GayandRight

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

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Freezing weather in Peru....

Note that they blame it on 'climate change'...not global warming....
Climate change continues to wreck havoc in Peru’s southern altiplano, where the arrival of freezing temperatures since March — almost three months earlier than usual — have killed more than a dozen people.

The extreme cold has claimed the lives of 16 people so far in Puno, and 5,053 others are suffering from respiratory ailments, most of them children under 5, Elsa Paredes, of Puno’s Regional Health Institute, told Enlace Nacional.

Moderate hail storms are predicted over the next several days over a wide area of the southern department of Puno, according to Senamhi, the national weather bureau, and temperatures are expected to drop in June, July and August to as low as -27º C (-16º F) in areas that lie above 4,000m (13,000 ft). The cold is also affecting the departments of Cusco and Arequipa.

Environmentalists take aim at Alberta's Tar Sands

I wish the press and environmentalists wouldn't call CO2 pollution...it's not.
Alberta's oilsands came under fire in Washington, D.C. yesterday, with environmentalists protesting the visit of deputy premier Ron Stevens and demanding a ban on "dirty oil" be enforced.

The National Resource Defense Council, which claims 1.3 million members across the U.S., bought an ad in the widely read Capitol Hill Roll Call newspaper, featuring a Maple Leaf oozing oil. It also slammed an Alberta government decision to spend $25 million on a public relations campaign to promote its green plan.

"Touting Alberta's commitment to environmental sustainability through the development of the oilsands is ludicrous," said the NRDC's Liz Barratt-Brown. "Development of oilsands has received widespread criticism due to the enormous amounts of global warming and toxic pollution it creates."

The group said Stevens's visit is an attempt to lobby the U.S. federal government to exempt the tarsands from Section 256 of the recently passed Energy Independence and Security Act.

Under that law, passed last year, federal agencies are banned from buying synthetic fuels - which could include synthetic fuel draw from tar sands bitumen - that have a higher lifecycle of greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels.

A natural stop to global warming....

As we have seen with La Nina this year, natural events can 'cancel' so-called global warming...
Global warming will be "put on hold" over the next decade because of natural climate variations, scientists claim.

A study of sea temperature changes predicts a lull as traditional climate cycles cancel out the heating effect of greenhouse gases from pollution.

The findings suggest the official models used to predict short-term global warming patterns are too crude.

But scientists say rising carbon dioxide levels caused by man will send temperatures up again after the natural trends peak and will continue to rise in following decades.

UN experts have said global temperatures are expected to increase by 0.3c over the next decade.

But the study by Dr Noel Keenlyside, of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Germany, predicts the temperature of the North Atlantic around Europe and North America may cool slightly.

Temperatures in the North Atlantic are influenced by a giant 'conveyor belt' of warm water from the south called the meridional overturning circulation.

This weakens and grows stronger every 80 years or so. When the circulation is strong, temperatures are warmer.

A new model of this pattern suggests it will weaken over the next ten years leading to cooler temperatures.

Writing in the journal Nature today, the scientists said: "Our results suggest global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade."

Hamas TV remembers the Holocaust....

Gee, you always learn something new on Hamas TV....
Jewish leaders concocted the mass murder of handicapped Jews in order to keep from having to support them, and this murder is what the Jews term "the Holocaust," according to a documentary special that aired on April 18 on Hamas's Al Aqsa television station.

Palestinian Media Watch located and translated the contents of the footage, which it uploaded to YouTube under the headline "Hamas: Jews planned Holocaust."

According to the documentary's narrator, Israel's first prime minister David Ben Gurion decided that Jewish "disabled and handicapped are a burden to the state," after which "the Satanic Jews" - the film cuts to a picture of a hassidic Jew - "thought up an evil plot to be rid of the burden of disabled and handicapped" - the film then cuts to piles of emaciated corpses - "in twisted criminal ways."

"This is official Hamas TV," explained PMW director Itamar Marcus. "It's owned and totally controlled by the Hamas leadership in Gaza, and it goes out by satellite to the whole Arab-speaking world."

The program dealt primarily with the Holocaust, but included comparisons to the Palestinian situation, calling the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps a "holocaust" and blaming Israel for a "Palestinian holocaust."

"They [the Jews] were the first to invent the methods of evil and oppression," explains the documentary's narrator, cutting to scenes of Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan and Ben Gurion.

The film claimed Jewish leaders blamed the Nazis for their own massacre of Jews "so the Jews would seem persecuted and try to benefit from international sympathy."

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Russia says NO to CO2 caps...

No surprise...no one wants to cap their CO2 emissions....
Russia will not accept binding caps on its greenhouse gas emissions under a new climate regime, currently being negotiated to succeed the Kyoto Protocol after 2012, top officials said on Monday.

Kyoto puts a cap on the average, annual greenhouse gas emissions from 2008-12 for some 37 industrialised countries, including Russia.

But former communist countries are well within their emissions targets, which are compared to 1990 levels, because their industries and carbon emissions subsequently collapsed after they struggled to adapt to free markets.

As a top energy producer and consumer, Russia welcomed the fact that Kyoto had not limited its carbon emissions and expected the same of any future climate deal, said Vsevolod Gavrilov, the official in charge of Russia's Kyoto obligations.

"Energy must not be a barrier to our comfort. Our emerging middle class... demands lots of energy and it is our job to ensure comfortable supply," he said.

Monday, April 28, 2008

An exhibition the public will never see...

It says something about a society when you can't find a willing exhibitor...
The controversial Mohammed-exhibition of work by Iranian artist Sooreh Hera remains hidden from the public. For the third time in succession, an exhibitor willing to show her work has reversed this decision.

Hera took photos of homosexuals wearing masks of the prophet Mohammed and his son-in-law Ali. The work was first going to be exhibited by the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, but the museum changed its mind because it "did not wish to become part of a political debate," as Director Wim van Krimpen put it.

MuseumgoudA then took on the role of advocate of artistic freedom. In December 2007, museum director Ranti Tjan offered to exhibit the work of Hera, who by then had begun to receive serious threats. But Tjan then needed protection himself and called the whole thing off.

Nor will the photos be shown at Art Amsterdam, an exhibition in the RAI at the beginning of May. Galerie A in Amsterdam offered two weeks ago to show the photos at Art Amsterdam, but now suddenly claims there is "not enough space". Only Hera's "less controversial" photos will therefore be on display in the RAI.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Who didn't walk out????

I'm more interested in who stayed.......
The United States, Britain and France have walked out of a closed meeting of the UN Security Council after Libya compared the situation in Gaza to Nazi concentration camps in World War II.

Council diplomats say Belgium and Costa Rica joined in the walkout.

It is a rare protest by members of the UN's most powerful body against one of their own members.

The council was discussing the possibility of issuing a press statement on recent Mideast events at a closed meeting late Wednesday when Libya's deputy ambassador made the comment.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Why Patrick Moore Left Greenpeace....

More reasons to loath Greenpeace....
The breaking point was a Greenpeace decision to support a world-wide ban on chlorine. Science shows that adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health, virtually eradicating water-borne diseases such as cholera. And the majority of our pharmaceuticals are based on chlorine chemistry. Simply put, chlorine is essential for our health.

My former colleagues ignored science and supported the ban, forcing my departure. Despite science concluding no known health risks – and ample benefits – from chlorine in drinking water, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have opposed its use for more than 20 years.

Opposition to the use of chemicals such as chlorine is part of a broader hostility to the use of industrial chemicals. Rachel Carson's 1962 book, "Silent Spring," had a significant impact on many pioneers of the green movement. The book raised concerns, many rooted in science, about the risks and negative environmental impact associated with the overuse of chemicals. But the initial healthy skepticism hardened into a mindset that treats virtually all industrial use of chemicals with suspicion.

Sadly, Greenpeace has evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas. Its antichlorination campaign failed, only to be followed by a campaign against polyvinyl chloride.

Greenpeace now has a new target called phthalates (pronounced thal-ates). These are chemical compounds that make plastics flexible. They are found in everything from hospital equipment such as IV bags and tubes, to children's toys and shower curtains. They are among the most practical chemical compounds in existence.

Phthalates are the new bogeyman. These chemicals make easy targets since they are hard to understand and difficult to pronounce. Commonly used phthalates, such as diisononyl phthalate (DINP), have been used in everyday products for decades with no evidence of human harm. DINP is the primary plasticizer used in toys. It has been tested by multiple government and independent evaluators, and found to be safe.

Despite this, a political campaign that rejects science is pressuring companies and the public to reject the use of DINP. Retailers such as Wal-Mart and Toys "R" Us are switching to phthalate-free products to avoid public pressure.

A new ice age....

Yet another scientist thinks global warming might be over...
Sunspot activity has not resumed up after hitting an 11-year low in March last year, raising fears that — far from warming — the globe is about to return to an Ice Age, says an Australian-American scientist.

Physicist Phil Chapman, the first native-born Australian to become an astronaut with NASA [he became an American citizen to join up, though he never went into space], said pictures from the U.S. Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) showed no spots on the sun.

He said the world cooled quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7 degrees Centigrade.

"This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930," Chapman wrote in The Australian Wednesday. "If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over."

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Historic synagogues in Tehran destroyed....

If this is really true, I'd like to see some commotion from the western powers...and the Vatican...
Seven ancient synagogues in the Iranian capital, Tehran, have been destroyed by local authorities.

The synagogues were in the Oudlajan suburb of Tehran, where many Iranian Jews used to live.

"These buildings, which were part of our cultural, artistic and architectural heritage were burnt to the ground," said Ahmad Mohit Tabatabaii, the director of the International Council of Museums’ (ICOM) office in Tehran.

"With the excuse of renovating this ancient quarter, they are erasing a part of our history," said Tabatabaii.

Gee, they even object to repairs on the wailing wall....

Of course, they deny any Jewish ties to the Wailing Wall...
The top Muslim cleric in Jerusalem, Mohammed Hussein, on Tuesday said he would object to Israel carrying out repair work on the Western Wall.

Hussein said that the wall is a part of the attached Al Aksa mosque, warning that any Israeli action there would be seen as aggression.

Michael Coren is wrong...

In today's National Post, Michael Coren writes that gay marriage is Canada's biggest mistake..The major problem I have with the Michael Coren article is that there is absolutely no evidence to support his claim.

Let's look at what he has written...
As for polygamy, it’s making something of a comeback — and here begin the objections.

Whenever this is mentioned by critics of same-sex marriage we are accused of using the slippery-slope argument. Sorry, some slopes are slippery. Polygamy is an ancient tradition within Islam — and was in Sephardic Judaism and some Asian cultures. When the precedent of gay marriage is combined with the freedom of religion defence, the courts will have a difficult time rejecting it.
Ok, so his first argument is the slipper slope one....

However, there are no court cases, that I know of, that use gay marriage as the precedent to legalize polygamy. Indeed, isn't Canada's lackadaisical approach to polygamy the real problem. Nobody is every prosecuted and the authorities just turn a blind eye to polygamy.....and that's been going on for decades, well before the legalization of gay marriage.
The state, though, should have a duty to judge and to do so based on its own interests. The most significant of which is its continued existence, meaning that we have to produce children. As procreation is the likely, if not essential, result of marriage between a man and a woman, it is in the interests of the state to encourage marriage.

Of course lesbian couples can have an obliging friend assist them in having a baby, and gay men can adopt or have an obliging friend have one for them, but this is hardly the norm and hardly going to guarantee the longevity of a stable society. Just as significant, it smashes the fundamental concept of a child being produced through an act of love. The donation of bodily fluid by an anonymous person, or that obliging friend again, is an act not of love but of lust, indifference, profit or a mere, well, helping hand.
Have gays 'smashed' the concept of a child being produced through an act of love...or have straights already done that through a variety of means??? And, who says that love isn't present??? Is he implying that there can be no love between gay couples???
For the first time not only in Canadian but in world history we are purposefully creating and legitimizing families where there will be either no male or no female role model and parent. Anyone who speaks of uncles, aunts, communities and villages raising children has no real understanding of family life. Single-parent families exist and are sometimes excellent and, obviously, not every mother/father family is a success. But to consciously create unbalanced families where children can never enjoy the profound difference between man and woman, mother and father, is dangerous social engineering.
For the first time? Gee, come on, give me a break. It's the divorce culture of straights, the rise of single mothers, etc. that have done more to delegitimize the family than ANYTHING gays can do or imagine.

I understand Coren's feelings towards kids having gay parents. But, to claim that these children can 'never enjoy the profound difference between man and woman" is just not true. Believe me, these kids (a very small number I should add) will get it.

Nowhere in Coren's article is there anything about the profound love that can exist between gay partners. The plain fact of the matter is that the only people, over the last several yars, that have really fought for marriage has been gay people and their friends.

York University is a disgrace...

Thanks to Barbara Kay for highlighting the horrible situation at York University....
Two weeks ago Hillel ran an event featuring Knesset member Natan Sharansky. His speech was disrupted by the Palestinian Students Association and Students Against Israeli Apartheid@York group (SAIA). They yelled and disrupted his talk and talked over him on their cell phones, according to witnesses.

One witness from a Zionist group, Hasbara, said she was terrified by remarks like “Get off our campus, you genocidal racist” and “you are bringing a second holocaust upon yourselves.”

Last week’s Jewish Tribune reported that a crowd of SAIA rioters had swarmed the “intimidated” York president Dr Mahmoud Shoukri’s office and then stormed the senate chambers. Permission was granted for them to speak to the president in spite of their lawless method of gaining access. According to some who witnessed the subsequent disruptions of Sharansky’s speech, the Palestinian students took the president’s meeting with them as encouragement for a continuation or even escalation of their hostile and threatening behaviour.

Fourth year student David Elmaleh commented, “York has demonstrated that when democratic and orderly processes do not achieve a desired outcome for a group of students, deplorable intimidation and mob tactics do.”

Blockades and disruptions shouldn't be tolerated....

The government has to stand firm to Mohawk and other protesters...
The Mohawk protester who helped shut down a stretch of Ontario's busiest highway last June says Canadians can expect more disruption on May 29.

That's the date chiefs across the country have circled for another day of peaceful demonstration to push for urgent action on native poverty. Shawn Brant, who led highway and railroad blockades near Kingston, Ont., last June, says placard-waving won't cut it.

If anything, he says, militancy has grown over the last year.
if only they'd put as much energy into entrepreneurship...and assimilation.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Leave her alone....

Why on earth are they spending money prosecuting Brigitte Bardot....you'd think they have enough real problems to work on...
French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of "inciting racial hatred" over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.

Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros (12,071 pounds) for saying the Muslim community was "destroying our country and imposing its acts".

Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim traditions and immigration from predominantly Muslim countries.

She has been fined four times for inciting racial hatred since 1997, at first 1,500 euros and most recently 5,000.

How's this for a plan? Import 'moderate' Imams from Pakistan.....

Gee, and how will they know they are moderate? And, are they any 'moderate' imams in Pakistan???
Moderate Muslim clerics are to be brought in from Pakistan in an effort to combat extremism in British mosques, the Home Secretary will announce today.

Jacqui Smith struck a deal on a recent visit to Pakistan under which respected imams could be invited to help British Muslims counter the fundamentalists.

The move is part of Government efforts to step up its so-called prevent agenda, which is aimed at tackling jihadi propaganda in Muslim communities.

The Dutch fund the glorification of terrorism...

I guess they believe better to spend the money 'over there'...and than in the Netherlands...
The Netherlands has put 1.2 million euros of taxpayers money in Ma'an, a Palestinian news agency that glorifies terrorism and incites to hatred, according to newspaper De Telegraaf. The Party for Freedom (PVV) is demanding that Development Cooperation Minister Bert Koenders claim the money back.

Press agency Ma'an is according to Israeli organisation Palestinian Media Watch guilty of disseminating the Jihad ideology of Palestinian terrorists. Thus, Ma'an glorifies the terrorist that recently murdered eight Jewish yeshiva students in cold blood with the highest Islamic status of "martyrdom for Allah." The news agency denies Israel's right to exist by characterising the territory of the Jewish state as 'occupied Palestine', De Telegraaf revealed.

The propaganda of hatred only appears in the Arabic reports of the news agency and not in the English versions. The Dutch representative at the Palestinian Authority, Frans Makken, believes the use of terminology glorifying terrorism did not happen "deliberately," the Netherlands' biggest newspaper added.

China is now tops in CO2 emissions....

I hate the way they use the term pollution in association with CO2...
China has already overtaken the US as the world's "biggest polluter", a report to be published next month says.

The research suggests the country's greenhouse gas emissions have been underestimated, and probably passed those of the US in 2006-2007.

The University of California team will report their work in the Journal of Environment Economics and Management.

They warn that unchecked future growth will dwarf any emissions cuts made by rich nations under the Kyoto Protocol.

UN confirms Hamas orchestrates fuel crisis..

They do this all the time....
Gaza's main fuel distributor is holding back one million litres of fuel, UN figures showed on Monday a day after Israel claimed Hamas was stage-managing a crisis in the Palestinian territory.

However, a UN official who requested anonymity said that the current stocks of fuel and industrial gasoline stored in Gaza are sufficient for only several days.

"The general petroleum association refuses to distribute in protest of the lack of supply of fuel by Israel," he said.

Monday, April 14, 2008

The truth about 'lights out'

The recent campaign was a farce....here's a great article by the Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg...
Danish newspapers - coincidentally in the native country of the story of the Emperor's New Clothes - happily quoted the WWF regarding the event's overwhelming success. But the entire savings (assuming people didn't use more energy later in the night to make up for lost time) amounted to just ten tons of CO2 - equivalent to just one Dane's annual emissions for a full year. Measuring the avoided climate impact for the indefinite future, the entire combined efforts of the queen, many companies, and the city halls of Copenhagen and other cities yielded $20 worth of good.

Are pointless gestures really the way to secure a greener future? And what sort of message does turning out the lights send?

As some conservative commentators like to point out, the environmental movement has indeed become a dark force, not metaphorically, but literally. Indeed, urging us to sit in darkness will probably only make us realise how unlikely it is that we will ever be persuaded to give up the advantages of fossil fuels.

Curiously, nobody suggested that the "lights out" campaign should also mean no air conditioning, telephones, Internet, movies, hot food, warm coffee, or cold drinks - not to mention the loss of security when street lights and traffic signals don't work. Perhaps recruiting support would have been much harder had the Danes also had to turn off their heat.

Ironically, the lights-out campaign also implies much greater energy inefficiency and dramatically higher levels of air pollution. When asked to extinguish electric lights, most people around the world would turn to candlelight instead. Candles are cozy and seem oh-so-natural. Yet, when measured by the light they generate, candles are almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs, and more than 300 times less efficient than fluorescent lights.

Moreover, candles create massive amounts of highly damaging indoor particulate air pollution, which in the United States is estimated to kill more than a 100,000 people each year. Candles can easily create indoor air pollution that is 10-100 times the level of outdoor air pollution caused by cars, industry, and electricity production. Measured against the relative decrease in air pollution from the reduced fossil fuel energy production, candles increase health-damaging air pollution 1,000-10,000-fold.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Reincarnation therapy for the unemployed???

Well, truth is stranger than fiction....will this come to Canada???
The municipality of Maastricht has pressurised unemployed people to follow reincarnation therapy. Uncooperative welfare recipients were told that their attitude could have consequences for their allowance, local newspaper De Limburger reported Friday.

The Social Services, which grants allowances and attempts to get recipients back to work, urged at least one unemployed resident of Maastricht to accept the guidance of a reincarnation therapist. Returning' to a previous life, would supposedly help them regain their balance and enhance their chances of finding work.

The local newspaper was tipped off by local councillor John Steijns. As leader of a local party, the politician came across documents revealing the alleged spiritual tendencies of the Maastricht government apparatus.

The responsible alderman Luc Winants (Social Affairs) did not wish to dismiss the initiative for now. "It might very well be true that reincarnation therapy is a means to get people back to work", said his spokesman Joep Delsing.

New research on global warming and hurricanes....

leads to a conclusion that they will slightly decline if the earth warms...
Noted Hurricane Expert Kerry Emanuel has publicly reversed his stance on the impact of Global Warming on Hurricanes. Saying "The models are telling us something quite different from what nature seems to be telling us," Emanuel has released new research indicating that even in a rapidly warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity will not be substantially affected.

"The results surprised me," says Emanuel, one of the media's most quoted figures on the topic.

Emanuel's newest work, co-authored with two other researchers, simulates hurricane conditions nearly 200 years in the future. The research -- the first to mesh global climate models with small-scale high-resolution simulations of individual storms -- found that while storm strength rises slightly in some areas, it falls in others -- and the total number of worldwide storms actually declines slightly.

Wise words from Hamas....

Could you imagine the uproar if a western parliamentarian said these sort of things about Mecca???
"The PLO is the sole legitimate representative [of the Palestinian people], and it has not changed its platform even one iota."

That's what the PLO's ambassador to Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, told Lebanon's NBN TV in an interview that aired last Wednesday and was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

"In light of the weakness of the Arab nation and the lack of values, and in light of the American control over the world, the PLO proceeds through phases, without changing its strategy. Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine," added Zaki.

The clip can be viewed at http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1738.htm.

And in a sermon televised on Friday, Yunis al-Astal, a Hamas MP and cleric, told worshipers that Islam would soon conquer Rome, "the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and which has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam," just as Constantinople was.

Rome, he said, would become "an advanced post for the Islamic conquests which will spread through Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, and even Eastern Europe."

In his address aired on Hamas's Al-Aksa TV and also translated by MEMRI, Astal told his audience: "Allah has chosen you for himself and for his religion, so that you will serve as the engine pulling this nation to the phase of succession, security, and consolidation of power, and even to conquests through da'wa [preaching] and military conquests of the capitals of the entire world."

"I believe that our children or our grandchildren will inherit our jihad and our sacrifices, and Allah willing, the commanders of the conquest will come from among them. Today, we instill these good tidings in their souls, and by means of the mosques and the Koran books, and the history of our prophet, his companions, and the great leaders, we prepare them for the mission of saving humanity from the hellfire on the brink of which they stand."

The clip can be viewed at http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1739.htm.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

The problem with Islamic studies...

Universities should not be accepting money from Saudi Arabia.....
Extremist ideas are being spread by Islamic study centres linked to British universities and backed by multi-million-pound donations from Saudi Arabia and Muslim organisations, a new report claims.

Eight universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, have accepted more than £233.5 million from Saudi and Muslim sources since 1995, with much of the money going to Islamic study centres, according to the report.

The total sum, revealed by Anthony Glees, the director of Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, amounts to the largest source of external funding to UK universities.

Arab donors have argued that their gifts to academic institutions help to promote understanding between the West and the Islamic world. However, Prof Glees claims in his unpublished report that the propagation of one-sided views of Islam and the Middle East at universities amounts to anti-Western propaganda.

Prof Glees attracted controversy in 2005 when he claimed that up to 48 universities had been infiltrated by fundamentalists and warned that the threat posed by radical groups should be "urgently addressed".

30 Terrorism Plots in the UK....

Gee, the police are monitoring 30 separate plots...
British police and security agencies are currently monitoring 30 terrorism plots, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said in extracts of a newspaper interview released on Saturday.

"We now face a threat level that is severe. It's not getting any less, it's actually growing," she said in an interview to be published in Sunday's News of the World.

"We task the police and the security agencies with protecting us ... There are 22,000 individuals they are monitoring. There are 200 networks. There are 30 active plots," she said.

Lesbian couple sent to prision under shariah law in Nigeria....

I expect the western powers to start protesting immediately....if they were jailed for being Christians, everybody would be upset....
Two women in Kaduna, Nigeria have been sentenced to six months in prison and 20 lashes each for having a lesbian relationship.

The Sharia court said that Malama Hauwa and Hajiya Ai'sha were violating the tenets of Islam and the teachings of Sharia law.

Friday, April 11, 2008

A Jewish community under threat...

There goes yet another Jewish community...
The Uzbek Justice Ministry has refused an accreditation request by the country's chief rabbi, Abe Dovid Gurevich. The ministry says Gurevich failed to provide proper documentation, while others say the move represents an attack on religious freedom.

The dwindling population of Jews in Central Asia represents one of the oldest religious communities in the region -- established more than 2,000 years ago, even before the predominant Muslim faith.

Though there are only thousands of Jews left in Central Asia, they still have a chief rabbi. But as of April 10, Gurevich has no official right to serve the Jewish community.

The Jewish community in Uzbekistan has seen several setbacks in the last decade. When Uzbekistan adopted a new law on religion in 1998, it abolished the rabbinate, the Jewish community's administrative office. Subsequent attempts to reopen the rabbinate have failed, leaving the Jewish community without theological schools to train rabbis.

In February 2006, Avraam Yagudaev -- a Jewish leader from Tashkent -- was killed in an automobile accident that some said was suspicious. A few months later, tragedy struck again when Gurevich's secretary and her mother were found strangled to death in Tashkent.

As for the Bukharan Jewish community, it numbered some 40,000 when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Today, it is about half that as thousands took the opportunity to move to Israel, the United States, or elsewhere.

New Iranian Missiles???

Good news....Iran may be developing missiles with a range of 6,000 km...
New satellite imagery exposed a site where Iran was developing long-range ballistic missiles, the London-based Times reported Friday.

On February 4, Iran launched a "research rocket" as part of its space program, the Islamic Republic announced. Experts have estimated since then, however, that the rocket launch was in fact a field test of Shihab-type ballistic missile.

But four days after the launch another intriguing feature of the test became apparent: analysis of photographs taken by the Digital Globe QuickBird satellite indicated that the launch site of Kavoshgar 1, as the Shihab missile was dubbed by the Iranians, is also the site where Iran is busy developing ballistic missiles with a range of about 6,000 km.

The site, about 230 km southeast of Teheran, was previously unknown and its link with the Iranian weapons program was revealed by Jane's Intelligence Review after the images were studied by a former Iraq weapons inspector.

Using a space program as a façade for a weapons program was the path chosen by Korea until it declared it had passed the nuclear weapon threshold.

Geoffrey Forden, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that there was a recently constructed building on the site, about 40 metres in length, which was similar in form and size to the Taepodong long-range missile assembly facility in North Korea.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Hamas creates a false crisis...

They confiscate half of all the fuel coming into Gaza...
Hamas seizes half the fuel Israel sends to the Gaza Strip and uses it in part for its military wing's vehicles, Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials said Thursday.

Israel cut off the only source of fuel for Gaza's 1.4 million people Thursday after Wednesday's deadly attack on the only fuel transfer point into the territory.

But Israeli defense officials indicated that the cutoff would not last past the weekend.

Nir Press, commander of the military liaison unit for Gaza, said Hamas takes about half the fuel transferred to the Gaza Strip.

Hussein al-Sheikh, a PA official, told Haaretz that Hamas seizes some 400,000 of the 800,000 liters of diesel transferred to Gaza weekly and intended for uses such as generators, hospitals, water pumps and sewage pumps.

Israeli sources said Hamas was preventing the pumping of all the fuel from the Nahal Oz depot's reserves and funneling it to the Strip's gas stations. In the past week, only a small amount of fuel and diesel was pumped from the depot, leaving some 820,000 liters of diesel and 200,000 of gas in the depots, they said.

"Hamas is trying to create a false fuel crisis in the Gaza Strip," a senior government source said. "The simulated strike by Gaza's gas-station owners is also organized by Hamas. They want to create long lines for gas and a feeling that Israel is tightening the siege on Gaza, although this is not the case," he said.

Egypt sentences 5 men for being gay...

I guess they'll be huge protests in New York, Sam Francisco and Toronto...
An Egyptian court convicted five men Wednesday on charges of homosexual behavior and sentenced them to three years in prison, officials said.

Defense lawyer, Adel Ramadan, said the judge found the men guilty of the "habitual practice of debauchery" — a term used in the Egyptian legal system to denote consensual homosexual acts.

The convictions were confirmed by a judicial official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to journalists.

Homosexuality is not explicitly referred to in Egypt's legal code, but a wide range of laws covering obscenity, prostitution and debauchery are applied to homosexuals in this conservative country.

The five men were arrested in what human rights groups describe as a crackdown on people with the AIDS virus, using the debauchery charges as a means to prosecute them.

Four of the five men tested HIV-positive after all were forced to undergo blood tests in custody, Human Rights Watch says. The New York-based rights group issued a statement Tuesday signed by more than 100 other organizations around the world condemning the prosecutions.

Ramadan, a lawyer with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said the five men were abused and tortured over the past several months to "extract confessions" from them.

In addition to their prison time, the men were sentenced to an additional three years of police supervision, meaning they will have to spend every night at a police station, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., the lawyer said.

Richard Warman's war against conservative bloggers...

If you aren't a regular reader of Ezra Levant's web site, you should be. Turns out, he has just been sued for libel by Richard Warman - the ex CHRC employee who regularly brings people before the Commission. He'a also suing several blogs like Small Dead Animals and Five Feet of Fury. This is a one-man wrecking crew of free speech.

Levant outlines three ways to help the fight...
1. Help me and the other defendants with our legal bills. I don’t know how Warman funds his dozens of defamation suits. As I mentioned above, I suspect the CJC helps him out. I know Kathy, Kate and Connie and Mark and, like me, they don’t have an extra $30,000 or $50,000 kicking around to fend off this nuisance suit. And that’s probably how much it will cost each of us to take this to trial. In my case, it’s a double-whammy – I’m already on the hook for legal bills fighting against the Alberta HRC complaint about publishing the Danish cartoons. This is clearly the HRCs’ attempt to pile on.

If you want to help, click on our PayPal buttons. Here’s the link to Kathy, Kate and Connie and Mark. And my PayPal button is below, and on my main page.

2. Spread the word about this fight, and the other abusive distortions to our law that Canada’s human rights commissions and their courtiers are doing. That’s what I call denormalization – letting ordinary Canadians know that the agencies and advocates who used to promote our civil rights are now amongst Canada’s worst abusers of our civil rights – especially our freedom of speech.

3. And, remember the second step in our fight-back plan: once we’ve raised awareness about the dangers of Canada’s out-of-control human rightsniks, we have to press our politicians to act. This lawsuit has just a handful of defendants. But that’s misleading, because what’s really at stake here is the right for anyone to criticize Canada’s HRCs, and the existence of conservative blogs at all. If we lose, no-one else will dare to criticize the HRCs – certainly not politicians. And Richard Warman’s campaign of bullying and censorship will continue. But if we win – and, by the way, we’re already winning – we’ll expose the depths of the corruption of the HRCs and we’ll be able to prune them back, or uproot them altogether. Warman might think that the defendants and I will be on trial. I give you my promise that he and the CHRC will be on trial every bit as much – and far more so in the court of public opinion.
If you want to hit Ezra's Paypal button, please go directly to his web site. Money well worth spending.

India's New Ultra-Mega Coal Plant....

The plant will emit 23 million tons of CO2 annually!
The troubling tension between propelling prosperity and limiting climate risks in a world still wedded to fossil fuels is on full display this week. India’s Tata Power group just gained important financial backing from the International Finance Corporation, a branch of the World Bank, for its planned $4 billion, 4-billion watt “Ultra Mega” coal-burning power plant complex in Gujarat state.

The I.F.C., along with the Asian Development Bank, Korea, and other backers, sees the need to bring electricity to one of the world’s poorest regions as more pressing than limiting carbon dioxide from fuel burning. The plants will emit about 23 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to the I.F.C., but using technology that is 40 percent more efficient at turning coal into kilowatt-hours than the average for India.

Global chill ahead???

More and more voices are being heard about the effects of solar activity....
Fluctuations in solar radiation could mean colder weather in the decades ahead, despite all the talk about global warming, retired Western Washington University geologist Don Easterbrook said Tuesday.

Easterbrook is convinced that the threat of global warming from mankind’s carbon dioxide pollution is overblown.

In a campus lecture, he cited centuries of climate data in an effort to convince a somewhat skeptical audience that carbon dioxide’s impact on climate is being much exaggerated by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and by scientists who appear to have won the debate over global warming.

“Despite all you hear about the debate being over, the debate is just starting,” Easterbrook said.

Easterbrook doesn’t deny that the Earth’s climate has been warming slowly since about 1980. But he argued that this warming trend fits a longstanding pattern of warming and cooling cycles that last roughly 30 years. Sunspot activity and other solar changes appear to explain the 30-year cycles, he said.

If that pattern persists, the earth could now be close to the next 30-year cooling cycle, Easterbrook said.

He noted that the 2007-08 winter set records for cold and snow in many parts of the globe. According to the data he displayed, the Earth’s temperature hit a peak in 1998 and has been steady or slightly cooler since then.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Anti-semitic incidents up 11% in Canada in 2007....

What's really worrying is the increase of incidents on campus...
Anti-Semitic incidents have jumped 400 percent in the past 10 years in Canada, a B'nai Brith Canada study released Wednesday indicates.

The group said in its annual survey that there were 1,042 incidents reported in 2007, up 11.4 percent from 2006 alone, the Canadian Broadcast Corp. reported. The group also noted a 51.9 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents on university and college campuses in Canada.

Allan Adel, president of B'nai Brith's human rights league, said the audit reveals that over the years the majority of reported cases consistently occurred in Ontario, though there was a spike in Quebec this year, as well.

Better to pay terrorists than deport them...

Now, there's a new strategy for fighting Islamic terrorism...
One of the world's most dangerous terror suspects was last night preparing for a life on benefits in Britain after judges ruled that his deportation would breach human rights law.

Abu Qatada, dubbed Osama Bin Laden's "truly dangerous" ambassador in Europe, could be released from jail within months following the Court of Appeal verdict.

Yesterday's decision has left Britain's anti-terror laws in tatters. It means the Jordanian father of five - who has been linked to a string of global terror conspiracies and is held in a high security prison under immigration powers - can expect to receive £1,000 a month in handouts.

The taxpayer also faces a bill of tens of thousand of pounds to keep the hate-filled cleric under 24-hour surveillance by security services under a control order unless a last-ditch Home Office appeal is granted by the House of Lords. Even if it is, Qatada could appeal again, to the European Court of Human Rights.

Yesterday the Court of Appeal said Qatada could stay because evidence used against him in any prosecution in his native Jordan may have been obtained by torture - a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

At the same time, 12 Libyan fanatics were cleared to remain in Britain for the rest of their lives by a second human rights ruling. They include an asylum seeker considered a "real and direct threat" to security who had a map marked with the flightpath to Birmingham Airport.

Gay Palestinian gets OK to live with Israeli lover...

Could you imagine the reverse headline???
Israel has granted a Palestinian a rare residency permit after the man, who is gay, said his sexuality put his life in danger in the West Bank, a Defence Ministry official said on Tuesday.

The 33-year-old Palestinian from Jenin was issued a temporary permit to live with his Israeli partner in Tel Aviv after arguing he faced death threats from fellow Palestinians who disapproved of him being gay, the official said.

Israel's Interior Ministry rarely issues permits for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank who want to live with their partners in Israel, regardless of sexuality. Requesting such a permit can take years.

"In this case the man's lawyer said his life was in danger because of his sexual preference," said Peter Lerner, spokesman for Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, whose office comes under the defence ministry.

"On this basis we issued the temporary permit," he said.

Glenn Beck and NewsBusters Expose Global Warming Bullies

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Jimmy Carter to meet with terrorists...

Gee, what on earth is going to say?
Former President Jimmy Carter is reportedly preparing an unprecedented meeting with the leader of Hamas, an organization that the U.S. government considers one of the leading terrorist threats in the world.

The Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat reported Tuesday that Carter was planning a trip to Syria for mid-April, during which he would meet with Khaled Meshal, the exiled head of the Palestinian terror group Hamas, on April 18.

Deanna Congileo, Carter’s press secretary, confirmed in an e-mail to FOXNews.com that Carter will be in the Mideast in April. Pressed for comment, Congileo did not deny that the former president is considering visiting Meshal.

“President Carter is planning a trip to the Mideast next week; however, we are still confirming details of the trip and will issue a press release by the end of this week,” wrote Congileo. “I cannot confirm any specific meetings at this point in time.”

Meshal, who lives in Syria to avoid being arrested by the Israeli government, leads Hamas from his seat in Damascus, where he is a guest of Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Mosque tells kids that non-muslims are dogs....

This happened in Amsterdam....
A primary school in Amsterdam wished to provide its pupils with an understanding for other cultures. But during a visit to a mosque, the children were told they were dogs.

With a view to developing understanding and respect for other cultures among children, primary school De Horizon regularly organises outings to various religious organisations. The chairman of the El Mouchidine mosque told the children from group 7 (aged 10) and their chaperones however that non-Muslims are dogs.

Global warming is cancelled....

The IPCC gets some of the science wrong...
This is why I felt so lucky to be in the right place at the right time when I heard Roy Spencer speak at the New York conference on climate change in March. At first I thought this was just another paper setting out observations against the forecasts, further confirming Evans' earlier work.

But as the argument unfolded I realised Spencer was drawing on observations and measurements from the new Aqua satellites to explain the mechanism behind this anomaly between model forecasts and observation. You may have heard that the IPCC models cannot predict clouds and rain with any accuracy. Their models assume water vapour goes up to the troposphere and hangs around to cook us all in a greenhouse future.

However, there is a mechanism at work that "washes out" the water vapour and returns it to the oceans along with the extra CO2 and thus turns the added water vapour into a NEGATIVE feedback mechanism.

The newly discovered mechanism is a combination of clouds and rain (Spencer's mechanism adds to the mechanism earlier identified by Professor Richard Lindzen called the Iris effect).

The IPCC models assumed water vapour formed clouds at high altitudes that lead to further warming. The Aqua satellite observations and Spencer's analysis show water vapour actually forms clouds at low altitudes that lead to cooling.

Furthermore, Spencer shows the extra rain that falls from these clouds cools the underlying oceans, providing a second negative feedback to negate the CO2 warming.

This has struck the alarmists like a thunderbolt, especially as the lead author of the IPCC chapter on feedback has written to Spencer agreeing that he is right!

There goes the alarmist neighbourhood!

The climate is not highly sensitive to CO2 warming because water vapour is a damper against the warming effect of CO2.

That is why history is full of Ice Ages - where other effects, such as increased reflection from the ice cover, do provide positive feedback - while we do not hear about Heat Ages. The Medieval Warm Period, for example, is known for being benignly warm - not dangerously hot.

We live on a benign planet - except when it occasionally gets damned cold.

While I have done my best to simplify these developments they remain highly technical and many people distrust their own ability to assess competing scientific claims. However, in this case the tipping point theories are based on models that do not include the effects of rain and clouds.

The new Nasa Aqua satellite is the first to measure the effects of clouds and rainfall. Spencer's interpretation of the new data means all previous models and forecasts are obsolete. Would anyone trust long-term forecasts of farm production that were hopeless at forecasting rainfall?

The implications of these breakthroughs in measurement and understanding are dramatic to say the least. The responses will be fun to watch.

Cutting CO2 is futile....

It's just not happening....
Will cutting our carbon emissions really make any difference to the planet? The answer is a definite no, and most of the proposals to do so are ludicrously inadequate anyway.

Take Australia, for example, where about 135 million incandescent light bulbs are in use. The Government wants to ban them by 2010 to cut the nation's greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 800,000 tonnes a year by 2012. If this sounds a lot, bear in mind that it represents a reduction of just 0.14 per cent.

American journalist Robert Samuelson derides such tiny cuts as part of a feel-good political culture that is mostly about showing off, not curbing greenhouse gas emissions, and is made worse by politicians who pander to green constituents who want to feel good about themselves.

Grandiose goals are declared, he writes, but measures to achieve them are deferred or don't exist.

He adds that it's all just a delusional exercise in public relations that, while not helping the environment, might hurt the economy.

Samuelson is right that such puny cuts are ludicrous as a means of preventing global warming. Why? Just take a look at China, which is scheduled to build 562 coal-fired power plants over the next five years. That's more than two a week.

China's annual carbon emissions of 1.3 billion tonnes have already overtaken those of Europe and will exceed those of the United States this year.

Peiser gets it right...

A terrific op-ed from the Financial Post today on the costs of CO reductions....
Developing nations insist that the rich world unilaterally commit to stringent and legally binding CO2 emissions cuts at home. At the same time, they also demand massive wealth transfers from the West in the form of 'clean' technologies and financial funds for adaptation and energy initiatives.

The self-inflicted damage as a result of Western climate policies has been ruinous. Japan alone faces a Kyoto bill of more than US$500-billion -- if the country endeavours to cut CO2 emissions by 11% over the next decade. No wonder, then, that Japan has officially given up on Kyoto and is now calling for a much softer replacement based on select sectoral, rather than national emission targets.

In Europe, too, policy-makers and business leaders now realize that the European Union's unilateral actions are threatening to drive energy-intensive industries abroad. According to recent estimates, European industries are expected to shoulder ¤50-billion to ¤80-billion ($128-billion) per year if the EU's agreed climate targets were to become legally binding. Unsurprisingly, the European Commission has now warned that it will abandon its own goals if the rest of the world won't agree to a new climate treaty.

These staggering costs, however, pale in comparison with what China and the developing nations are demanding for their signature under any new climate treaty. Arguing that Europe, Japan and North America have caused much of the buildup of the world's CO2 emissions in the atmosphere over the last century or so, China has called on Western nations to hand over 0.5% of their GDP per year in form of funds and clean-technology transfer to developing nations to counter global warming. China's demand amounts to a wealth transfer of around US$200-billion a year from the OECD to the rest of the world, of which US$65-billion annually would come from the United States alone.

China's exorbitant request, however, has been eclipsed by demands by African campaigners, who are charging a payback that is twice as high. At the Bangkok meeting, African non-governmental organizations called on rich countries to commit 1% of their GDP each year -- for Africa alone -- for adaptation policies dealing with the effects of climate change, in addition to existing development aid.

Sexual orientation is innate....

Jonathan Kay has a terrific op-ed in the National Post today on being gay....
It's worth pointing out, at this point, that no one knows for sure what causes homosexuality. There is no known "gay gene." According to the American Psychological Association (APA), rather, "most scientists today agree that sexual orientation is most likely the result of a complex interaction of environmental, cognitive and biological factors." But whatever the cause, sexual orientation becomes part of one's identity no less than skin colour or sex. (The APA has declared that sexual orientation is "not changeable.") Not surprisingly, the "ex-gay" men who find Christ and declare themselves "cured" of homosexuality usually wind up not so "ex" in the long run. As others have noted, the truest test of a person's claimed belief that a gay man can be turned straight is whether he would let such a convert marry his own daughter. (If there's a reader out there who can pass that test, I'd like to hear from him. I'm talking to you, Dexter38.)

All this should be fairly obvious to anyone who grew up with even a few gay acquaintances. I did have one university friend who, after a bad breakup with a lothario boyfriend, tried to turn lesbian as a political statement. (Surprise, surprise: It's didn't last.) But the gay men I know typically acknowledged their homosexuality reluctantly, and only after years of guilt, confusion and social terror in their high-school years. The idea that these specimens "turned gay" voluntarily -- or that they could reverse their God-given lust thrusters 180 degrees as a matter of conscious will--is laughable.

I say all this not to make fun of religious types. But speaking selfishly as a secularized conservative, I do find their line of free-will argumentation slightly embarrassing. It furthers the unfortunate stereotype of conservatives as being out-of-touch with anyone outside society's mainstream (narrowly defined). It also bespeaks a mindset that privileges dogma above empirical observation, an accusation usually reserved for the left.

In some cases, culture wars have clear winners. That's what's happened with homosexuality: The love that dared not speak its name a half-century ago has now been normalized to the point of banality. Conservatives should concede liberals this victory and move on. Advancing dubious theories of homosexuality's origins may help Christians keep their faith in God's existence. But on the political stage, the tactic merely undermines the right's credibility.
I totally agree. I knew early on that I was 'different'. High school was a torment since my friends just couldn't stop talking about girls, and I just had no interest. It was a very lonely time since I had no one to talk to. And, there was no support structure back in the 70s for gay people. A gay society only started at Concordia University in my last year there.

Homosexuality is innate and it cannot be changed. I hope more social conservatives will hear Jonathan Kay's message.

Monday, April 07, 2008

Fire the UK Home Secretary...

I really hate it when people refer to Islam as the Religion of Peace...
Two million Muslims are now living in the UK, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith revealed yesterday.

The milestone total includes 10,000 millionaires, she said during a visit to Pakistan to discuss counter-terrorism.

It means the Islamic population in the UK has increased by 400,000 since the 2001 census - adding more than 50,000 to the total each year.

Miss Smith told the Pakistan National Council of the Arts: "After Christianity, Islam is the largest faith community in the UK.

"1.6million declared themselves Muslims in the 2001 census, and that figure may now be as high as 2million. Islam is one of many faiths which are practised in UK communities.

"We are proud to live in such a diverse country.

"Muslims play a full and active part in British society: in politics, from Parliament to local government, in the armed forces, policing, the professions, the arts and sports, and of course in business."

The Home Secretary said she wants Britain's universities to "provide high quality learning about faith and Islam and to establish the UK as centre of excellence outside the Islamic world for Islamic studies".

She repeated the Government's new position there is no such thing as "Islamic terrorism", telling the audience: "Terrorism has no place in Islamic thought, teaching or tradition. It is the opposite of everything that Islam stands for: Peace, Tolerance and Obedience to God.

WMDs once again?

An interesting tidbit in the Jerusalem Post....
An upcoming joint US-Israel report on the September 6 IAF strike on a Syrian facility will claim that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein transferred weapons of mass destruction to the country, Channel 2 stated Monday.

Green is the new Red...

Lord Lawson of the UK has a new book out about global warming....here's a review by Christopher Booker of the Daily Telegraph...
Lord Lawson closes on a note that others of us have struck in trying to puzzle out the deeper reasons for this great climate panic. He recognises that in many ways the global warming ideology has filled the vacuum left by the collapse of Marxism: "Green is the new red."

He sees parallels with the apocalyptic visions held out by certain religious movements in the past. He is alarmed by the fanatical intolerance shown by many believers in global warming to any heretic who dares question their certainties.

He ends by describing "the new religion of global warming" as "the Da Vinci Code of environmentalism. It is a great story and a best-seller. It contains a grain of truth and a mountain of nonsense.

"We have entered," he says, "a new age of unreason, which threatens to be as economically harmful as it is disquieting. It is from this, above all, that we really do need to save the planet."

The horrors of feminism....

A terrific piece from Barbara Kay on feminism...
I then turned my attention to the negative and far-ranging effects, of feminism on men. Misandry, which is the female equivalent of misogyny (misanthropy is a hatred of humankind), is now entrenched in our public discourse, our education system and social services. Misandry flies beneath most people’s radar, because we have become compliant in the acceptance of theories that have nothing to do with reality, and compliant in the speech codes that accompany that tendency.

Denigration of men in ways both casual and formal are a commonplace in society. Last Christmas I saw an advertisement for a butcher block knife holder in the shape of a man. The slot for the largest knife was placed in his groin. Hilarious? Imagine a knifeholder in the shape of a woman and a knife slot at the vagina. Hilarious? Not so much. Once you become aware of the phenomenon, you will see it everywhere, trust me.

For overt misandry, one has only to survey the industry around domestic violence. You could be forgiven for thinking that domestic violence is a one-way street, for that is certainly the impression one has from the fact that there are innumerable tax-funded shelters for abused women, none for abused men, unlimited funds for campaigns to raise consciousness around abused women, none for abused men. There is not a single social services agency or charity in Canada advertising "family services" that offers counseling, shelter or legal services for men who have been physically abused by women.

When angry feminists adduce their mantra that only men are inherently violent and that women use violence only in self-defense, I bring up a theme that is forbidden to discussion in women’s shelters: how is it then that partner violence amongst lesbians is significantly higher than amongst heterosexual partnerships?

How is it that children are far, far more likely to be physically abused by their mothers than their fathers? And when they are, how can we justify a woman’s right to take her children to a shelter to escape a violent husband when there is no shelter in the country that will accept a father with children fleeing an abusive mother?

WHO fearmongering....

I just wish they would stick to health....and not talk about 'changing lifesyles'...
The World Health Organization is sounding the alarm about the potential health effects of global warming in the coming years.

The hardest hit countries will be poorer nations in Asia, where, according to the WHO, millions of people will face hunger, disease, and poverty due to rising temperatures and increased rainfall.

Diseases such as malaria and diarrhea, along with malnutrition and floods, could cause about 150,000 deaths around the world each year.

"Without urgent action through changes in human lifestyle, the effects of this phenomenon on the global climate system could be abrupt or even irreversible, sparing no country and causing more frequent and more intense heat waves, rain storms, tropical cyclones and surges in sea level,'' warned WHO Director Shigeru Omi on Monday.

Speaking in the Philippines, Omi said that governments will need to reform and strengthen services to monitor clean water, disease surveillance, mosquito control, and disaster preparedness.
How about just spending money on eliminating malaria right now??? No need for lifestyle changes. I believe that there are true environmental problems that we should address - including malaria, low nutrition in Africa, AIDs in Africa, and safe drinking water. But, let's tackle these problems directly, rather than through a very expensive indirect approach (and very uncertain) lifestyle changes.

More evidence on Iran's Nuclear Programme...

This is from Le Monde....
While the United Nations' Security Council recently adopted a third set of sanctions designed to force Iran to halt its nuclear program, Le Monde has obtained documents showing that Tehran has pursued a military nuclear program after 2003, contrary to an American National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) report published on December 3, 2007.

On February 25, Olli Heinonen, the Finnish Deputy Director General of the International Agency of Atomic Energy (IAEA), presented evidence of the existence of an Iranian military nuclear program. A letter in 2004 by Engineer Mahdi Khaniki, one of the main interlocutors of the IAEA and former Iranian ambassador to Syria, to Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, vice president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), confirms the charge.

The letter provides an overview of relations between Tehran and IAEA inspectors in Vienna. Khaniki reminded that IAEA inspectors - who act under the direction of Mr. Heinonen - have requested to see the purchase orders for the spare parts used in the development of centrifuges. These centrifuges when assembled in "cascade" can be used to enrich uranium, possibly to military grade.

"At a meeting held on January 31, 2004 in the presence of Dr Rowhani (Hassan Rowhani, chief negotiator of the Iranian nuclear programme until the end of 2005), he determined that these orders be prepared in accordance with wishes of the AEOI, so that they would be ready to be delivered to the IAEA." He added: "It is worth noting, that the representative of the Defense Ministry and Armed Forces said at the meeting that the purchase orders had been prepared to be handed over (to the IAEA)."

"However, Khaniki continues saying that portions of these purchase orders, which I myself saw at the Ministry of Defense, were crossed out in black ink and the quantities were not visible. It seems, therefore, that these purchase orders could raise more questions than those which should (normally) be submitted to the Agency (IAEA)." He concluded "Naturally, I asked Engineer Mohammadi to prepare the ones with the necessary number (corrected), and I hope he has already done it."

For Iranian dossier specialists, this letter represents clear evidence of the Defense Ministry's involvement in the Iranian nuclear project. This confirms suspicions about the military nature of the program, while attesting to the efforts of the Iranians to conceal it.

According to sources close to an intelligence service, this letter is part of "Project 13", which is entitled "Project to eradicate threats."

This project would have meant to deceive the IAEA inspectors. The Center for Research in Physics (PHRC) in Lavizan Shian has been renamed as "AMAD", and the "departments" have been named after the "projects," in order to destroy the leads. In the second phase, probably in 2006, the name "AMAD" was also deleted. Since then, it is no longer referred to as the "Center" which would be an indication of the presence of a military nuclear program.

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Iran and North Korea....

We need more than the US to put pressure on North Korea...
The United States and Israel seek to pressure North Korea to cease its nuclear cooperation with Iran, which is one of the motives behind their agreement to disclose details on the air-force strike in Syria last September.

According to foreign press reports, the strike targeted a nuclear installation built with North Korean assistance. According to information obtained by Washington and Jerusalem, North Korea transferred technology and nuclear materials to Iran to aid Tehran's secret nuclear arms program.

U.S. and Israeli officials agreed last week that the talks between the U.S. and North Korea, scheduled to take place in Singapore tomorrow, should be used to pressure Pyongyang to disclose its nuclear cooperation with countries in the Middle East. As a pressure tactic, U.S. officials could reveal details of North Korea's cooperation with Syria to Congress.

Foreign news sources reported that in addition to helping Syria build the nuclear facility that Israel attacked, North Korea sent engineers and various materials to the site. Israel and the U.S. fear that Pyongyang could be doing even more to boost Iran's nuclear program.

Big demonstration against Fitna in Karachi...

Is this the start??
In Pakistan thousands of people have demonstrated against the anti-Qur'an film by MP Geert Wilders and Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. The protest in Karachi was organised by a radical Islamist party. Demonstrators shouted "Down with Holland" and "Down with Denmark". National flags of the two countries were also set alight. Estimates of the numbers of demonstrators vary widely between 5,000 and 20,000.

April snow in the UK.....

Worst in 20 years....
Britain saw its worst April snowfall for nearly 20 years yesterday as winter returned.

Up to three inches of snow fell in parts of southern England and temperatures were below freezing in many places even at midday.

The Arctic cold snap meant more misery for passengers at Heathrow's Terminal 5, where British Airways cancelled more than 100 flights.

Anti-Semitism at UC-Irvine....

A lot of Jewish groups don't want to make a fuss...but have a look at some of the programs offered at UC-Irvine...
Programs at UCI have included "Holocaust in the Holy Land;" "Israel: The 4th Reich;" and recently in February 2008, "From Auschwitz to Gaza: The Politics of Genocide," at which speakers reportedly made such statements as "Zionist Jews... are the new Nazis," and that "the apartheid state of Israel is on the way down... your days are numbered. We will fight you until we are martyred or until we are victorious."

Arctic fishing grounds???

I don't believe we are going to see this anytime soon - but here's a benefit to global warming - fishing grounds in the Arctic...
For Arctic nations, one of the so-called “benefits” of global warming has been the promise of opening up new fisheries in a remote part of the world choked by ice much of the year.

But many worry that the new territory is also an unregulated one, and that if the United States doesn’t act in the next few years, rogue fishermen from other nations could begin plying areas north of the Bering Strait in the summer, looking for new, unexploited fisheries.

So far, no major commercial fisheries are in the area of the Arctic Ocean closest to Alaska, said David Balton, the assistant secretary for oceans and fisheries at the State Department’s Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science.

Yet “as the climate changes, the ice recedes, the water warms, we should be expecting and anticipating that there could be major commercial fisheries north of the Bering Strait,” Balton testified at a recent Senate Commerce Committee meeting.

The United States needs to make a strong case for managing those Arctic Ocean fisheries before the ice thins enough for fishing vessels to access them in the summer without ice-breaking equipment, said U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

“It’s time that we really worked on an aggressive approach to protect the Arctic,” he said.

Just two or three years are left to develop a plan, Stevens said. That will include talking to Russian counterparts to come up with a way to manage vessel traffic through the Bering Strait, said U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Arthur Brooks, who oversees the Alaska region.

The United States also needs an aggressive — yet cooperative — approach with both Russia and Canada on the issue, said Lisa Speer, of the Water and Oceans Program with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
For those of you skeptics out there, don't panic. I'm not saying that global warming will mean fishing in the Arctic, just that there are some actual 'positives' that would accrue to Canada should warming occur.

Saturday, April 05, 2008

Arab states want to close Security Council doors...

Could you imagine what they'd say if they held secret meetings???
Arab diplomats in the United Nations are leading an initiative to get the UN Security Council to halt its practice of holding open sessions. Instead, all sessions would be held behind closed doors.

A key Arab diplomat in the United Nations met a few days ago with the ambassador of one of the five permanent members of the Security Council to discuss the suggestion, which would keep sessions closed to the media as well as the general public.

A veteran Western diplomat said on Tuesday that the Arabs in the UN want to prevent media reports on the meetings, which have recently become a source of criticism and scorn against extremist Arab positions.

Good news! Iranian mortars more powerful than Kassams...

Another reason to celebrate today....Iranian technology is providing employments for many Palestinians...
Israel Television Channel Two Correspondent Ronnie Daniel reported last night that the mortars fired from Gaza on Tuesday were 120mm Iranian mortars.

They have a range of 8 kilometers and can do considerably more damage than Qassam rockets.

Daniel said that many of the protective reinforcements that have been placed in order to shield Israelis from Qassams do not provide protection from these mortars. In addition, the Iranian made mortars travel at a speed that makes the warning system that gives Israelis a few seconds to duck for cover from the slower Qassams meaningless.

I accept your apology...

Can we please put the Lukiwski affair behind us? It was, after all, 16 years ago. One of the reasons why we now have gay marriage in Canada is that attitudes have changed dramatically over time. We've come a long way - in fact, I remember the police raiding the Trux bar in Montreal when I was still in University - back in 1978. So, imagine that - from raiding gay bars and baths in the late 70s and early 80s to gay marriage in just 20+ years.

Now, that's something to celebrate.

Lukiwski is now going to pay a huge price for his 16-year-old mutterings. And, he has apologized.

Enough.

Next topic.

A novel reason to speed......

It's a good thing he doesn't have three wives...
When it comes to avoiding a ban for speeding, the courts hear every excuse in the book.

But yesterday one motorist offered what must be a unique reason why he should keep his licence.

Mohammed Anwar said a ban would make it difficult to commute between his two wives and fulfil his matrimonial duties.

His lawyer told a Scottish court the Muslim restaurant owner has one wife in Motherwell and another in Glasgow - he is allowed up to four under his religion - and sleeps with them on alternate nights.

He also needed his driving licence to run his restaurant in Falkirk, Stirlingshire.

Airdrie Sheriff Court had heard that Anwar was caught driving at 64mph in a 30mph zone in Glasgow, fast enough to qualify for instant disqualification.

Anwar admitted the offence, but Sheriff John C. Morris accepted his plea not to be banned and allowed him to keep his licence.

Instead, he was fined £200 and given six penalty points.

Friday, April 04, 2008

BBC admits temperatures haven't risen since 1998....

It's starting to dawn on some people that natural systems like La Nina can 'overpower' so-called 'man-made' global warming...
Global temperatures will drop slightly this year as a result of the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.

The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.

Re-thinking Kyoto...

Gee, when the Guardian starts to run articles like this...then the jig is up for Kyoto...
A spring gale is lashing orthodox climate policy. This week, an article was published in Nature that should shake the certainty of anyone who assumes that the Kyoto protocol approach is the sensible way to go, and that signing the accord is a responsible step for the United States to take.

Three climate experts offer some inconvenient truths. Roger Pielke, Tom Wigley and Christopher Green are far from being climate change sceptics, but they are vigorous heretics about some of the orthodoxy of the debate. They show it is even more urgent than we thought to abandon the failed Kyoto strategy and move quickly to policies which might actually reduce carbon emissions. Any workable strategy has to include India and China: Kyoto did not. As they rapidly industrialise and reduce poverty, their CO2 emissions will rise steeply - by as much as 13% a year for the period from 2000 to 2010, in the case of China.

The Nature piece is titled "Dangerous assumptions". The most dangerous assumption is how all the scenarios that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published have a built-in assumption that misleads us about the magnitude of the emissions challenge. It shows that the technological challenge is at least twice as big as people believe. So this is where the rubber hits the road.

The IPCC has assumed that about three-quarters of the emissions reduction required to stabilise CO2 will occur "spontaneously". It would arrive as a free rider on the back of the well-documented trend which indicates that, after an initial upswing, the energy intensity of industrial societies has a record of impressive and continuous decline. What does that mean?

Energy intensity is an elegant and potent function which shows the relationship, over time, between a standardised unit of production - say £1,000 of gross domestic product - and the amount of energy used to make it. Until recently, mature industrial economies have become less energy-intensive: through greater efficiency they have used less and less energy per unit of production during the later 20th century. Japan is the world leader in this respect.

But "Dangerous assumptions" shows that, globally, this is no longer the case. Principally because of the rapid industrialisation of India and China, reduction in energy intensity has levelled out or reversed in recent years. The global economy is not decarbonising - it is recarbonising. This was noticed by the experts in the IPCC but not reported in its Summary for Policymakers, the politically negotiated document mostly read by politicians and journalists. If the free rider of decarbonisation is not available, the challenge to move quickly to a radically different type of global climate policy is all the greater.

What would a materially effective policy do? It would break the link between poverty reduction and carbon emission. It would recognise that the developing world needs to consume - and will consume - more energy, not less. It would recognise that attempting to control human-created carbon emissions by setting binding output targets and relying on artificial carbon markets and dodgy offsets, as Kyoto does, has not and never will work.

Such policy would shift to the input side, and concentrate on radical improvements in the production and use of energy. It would focus first on the sectors of all economies that are the heaviest consumers of energy: power generation, building, cement and metals production. The sectors that western environmentalists have prioritised hitherto, such as road and air transport, should be much further down the list. If all automobile use in the US stopped tonight, the reduction in global emissions would be less than 6%. Instead, there must be a much larger commitment to fundamental energy technology research and development.

Biofuels will starve us.....

Can we just get back to oil, please?
Corn prices jumped to a record $6 a bushel Thursday, driven up by an expected supply shortfall that will only add to Americans' growing grocery bill and further squeeze struggling ethanol producers.

Corn prices have shot up nearly 30 percent this year amid dwindling stockpiles and surging demand for the grain used to feed livestock and make alternative fuels including ethanol. Prices are poised to go even higher after the U.S. government this week predicted that American farmers -- the world's biggest corn producers -- will plant sharply less of the crop in 2008 compared to last year.

"It's a demand-driven market and we may not be planting enough acres to supply demand, so that adds to the bullishness of corn," said Elaine Kub, a grains analyst with DTN in Omaha, Neb.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Cartoon blackmail in Holland...

If you don't take it down..we'll destroy it...
A school in Nijmegen yesterday cancelled a cartoon exhibition about discrimination following threats by Muslim pupils. Before this decision was taken, the exhibition was already literally destroyed.

Muslim pupils of the ROC Nijmegen, a large school with largely immigrant pupils, pulled cartoons from the walls shortly before these were to be presented officially. They also threatened to set the school alight. The school management decided to call off the opening.

In the exhibition, artists expressed their vision on discrimination in a humorist manner. "My expectation was that the pupils would be able to laugh about it", Ralph Sluis stated. He heads a local anti discrimination organisation. Sluis was the exhibition's coordinator.

A total of fifteen cartoonists worked on the exhibition. According to Sluis, the trouble was sparked by a work by cartoonist Peter de Wit, which shows two women in niqabs, the all-covering Islamic garments.

In the cartoon, one niqabed woman tells the other: "You filthy Muslim". The other one replies: "Yes I know, I'll wash". This woman smells bad, the cartoon shows.

The cartoon's message is that someone is not filthy if they wear a niqab. "A small group of pupils interpreted the cartoons in an entirely different way than the artist intended", Sluis stated.

Welcome to the Indian Climate Skeptics...

Nice to see some more skeptics on the world stage...
Deputy Chairman Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia has called for a more comprehensive debate on the issue of climate change as there was an element of uncertainty on whether the climate change was as serious a threat as it was being projected.

“It needs to be thoroughly discussed and if it is true then it is for the developed countries to mitigate the damage caused to environment while the developing countries can resort to adaptation to prevent global warming,” he said at a function organised to release Civil Society Report on Climate Change prepared by the Liberty Institute and Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change.

He said developed countries can afford to spend the money on new technologies which can then be used by the developing countries.

The report, prepared by 40 civil society organisations from around the world, alleges that rich countries were putting pressure on India, China and other poor countries to sign up to binding emission targets. It says cutting greenhouse gas emissions is not a cost-effective way to address climate change. Rather, policies must promote economic growth and empower the poor so that they are able to solve problems and adapt to future needs.

Deaths from climate related natural disasters have fallen dramatically since the 1920s as a result of economic growth and technological development. With continued economic growth, the death rate is likely to continue to fall regardless of climate change, the report said.

It further points out that there was no evidence to show that climate change has caused an increase in disease. If the main causes of diseases such as diarrhoea and malaria are properly addressed, climate change will not increase their incidence. The agricultural production has outpaced population growth in the past 50 years and with continued technological improvements, this trend will continue to 2100, even if the global mean temperature rises by 3 degrees Celsius.

To overcome water scarcity, the report suggests better management and the use of modern technology. Millions of people in poor countries currently die unnecessarily due to lack of wealth and technology.

These problems have generally been exacerbated — not alleviated by foreign aid, which has supported unaccountable governments that have oppressed their citizens, denying them the ability to improve their lot. Instead of pushing emission restrictions and failed ‘aid’ policies, governments should focus on reducing barriers to economic growth and adaptation including removing trade barriers and decentralising management of water and land, the report said.

European CO emissions continue to rise...

As I have been saying, no one has the will to really limit CO emissions...nor should they....
The European Union's greenhouse-gas emissions from key industries rose 1.1% last year, despite its antipollution policies, demonstrating the difficulty in meeting international commitments to fight climate change.

Carbon-dioxide emissions reached 1.914 billion metric tons last year in the sectors covered by Europe's Emission Trading Scheme, according to an analysis of data by Oslo-based Point Carbon, a carbon market-research and consulting firm. The data released Wednesday aren't complete, because some companies' results are still trickling in, but it represents about 93% of the total, according to the EU Web site.

For the past three years, Europe has been trying to reduce emissions by imposing a market-based cap-and-trade system. Industries such as power generators, steel, cement and aluminum are supposed to cap the amount of carbon dioxide they spew. If they can't make their targets, they must buy permits to emit carbon on the open market.

By forcing companies to buy and sell the right to pollute, Europe's system is supposed to give them a financial incentive to clean up their acts. It is also supposed to provide European countries with a way to meet their commitments to the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations accord that set emissions-cutting targets for the 175 nations that ratified it for the period between this year and 2012.

Some 11,500 factories, oil refineries, steel mills and other installations are covered by the EU scheme, accounting for about half of Europe's total emissions. There is still no limit on the other half, produced by everything from cars and planes to buildings and retail outlets.

But the caps that the EU set for different industries turned out to be too high. As a result, instead of shrinking, as was originally envisioned, emissions in these industries have crept up by about 1% each year since the program began.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

The Chinese spill the beans on Iran...

I wonder what they are telling the IAEA...
China has betrayed one its closest allies by providing the United Nations with intelligence on Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear technology, diplomats have revealed.

Concern over Tehran's secretive research programme has increased in recent weeks after officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, discovered that Iran had obtained information on how to manufacture nuclear-armed weapons.

Beijing is believed to have decided to assist the inspectors after documents seized from Iranian officials included blueprints for "shaping" uranium metal into warheads, the testing of high explosives used to detonate radioactive material and the procurement of dual-use technology.

Malik Ali at an anti-Israel rally

Why would Canada abstain on this????

The Harper Government is usually good about these things...why on earth did they abstain???
Muslim and Western nations clashed at the United Nations on Tuesday after a measure backed by Islamic countries added monitoring religious prejudice to the duties of a U.N. free speech expert.

The U.N. investigator on freedom of opinion and expression is responsible for reporting on repressive governments' restriction of free speech. The change sponsored by Egypt and Pakistan now requires him to also report acts of "racial or religious discrimination" that constitute "abuse of the right of freedom of expression."

The change passed 32-0 by the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday was seen as a move against forms of expression that have offended Muslims, such as Danish newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The U.S., Canada and some European countries said the measure could curtail freedom of expression and help dictatorial regimes block dissenting views.

"The resolution adopted attempts to legitimize the criminalization of expression," U.S. Ambassador Warren W. Tichenor told the 47-nation Human Rights Council.

European countries, Canada and some other nations abstained from voting last week. The United States is not a member of the council but can speak as an observer.

Jeff Jacoby on Fitna

Jacoby writes for the Boston Globe and he's terrific...
The violence "Fitna" portrays is horribly real, and the fanatics who commit it are explicit in saying they do so as Muslims.

Where is the Islamic world's outrage against that? When has Iran's foreign ministry ever excoriated the beheading of a hostage, or the poisonous sermon of a jihadist imam, as "heinous, blasphemous, and anti-Islamic?" How often has the Organization of the Islamic Conference thundered its disapproval of "honor killings" or Islamist anti-semitism? When Theo van Gogh was murdered in public, when the Taliban turned Afghanistan into a repressive terror state, when fatwas were issued for the murder of Danish cartoonists - where was the chorus of Muslim anguish then?

Nor is "Fitna," whatever its flaws, as dangerously misguided as the eagerness with which Western governments rushed to denounce it. Panicked at the prospect of Islamist violence, desperate to appease extremists who respond to "insults" with mobs and mayhem, they ostentatiously deplored Wilders's exercise of free speech instead of defending it. They would never have reacted that way to a film that criticized Christianity or the United States or European tradition - and the Islamists know it.

Cringing before bullies is not the way to defend Western civilization. There is room for "Fitna" in the marketplace of ideas. Heaven help us if we are too timorous to say so.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Only 15% of Canadians see Israel as a positive influence in the world...

The number of Canadian with a positive view of Israel declined from 27% to 15%....
Negative views also increased among Americans, from 33% to 39%. Canadians had significantly fewer positive views than a year earlier, down from 27% to 15%.

The poll was based on 17,457 interviews conducted in 34 countries between October 2007 and January 2008, and conducted by Toronto- and London-based Globescan together with the program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.
In the UK, the three most negatively-viewed countries were Iran, Israel and Pakistan.

Makes you want to cry.

More on the Israeli raid on Syria....

More confirmation it was a nuclear facility - built with the cooperation of the North Koreans...
Israel has admitted for the first time that an air strike in Syria last year was aimed at a nuclear facility built with assistance from North Korea.

The Japanese daily newspaper Asahi Shimbun cited sources at the Japanese foreign ministry for its report of a meeting between Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of Israel, and Yasuo Fukuda, his Japanese opposite number.

Mr Olmert is reported to have admitted that Israel carried out the bombing last September and that the target was a nuclear-related facility built using technical assistance from Pyongyang.

According to the paper's sources, Mr Olmert told Mr Fukuda that the site was a nuclear-related facility under construction with advice and assistance from North Korean technicians.

The sources added that Mr Olmert said Israel remained concerned about nuclear proliferation by North Korea and was seeking greater information sharing with Tokyo on the issue.