Ahmadinejad warns of revenge.....

I am glad this douchebag keeps on making horrendous statements....

Mr Ahmadinejad used the attack on Western powers send a defiant message in his first public comments since his controversial re-election was upheld by the electoral authorities on Monday. He said: "We must use all the capacities to break the monopoly of the global powers."

The myth of feminist scholarship...

Christina Hoff Sommers tells the truth about feminists...

"Harder to kill than a vampire." That is what the sociologist Joel Best calls a bad statistic. But, as I have discovered over the years, among false statistics the hardest of all to slay are those promoted by feminist professors. Consider what happened recently when I sent an e-mail message to the Berkeley law professor Nancy K.D. Lemon pointing out that the highly praised textbook that she edited, Domestic Violence Law (second edition, Thomson/West, 2005), contained errors.

Her reply began:

"I appreciate and share your concern for veracity in all of our scholarship. However, I would expect a colleague who is genuinely concerned about such matters to contact me directly and give me a chance to respond before launching a public attack on me and my work, and then contacting me after the fact."

I confess: I had indeed publicly criticized Lemon's book, in campus lectures and in a post on FeministLawProfessors.com. I had always thought that that was the usual practice of intellectual argument. Disagreement is aired, error corrected, truth affirmed. Indeed, I was moved to write to her because of the deep consternation of law students who had attended my lectures: If authoritative textbooks contain errors, how are students to know whether they are being educated or indoctrinated? Lemon's book has been in law-school classrooms for years.

One reason that feminist scholarship contains hard-to-kill falsehoods is that reasonable, evidence-backed criticism is regarded as a personal attack.

Lemon's Domestic Violence Law is organized as a conventional law-school casebook — a collection of judicial opinions, statutes, and articles selected, edited, and commented upon by the author. The first selection, written by Cheryl Ward Smith (no institutional affiliation is given), offers students a historical perspective on domestic-violence law. According to Ward:

"The history of women's abuse began over 2,700 years ago in the year 753 BC. It was during the reign of Romulus of Rome that wife abuse was accepted and condoned under the Laws of Chastisement. ... The laws permitted a man to beat his wife with a rod or switch so long as its circumference was no greater than the girth of the base of the man's right thumb. The law became commonly know as 'The Rule of Thumb.' These laws established a tradition which was perpetuated in English Common Law in most of Europe."

Where to begin? How about with the fact that Romulus of Rome never existed. He is a figure in Roman mythology — the son of Mars, nursed by a wolf. Problem 2: The phrase "rule of thumb" did not originate with any law about wife beating, nor has anyone ever been able to locate any such law. It is now widely regarded as a myth, even among feminist professors.

A few pages later, in a selection by Joan Zorza, a domestic-violence expert, students read, "The March of Dimes found that women battered during pregnancy have more than twice the rate of miscarriages and give birth to more babies with more defects than women who may suffer from any immunizable illness or disease." Not true. When I recently read Zorza's assertion to Richard P. Leavitt, director of science information at the March of Dimes, he replied, "That is a total error on the part of the author. There was no such study." The myth started in the early 1990s, he explained, and resurfaces every few years.

Zorza also informs readers that "between 20 and 35 percent of women seeking medical care in emergency rooms in America are there because of domestic violence." Studies by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice, indicate that the figure is closer to 1 percent.

Few students would guess that the Lemon book is anything less than reliable. The University of California at Berkeley's online faculty profile of Lemon hails it as the "premiere" text of the genre. It is part of a leading casebook series, published by Thomson/West, whose board of academic advisers, prominently listed next to the title page, includes many eminent law professors.

I mentioned these problems in my message to Lemon. She replied:

"I have looked into your assertions and requested documentation from Joan Zorza regarding the March of Dimes study and the statistics on battered women in emergency rooms. She provided both of these promptly."

If that's the case, Zorza and Lemon might share their documentation with Leavitt, of the March of Dimes, who is emphatic that it does not exist. They might also contact the Centers for Disease Control statistician Janey Hsiao, who wrote to me that "among ED [Emergency Department] visits made by females, the percent of having physical abuse by spouse or partner is 0.02 percent in 2003 and 0.01 percent in 2005."

Here is what Lemon says about Cheryl Ward Smith's essay on Romulus and the rule of thumb:

"I made a few minor editorial changes in the Smith piece so that it is more accurate. However, overall it appeared to be correct."

A few minor editorial changes? Students deserve better. So do women victimized by violence.

Feminist misinformation is pervasive. In their eye-opening book, Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies (Lexington Books, 2003), the professors Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge describe the "sea of propaganda" that overwhelms the contemporary feminist classroom. The formidable Christine Rosen (formerly Stolba), in her 2002 report on the five leading women's-studies textbooks, found them rife with falsehoods, half-truths, and "deliberately misleading sisterly sophistries." Are there serious scholars in women's studies? Yes, of course. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an anthropologist at the University of California at Davis; Janet Zollinger Giele, a sociologist at Brandeis; and Anne Mellor, a literary scholar at UCLA, to name just three, are models of academic excellence and integrity. But they are the exception. Lemon's book typifies the departmental mind-set.

Consider The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World (2008), by the feminist scholar Joni Seager, chair of the Hunter College geography department. Now in its fourth edition, Seager's atlas was named "reference book of the year" by the American Library Association when it was published. "Nobody should be without this book," says the feminist icon Gloria Steinem. "A wealth of fascinating information," enthuses The Washington Post. Fascinating, maybe. But the information is misleading and, at least in one instance, flat-out false.

One color-coded map illustrates how women are kept "in their place" by restrictions on their mobility, dress, and behavior. Somehow the United States comes out looking as bad in this respect as Somalia, Uganda, Yemen, Niger, and Libya. All are coded with the same shade of green to indicate places where "patriarchal assumptions" operate in "potent combination with fundamentalist religious interpretations." Seager's logic? She notes that in parts of Uganda, a man can claim an unmarried woman as his wife by raping her. The United States gets the same low rating on Seager's charts because, she notes, "State legislators enacted 301 anti-abortion measures between 1995 and 2001." Never mind that the Ugandan practice is barbaric, that U.S. abortion law is exceptionally liberal among the nations of the world, and that the activism and controversy surrounding the issue of abortion in the United States is a sign of a vigorous free democracy working out its disagreements.

On another map, the United States gets the same rating for domestic violence as Uganda and Haiti. Seager backs up that verdict with that erroneous and ubiquitous emergency-room factoid: "22 percent-35 percent of women who visit a hospital emergency room do so because of domestic violence."

Here are some really stupid parents...

Gender is NOT a social construction...and these parents will find it out the hard way....it's just too bad their child has to be experimented on...

The Local reported June 23 on Swedish parents who are keeping their 2-year-old's gender a secret. They're raising a not very funny Saturday Night Live Pat.

The child was called "Pop" for the interview with parents, but is not the child's real name:

Pop's parents, both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop's sex a secret. Aside from a select few - those who have changed the child's diaper - nobody knows Pop's gender; if anyone enquires, Pop's parents simply say they don't disclose this information.

In an interview with newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in March, the parents were quoted saying their decision was rooted in the feminist philosophy that gender is a social construction.

"We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset," Pop's mother said. "It's cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead."

The child's parents said so long as they keep Pop's gender a secret, he or she will be able to avoid preconceived notions of how people should be treated if male or female.

Pop's wardrobe includes everything from dresses to trousers and Pop's hairstyle changes on a regular basis. And Pop usually decides how Pop is going to dress on a given morning.

Although Pop knows that there are physical differences between a boy and a girl, Pop's parents never use personal pronouns when referring to the child - they just say Pop.

Islamists against legalization of gay sex in India...

India is finally thinking about legalizing gay sex....but, of course, the muslims object...

A leading Islamic seminary on Monday opposed Centre's move to repeal a controversial section of the penal law which criminalises homosexuality saying unnatural sex is against the tenets of Islam.

"Homosexuality is an offence under Shariat Law and haram (prohibited) in Islam," deputy vice chancellor of the Darul Uloom Deoband Maulana Abdul Khalik Madrasi said.

Madrasi also asked the government not to repeal section 377 of IPC which criminalises homosexuality.

Good news! White firefighters win the US....

A good decision by the Supreme Court...

The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide, potentially limiting the circumstances in which employers can be held liable for decisions when there is no evidence of intentional discrimination against minorities.

"Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Good news! Ahmadinejad loves Neda!

Good god...can you imagine what horrors will come out of this investigation - probably that the Zionists were behind the death of Neda...

Mr Ahmadinejad sent a letter to Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi, the head of the judiciary, requesting an investigation to help identify "the elements" behind this month's killing of the student, the official IRNA news agency said.

He accused foreign media of using the case for propaganda purposes. He also suggested that the opposition and Iran's enemies abroad aimed to misuse it "for their own political aims and also to distort the pure and clean image of the Islamic Republic in the world".

His letter added: "I request you to order the judicial system to seriously follow up the murder case ... and identify elements behind the case and inform the people of the result."

Great Lake Water Levels are Up....

If they were down, it would be a huge global warming story...

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reports that Great Lakes water levels are up from this time a year ago. Lakes Michigan and Huron are up 12 inches, Lake Superior 2 inches and Lake Erie 5 inches while Lake Ontario is unchanged. Even Lake St. Clair is up 9 inches. Erie and Ontario (and St. Clair) are between 2 and 6 inches above long-term monthly averages for June. Superior, Michigan and Huron are only 6 to 7 inches below long-term averages for June. While this change in the water levels is pronounced, it is not unusual. The Great Lakes have a history of considerable fluctuation in water levels.

During the last 10 years, water levels in the Great Lakes have been below long-term averages. For 30 years prior to that the levels were above average. In fact, historical water level data indicates there is no normal water level for the Great Lakes. A normal water level and an average water level are not the same thing.

The press has been quick to report on lower-than-average Great Lakes levels over the last decade. Many of the articles quote environmental and other groups predicting the dire consequences of global warming's influence. "Warming saps Great Lakes: Water levels could take big drop as Earth gets hotter" is the headline of an article that appeared April 7, 2007, in The Detroit News. In the article, Scudder Mackey of Canada's University of Windsor predicts that in a worst case scenario, Lake St. Clair's shoreline could recede by as much as 3.5 miles. In the same article George Kling, a University of Michigan ecologist, suggests that within 30 years summers in Michigan are likely to feel more like those in Kentucky today and that by the end of the century, summer weather will resemble Arkansas and northern Mississippi.

Climate change alarmists predicting doomsday scenarios for the Great Lakes are probably not too pleased with the draft report "Impacts on Upper Great Lakes Water Levels: St. Clair River" released May 1, 2009, by the International Joint Commission. The report found that the difference in water levels between Lake Michigan-Huron and Lake Erie of 9 inches between 1962 and 2006 was caused by three factors:

* A change in the conveyance of the St. Clair River, mostly likely caused by a large ice jam that occurred in the mid-1980s;
* Glacial isostatic adjustment (the rebounding of the earth's crust after the melting of the glaciers about 10,000 years ago);
* Changes in climate patterns.

If lower-than-average water levels in the Great Lakes is caused by global warming, then increasing water levels must be caused by global cooling, right? Of course the global cooling connection to Great Lakes water levels is just as spurious as the global warming claims. Maybe it is time to take a pause and understand that as much as we might like to, man does not control nature. At the very least we should not undertake expensive and job-killing policy initiatives such as cap-and-trade of CO2 because of predictions regarding the Great Lakes, which are proving to be wrong.

Iran has arrested over 2,000 people...

And, who knows what the real number is...

More than 2,000 Iranians have been arrested and hundreds more have disappeared since the regime decided to crush dissent after the disputed presidential election, a leading human rights organisation said yesterday.

“A climate of terror and of fear reigns in Iran today,” the International Federation for Human Rights , an umbrella body for 155 human rights organisations, said as it released the startling figures.

Last night 3,000 protesters tried to gather outside a mosque in Tehran where they believed that Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated presidential candidate, was going to speak. The police rapidly dispersed them and Mr Mousavi never appeared.

Having largely suppressed such protests, the security forces are engaged in a purge of dissidents in an apparent effort to decapitate Mr Mousavi’s so-called green movement.

Prominent Iranian actors, actresses, writers and singers are believed to have been seized at the weekend for supporting the demonstrators. Several opposition bloggers have fallen silent, probably because they have been detained. Almost anyone who dares to challenge President Ahmadinejad’s re-election is now considered an enemy of the state.

At least one senior Mousavi aide and other unidentified Iranians have appeared on state television to “confess” that the demonstrations were part of a foreign conspiracy against the Islamic Republic.

Human Rights Watch says that the Basiji — volunteer Islamic militiamen — are raiding houses, beating civilians and destroying their cars and other property in an effort to silence the nightly rooftop chanting that has become the opposition’s last means of peaceful protest. “The Basiji entered our neighbourhood and started firing live rounds into the air, in the direction of the buildings from which they believe the shouting of ‘Allahu akbar’ [God is greatest] is coming from,” a middle-aged Tehran resident said.

“Shortly thereafter my cousin arrived at our apartment. He was very shaken. The Basiji had entered their house and they had destroyed the doors and they had destroyed cars in the street. In every neighbourhood of Tehran people are talking about how the Basiji and other security services are coming into their houses and terrorising people.”

Even a comedian can't play Lebanon...

Calls for a boycott despite the shows being sold-out!

French-Jewish stand-up comedian Gad Elmaleh has cancelled his performances in a Lebanon festival, after media in Lebanon reported he had served in the Israel Defense Forces.

The organizing committee of the Beiteddine festival, which is scheduled to take place south-east of Beirut next month, wholly denied the claims.

But in a statement, Elmaleh's agent said he decided to cancel his participation "out of concern for his personal security and that of the festival," after the organizers were swamped with e-mails and phone calls calling for a boycott of his three shows, which are sold out.

The UK has 85 sharia courts....

Way more than people thought...

At least 85 Islamic sharia courts are operating in Britain, a study claimed yesterday.

The astonishing figure is 17 times higher than previously accepted.

The tribunals, working mainly from mosques, settle financial and family disputes according to religious principles. They lay down judgments which can be given full legal status if approved in national law courts.

However, they operate behind doors that are closed to independent observers and their decisions are likely to be unfair to women and backed by intimidation, a report by independent think-tank Civitas said.

Commentators on the influence of sharia law often count only the five courts in London, Manchester, Bradford, Birmingham and Nuneaton that are run by the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, a body whose rulings are enforced through the state courts under the 1996 Arbitration Act.

But the study by academic and Islamic specialist Denis MacEoin estimates there are at least 85 working tribunals.

American climate change bill is going to cause world-wide problems....

This could cause a huge trade war....let's hope the Senate never passes this bill...

President Obama on Sunday praised the energy bill passed by the House late last week as an “extraordinary first step,” but he spoke out against a provision that would impose trade penalties on countries that do not accept limits on global warming pollution.

“At a time when the economy worldwide is still deep in recession and we’ve seen a significant drop in global trade,” Mr. Obama said, “I think we have to be very careful about sending any protectionist signals out there.”

He added, “I think there may be other ways of doing it than with a tariff approach.”

No one has seen the entire 1,200 page bill...but I really want to see the penalties on countries that don't buy into the global warming crap...

Another major clash in Iran....

This was in North Tehran...

Witnesses in Iran say police have clashed with up to 3,000 protesters near a mosque in north Tehran.

They say security forces fired tear gas to disperse the crowd, and some demonstrators fought back, chanting: "Where is my vote?"

Witnesses at the scene tell The Associated Press that some protesters claimed they suffered broken arms or legs in Sunday's clashes around the Ghoba Mosque.

They say some young demonstrators screamed at police and then attacked them after the officers allegedly beat an elderly woman.

We don't need green jobs....

We just need jobs, period...

Can governments create “green” jobs by spending big wads of money? Sure - but at the cost of destroying other jobs.

The benefits, environmental or otherwise, might offset the costs. But three prominent recent reports advocating the creation of “green” jobs make no attempt to calculate real benefits and real costs. The economic illiteracy revealed is breathtaking.

The Beacon Hill Institute has analyzed these proposals. We noted similar analyses last month from the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Mont. Columnist George Will highlighted the subject last Thursday.

Will reported on a Spanish researcher’s finding that Spain has destroyed or not created 2.2 jobs for each one created with the help of subsidies of $752,000 to $800,000 in alternative energy.

The Beacon Hill Institute examined reports from the Worldwatch Institute done with support from several international agencies, from the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst for the Center for American Progress and from Global Insight, a consulting firm, for the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

All count jobs as benefits - as the Beacon Hill Institute puts it, they are “mistakenly arguing that a cost is actually a benefit.” None calculates jobs destroyed or not created.

For example, Worldwatch argues for “nonmotorized transport,” such as the pedicabs used in Uganda and Kenya to transport large numbers of people. Pedicabs - amusing as they may be for a ride to Fenway - would just impoverish America.

Here's an issue I wouldn't drop....

We definately need legislation to make it clear that veiled women reveal their faces to vote...

The federal government has quietly dropped the idea of forcing veiled women to show their faces if they want to vote in Canadian elections.

The loss of interest comes just as the issue of face coverings is heating up overseas, with President Nicolas Sarkozy declaring that the Islamic burka is "not welcome" in France.

Steven Fletcher, Canada's minister of state for democratic reform, confirmed Thursday that the government has no plan to proceed with legislation requiring voters to uncover their faces.

"We have other priorities as far as increasing voter participation and with the expanded voting opportunities legislation," he said in an interview.

"And that is our focus. That obviously will effect a lot more people."

A spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper maintained the minority government still supports the idea of forcing voters to reveal their faces.

But Dimitri Soudas said it would be pointless to proceed with legislation since all three opposition parties have signalled they wouldn't support it.

"I'm telling you that we haven't dropped that idea," said Soudas. "The bottom line is even if we were to proceed with legislation, it would be voted down immediately."

Let's make this an election issue...

CBC issue clarification...

They ran a very misleading report on Hamas....

Some people don't want to hear the truth about the polar bears...

They're actually doing fine...

Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.

This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world's leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week's meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists' agenda as their most iconic single cause. The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the wind-sculpted ice they were standing on made such a striking image.

Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week's meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming. The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor's, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears: "it was the position you've taken on global warming that brought opposition".

Dr Taylor was told that his views running "counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful". His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – was "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG".

So, as the great Copenhagen bandwagon rolls on, stand by this week for reports along the lines of "scientists say polar bears are threatened with extinction by vanishing Arctic ice". But also check out Anthony Watt's Watts Up With That website for the latest news of what is actually happening in the Arctic. The average temperature at midsummer is still below zero, the latest date that this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping. After last year's recovery from its September 2007 low, this year's ice melt is likely to be substantially less than for some time. The bears are doing fine.

The Basij pay some visits to hospitals....

And, there they grab protesters...

Iranians wounded during protests are being seized at hospitals by members of an Islamic militia, an Amnesty International official told CNN.

"The Basijis are waiting for them," said Banafsheh Akhlaghi, western regional director of the human rights group, referring to the government's paramilitary arm that has cracked down on protesters during the violent aftermath of the June 12 presidential election.

Amnesty International has collected accounts from people who have left Iran and expatriates with relatives there who say the Basij has prohibited medical professionals from getting identification information from demonstrators wounded in the streets, Akhlaghi said on Saturday. They are also not allowed to ask how the injuries happened.

Once the patients are treated, the militia removes them from the hospital to an undisclosed location, she said.

The devil offers Mousavi a deal....

Let's hope he rejects the deal...

Iran’s Guardian Council has offered opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi a deal to settle the dispute over alleged fraud in the June 12 presidential election. Council spokesman Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei said a special committee would be formed to review the disputed poll results that gave president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a controversial victory.

The council also called on Mousavi and fellow defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi to send representatives within 24 hours to join the committee. Mousavi demanded an independent committee to evaluate the election results, but supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected it, saying prevailing laws and the constitution gave the Guardian Council sole authority regarding election results.

Amnesty's horrible new ads...

Innovative, horrible...and only in Germany...

Iran now trying to stop rooftop chanting...

What could be more dangerous?

Human Rights Watch has accused Iran's volunteer Basij militia of carrying out night-time raids, destroying property in private homes and beating civilians.

The New York-based group says the raids are an attempt to stop the nightly rooftop chants against the government.

It also says satellite dishes are being confiscated to stop people from watching foreign news.

Meanwhile, on state TV, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again attacked what he said was US and European meddling.

And Iranian media reported that the public relations chief of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi had been banned from leaving the country.

Bruce Bawer is Coming to Ottawa

The Free Thinking Film Society is proud to present a lecture by Bruce Bawer, one of leading experts on the threat from Islam. He has written two books on the threat from Islam - "While Europe Slept" in 2006, and his current book, "Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom" which came out in May 2009.

September 14, 2009, 7:00 PM
National Archives/Library of Canada
Admission: $15.00, includes a reception.

"An alarming, depressing, brilliant and remarkably courageous book."
- Martin Sieff, Washington Times

"Bruce Bawer has yet again written an excellent book....I truly hope that it will serve as an eye-opener for everyone." - Geert Wilders

“Written with an urgency and clarity that makes it hard to stop reading and re-reading it. It should be studied by all who wish to understand the forces at work in the West that make an Islamic ‘House of Peace’ a brewing nightmare.”
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"With courage and verve, Bruce Bawer builds the case for how 'the West is on the road to sharia'....Bawer rousingly and rightly argues that the West’s unwavering principle must be 'a refusal to sacrifice or compromise liberty - no matter what.'"
- Daniel Pipes, Director, Middle East Forum

"Liberals should be in the forefront of the defense of free expression against the deeply disturbing threats Bruce Bawer documents."
- Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler and The Shakespeare Wars

For more information, please visit the Free Thinking Film Society.

For a Free and Independent Taiwan...

I went to a lecture yesterday by Ms. Annette Lu, the former VP of Taiwan (2000-2008). She gave an impassioned speech for the Independence of Taiwan - and I am in total agreement. For decades, Taiwan has been ostracized by the international community because of the People's Republic of China, and this is a horrible injustice. Taiwan is still not a member of the United Nations, and China regularly denies Taiwan's participation at a variety of international forums. The only remedy is complete independence for Taiwan, and the sooner the better.

The real truth about Michael Jackson's death....

Yup, it was the Mossad....

Two years of Hamas rule in Gaza....

Where are all the celebrations???

No victory parade, no jubilation and no great words: The radical Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza this week marked the second anniversary of its take-over of the coastal salient, quietly and without much fuss.

Despite the growing anger, despair and hopelessness of many Palestinians from Rafah in the south to Beit Hanoun in the north, the Islamists, who rule with heavy hand, appear more firmly in the saddle than ever.

It was mid-June two years ago when Hamas fighters violently overpowered the secular Fatah movement of Mahmoud Abbas, by storming their security headquarters throughout the strip.

'Not everything deserves to be celebrated,' says Ahmed Yousef, the de-facto deputy foreign minister of the internationally unrecognized Hamas government in Gaza.

'It was a surgical operation, otherwise the system would have collapsed. We defended moral authority. We are not proud of having killed each other,' is how Yousef describes the bloody clashes that left hundreds dead.

The grey-bearded politician represents Hamas' more moderate voice towards the West. But Hamas - depending on one's perspective - is like a mask with 100 different faces.

The nationalist-religious movement has more than half a million members and supporters, who include not only its radical politicians and 20,000 armed fighters, but also intellectuals, devoutly religious citizens - and people who ride the Hamas coattails, going along with it for personal benefit, whether profit or power.

Gaza in June 2009 looks like a police state. Armed Hamas men keep each residential block under their scrutiny. A photographer has hardly clicked the shutter to take a photograph of the Gaza City security headquarters destroyed by Israel, when a vehicle pulls up on the side of the road.

A Hamas brigadier demands he delete the photograph. 'What an idiot. He's probably illiterate,' comments the taxi-driver. 'Anyway, his rank is only based on the number of Fatah fighters he has killed.'

In a utility store two old friends argue about politics. Store owner Bassam Batrassawi openly portrays himself as a Hamas friend. 'They gave us back security and religion. And they backed up the talk against Israel with force,' says the 37-year-old.

'They (Hamas) have destroyed everything,' on the other hand mutters Adah Shawa. The butchery owner is a millionaire, but everything is relative in the face of Israel's stringent blockade of the strip. Gaza with its 1,5 million inhabitants is often described as the 'world's biggest open-air prison.' 'What use is money, when you can't leave this place. I want to go to France, to Germany,' sighs the 33-year-old.

Seja'eyah, a western Gaza City suburb, is only a stone's throw from the Israeli border. Part of the land belongs to the al-Dabba clan, which cultivated 350 olive trees here, some of them more than 300 years old. The Israeli military destroyed them all. 'Hamas fighters fired rockets at Israel from them,' explains a family member.

'When we told them to stop this nonsense, they pointed their guns at us and asked if we were traitors of the resistance.'

Complaints about unscrupulous behaviour by Hamas people can fill pages. A young man reports how Hamas first beat him up and then shot apart all four tyres of his car, because he was listening to a Fatah song.

A common intimidation method used by Hamas is knee-capping, where victims are shot from close range in the knees, crippling them. Unapproved demonstrations are sometimes dispersed with live ammunition. In the neat Gaza City headquarters of President Abbas, dozens of Fatah supporters are allegedly still being held.

Animal rights terrorists close restaurant in Sweden....

Is this going to come to North America???

Threats and vandalism allegedly carried out by animal rights activists have forced restaurant in Umeå in northern Sweden to close its doors.

In the two years since Michael Hansen opened his Garaget restaurant, which specializes in Texas-style barbecue, his establishment has been targeted by animal rights groups on numerous occasions, the Västerbottens-Kuriren newspaper reports.

In addition to confessing to breaking windows at Garaget, the Swedish chapter of the Animal Liberation Front (Djurens befrielsefront) admitted in December to spraying glue in the locks of the restaurant’s doors.

Nevertheless, Hansen continued to persevere, doing his best to “create a meeting place” where “everyone can slip in and get a well-prepared meal made from quality ingredients”, according to the restaurant’s website.

But after an incident in mid-May which threatened his family, Hansen has finally decided to call it quits.

“When actions include statements about my family’s safety being threatened, I have no choice,” he told the newspaper.

His comments came following an incident which took place on the morning of May 14th outside of Hansen’s home.

As he approached his doorway, Hansen discovered a bottle filled with a clear liquid and stuffed with a rag.

Near the bottle was a message reading, “Close down Garaget otherwise this bottle will come through your bedroom window.”

Noonan on Obama....

When Peggy Noonan is on, she's terrific...please read this entire article...

There is a persistent sense of extraneous effort, of ambitions too big and yet too small, too off point, too base-pleading, too ideological, too unaware of the imperatives. And there is the depressing psychological effect of seeing government grow so much, so big, so fast. This encourages a sense that things are out of control and cannot be made better.

In terms of our security, we face challenges all over the world, from state and nonstate actors. Today a headline popped up on my screen: North Korea has threatened to attack us. A mordant response: Get in line, buddy. The administration, which has been appropriately modest in its face toward the world, should be more modest internally, and seek a new and serious bipartisan consensus on our defense system, our security, our civil defense, our safety. This of course is an impossible dream, but it was impossible back in the fractious '50s to reach a workable consensus on a strategy toward the Soviets. And yet we did it. Do we have anything like a bipartisan strategy for our age? Not nearly. We're split in two, in three. We'll wish someday we did. It is amazing we don't even talk about this.

Our economy and our security are intertwined. They are at the heart of everything, even to our ultimate continuance as a nation. Mr. Obama cannot replace his sentence with 10 paragraphs, and he can't escape it, either. Because history dictated it. History wrote it. "He brought America back from economic collapse and kept us strong and secure in the age of terror." Sentences don't really get better than that. He should stop looking for a better one. There isn't a better one.

Global warming skeptics on the increase...

More and more people are questioning the science....

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

Uh Oh....Ahmadinejad's angry and wants an apology.....

I hear he's tweeted Obama directly....

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lashed out at President Obama on Thursday, warning him against "interfering" in Iranian affairs and demanding an apology for criticism of a government crackdown on demonstrators protesting alleged electoral fraud.

The truth about Michael Jackson's death.....

You heard it here first....he was killed by the Mossad...

UNIFIL finds 20 missiles...

If they would really look hard, I am sure they would find a lot more....

In an effort to prevent a flare-up along the northern border, UNIFIL has increased its operations in southern Lebanon and has begun entering villages in search of Hizbullah weapons caches, according to information obtained recently by Israel.

In one recent successful operation in the eastern sector of southern Lebanon, UNIFIL peacekeepers uncovered close to 20 Katyusha rockets that were ready for launch.

UNIFIL operates under Security Council Resolution 1701, passed following the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Operations in villages have been a point of contention between UNIFIL and Israel, which said over the past three years that the peacekeeping force was failing to prevent Hizbullah's military buildup in southern Lebanon since it refrained from entering villages.

Hizbullah, the IDF believes, has deployed most of its forces and weaponry - including Katyusha rockets - inside homes in the villages. Until now, UNIFIL and the Lebanese army have mostly operated in open areas.

According to information obtained by Israel, UNIFIL has also succeeded recently in thwarting attacks that were planned against its own personnel.

Hamas says no to a Jewish Israel...

They keep saying they will never support Israel...so, how can there be peace between Israel and the Palestinians?

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal denounced on Thursday an Israeli offer of a demilitarized Palestinian state as a "big prison" and said only armed struggle could restore Palestinian rights.

In a speech this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supported the U.S. goal of a Palestinian state but said it should be demilitarized and the Palestinians must accept Israel as a Jewish nation.

"The state that Netanyahu talked about, with control on it by land, sea and air, is a freak entity and a big prison, not a country fit for a great people," Meshaal said in a speech in the Syrian capital to supporters of Hamas, which won Palestinian elections in 2006.

Meshaal said the notion of an exclusive Jewish nation was anathema to the Palestinians because it means giving up what he described as the right of six million Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland in what is now Israel.

"We warn against any Arab leniency on this issue. The calls by the leaders of the enemy for the Jewishness of Israel are racist, not different to Italian Fascism and Hitler's Nazism," said Meshaal, who lives in exile in Syria.

Iranians fighting the Basij...

A lovely FATAH celebration...

And, where is the UN???

Missing in action, as always..

People are being killed in Iran. Where is the U.N.? What institution could be better positioned to relieve President Obama of his worries about America standing up unilaterally for freedom in Iran? The U.N. is the self-styled overlord of the international community, committed in its charter to promote peace, freedom and "reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights."

Iran's regime is already in gross violation of a series of U.N. sanctions over a nuclear program the U.N. Security Council deems a threat to international peace. The same regime has now loosed its security apparatus of trained thugs and snipers on Iranians who have been, in huge numbers, demanding their basic rights. Surely top U.N. officials such as Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon should be leading the charge for liberty and justice, with the strongest possible criticism and measures against the Iranian regime.

But that's not happening. While Iranian protesters have been risking their necks to try to rid their country of a malignant despotism, the U.N. has hardly even qualified as voting "present."

During the upheaval following the disputed results of Iran's June 12 presidential election, Ban confined himself to a grand total of three public utterances on the matter. In the first, on June 15, with pictures of bloodied Iranian protesters already flooding the Internet, Ban told reporters in New York that he was "closely following the situation." In words so ritually obtuse that they could have been scripted for him by Iran's supreme tyrant, Ali Khamenei, Ban added that he had "taken note of the instruction by the religious leaders that there should be an investigation into this issue."

The next day, June 16, when asked again about Iran, Ban came up with pretty much the same anodyne answer: "taken note ... very closely following ... just seeing how the situation will develop." Other than that, for the next six days, Ban had lots to say--but not about Iran. He sent a message to a meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia, of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was attending as an observer, having briefly decamped from the upheaval that his own Ayatollah-blessed, irregularity-fraught "re-election" had sparked in Iran.

To this gathering in Russia, where Ahmadinejad posed for the cameras among a lineup of heads of state, Ban dispatched a message full of buzzwords about poverty, climate change and "combined commitment to a peaceful and prosperous common future." He made no mention of the "situation" in Iran.

Neda will win...

The Iranian public have seen the thugs up close...

On one side you have all the instruments of repression in Iran, gathering their forces for a crackdown. On the other you have unarmed protesters symbolized by the image of Neda Agha Soltan, a martyred woman dying helplessly on the street, whose last words reportedly were: "It burned me."

Who's going to win? In the short run, the victors may be the thugs who claim to rule in the name of God: the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij militia and the other tools of an Islamic revolution that has decayed and hardened into mere authoritarianism. They have shown they are willing to kill enough of their compatriots to contain this first wave of change.

But over the coming months and years, my money is on the followers of the martyred Neda. They have exposed the weakness of the clerical regime in a way that Iran's foreign adversaries -- America, Israel, Saudi Arabia -- never could. They have opened a fundamental split in the regime. The rulers will try to bind this wound with force, and salve it with concessions, but neither approach will make the wound heal.

Clinton is wrong about Settlements...

The United States, under George Bush, did agree to natural growth of settlements...

Throughout, the Bush administration gave Mr. Sharon full support for his actions against terror and on final status issues. On April 14, 2004, Mr. Bush handed Mr. Sharon a letter saying that there would be no "right of return" for Palestinian refugees. Instead, the president said, "a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel."

On the major settlement blocs, Mr. Bush said, "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." Several previous administrations had declared all Israeli settlements beyond the "1967 borders" to be illegal. Here Mr. Bush dropped such language, referring to the 1967 borders -- correctly -- as merely the lines where the fighting stopped in 1949, and saying that in any realistic peace agreement Israel would be able to negotiate keeping those major settlements.

On settlements we also agreed on principles that would permit some continuing growth. Mr. Sharon stated these clearly in a major policy speech in December 2003: "Israel will meet all its obligations with regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic incentives and no construction of new settlements."

Ariel Sharon did not invent those four principles. They emerged from discussions with American officials and were discussed by Messrs. Sharon and Bush at their Aqaba meeting in June 2003.

They were not secret, either. Four days after the president's letter, Mr. Sharon's Chief of Staff Dov Weissglas wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that "I wish to reconfirm the following understanding, which had been reached between us: 1. Restrictions on settlement growth: within the agreed principles of settlement activities, an effort will be made in the next few days to have a better definition of the construction line of settlements in Judea & Samaria."

Stories in the press also made it clear that there were indeed "agreed principles." On Aug. 21, 2004 the New York Times reported that "the Bush administration . . . now supports construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion does not extend outward."

In recent weeks, American officials have denied that any agreement on settlements existed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated on June 17 that "in looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements. That has been verified by the official record of the administration and by the personnel in the positions of responsibility."

These statements are incorrect. Not only were there agreements, but the prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation -- the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of four small settlements in the West Bank. This was the first time Israel had ever removed settlements outside the context of a peace treaty, and it was a major step.

Is the FBI reaching out to the Muslim Brotherhood???

This is very disturbing...

FBI Executive Assistant Director Tom Harrington held a meeting today with Imam Majid, the Vice-President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). According to Jihad Watch, the meeting follows an official decision to use the group as an official point of contact with the American Muslim community as a means to contact Hamas.

ISNA is one of the largest and most prominent Muslim Brotherhood entities in the U.S. Its members were alleged co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Trial in Dallas in which all defendants were found guilty of channeling funds to support Hamas terrorism.

Iranians no longer invited to July 4th parties...

Take that!

The White House has rescinded the invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend July 4 celebrations at U.S. embassies around the world.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said nobody from Iran RSVPed to come, and at this point, the invitations are no longer valid.

"Given the events of the past many days, those invitations will no longer be extended," Mr. Gibbs said.

When the US gets tough....I feel this is like a Seinfeld episode - "No Soup For You."

Iranians hold British Reporter....

This regime has got to go....we need bold action from the west...

Senior Iranian officials said Jason Fowden, who had been working for the Washington Times, was among British passport holders who had been detained for underground activities.

Hossein Mohseni Ejeii, the country's intelligence minister, accused Britons of formenting protests against the regime.

"Some people with British passports were involved in recent riots," he said. "One of the detainees collected information needed by the enemies under the guise of a reporter.

"Britain was one of the countries which fuelled the situation by strong propaganda and some undiplomatic measures."

Mr Fowden, who also has a Greek passport and is known by the name Iason Athanasiadis, was initially arrested a week ago for overstaying his visa in Iran.

Greek diplomats are leading efforts to secure his release but have not yet been able to visit him in prison.

Will they need a license to sell bras?

The latest from Saudi Arabia...

Using colorful bras donated by employees at Victoria's Secret, a group of 26 mostly Saudi women completed the first course of its kind to be offered in the kingdom -- how to fit, stock and sell underwear -- a training organizers hope will help boost a campaign to lift the ban on women selling underwear in the kingdom.

The graduates held a small ceremony at a college in the western seaport of Jiddah on Tuesday, capping 40 hours of instruction during which they learned to overcome their embarrassment at doing bra fittings, deal with customer complaints and display the stock in an appealing manner.

"It was a beautiful experience," said Faten Abdo, a 32-year-old coordinator in the offices of a lingerie company.

"The most shocking thing for me was the bra sizes," she added. "We didn't know how to get proper measurements before."

The 10-day course comes three months after a group of Saudi women launched a campaign to boycott lingerie stores until they employ women. Almost all the stores in the kingdom are staffed by men. The only exceptions are a few women-only boutiques, some of them inside popular shopping centers.

The restrictions are ironic in a country that goes to great lengths to segregate the sexes. Men and women, for instance, who are not close relatives cannot stand in the same line at fast-food outlets or even be in the same car together. Conservative clerics have strong influence on government and society, and they ban anything they believe might lead to women's emancipation, such as driving or voting.

But those pushing for saleswomen in lingerie stores say they were tired of discussing intimate details with male staff and enduring their scrutiny when they ask for a particular cup size.

Their aim is to push for implementation of a law that has been on the books since 2006 which says only female staff can be employed in women's apparel stores. The law has never been put into effect, partly due to hard-liners in the religious establishment who oppose employing women in mixed environments like malls.

Because of the mortification many women feel ordering bras, thongs and negligees, the lack of trained sales staff and the absence of fitting rooms -- they're banned because the idea of a woman undressing in a public place is unthinkable -- many women end up with the wrong underwear size.

The training was the idea of Suhair al-Qurashi, head of the private Dar al-Hekma College, according to Reem Asaad, a finance lecturer at the college and the main force behind the boycott campaign.

"She wanted the training to be a part of the solution because the industry was complaining that there's a lack of qualified (women) in the market who can run and manage lingerie stores," said Asaad. "So we covered fitting and technical issues, we covered selling and handling customer complaints."

The trainer was an Australian woman who had heard about the boycott campaign online and then offered to give the course.

Could you imagine a father getting away with this???

How on earth was she not found guilty????

A woman who gave birth in a Wal-Mart washroom in Prince Albert, Sask., and left the baby behind has been found not guilty of child abandonment, a judge has ruled.

Queen's Bench Justice Neil Gabrielson released his decision Wednesday in the case of April Dawn Halkett, 22. He said the Crown didn't prove its case, and that while what Halkett did was negligent and inappropriate, it was not criminal.

Halkett rested her head on one of her hands while the decision was read. She didn't react when Gabrielson said she was not guilty.

During her judge-alone trial in May, Halkett testified that she did not realize she was pregnant when she went to use the store's washroom during a shopping trip in May 2007.

She said that the birth happened very quickly and that the child did not look like he was alive.

In a police interview, entered into evidence at the trial, Halkett said after giving birth she was scared, she washed the blood off her hands and ran out of the washroom.

The baby was found in the toilet.

Can someone explain this to me???

The latest Jewish Conspiracy...

Just wanted to let you in on the conspiracy....

Strange as it may sound, there is a belief among extremist Muslims that certain soft drinks are part of a grand Zionist plot. What follows is a transcript of an address given by a Muslim religious leader in Egypt last February, in which he explains that Pepsi is actually an acronym for “Pay Every Penny to Save Israel.” The transcription is provided by MEMRI, the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute, and is available at www.memri.org.

Do you know what the word “Pepsi” means? Pepsi as in P-E-P-S-I. The first P stands for “Pay.” E stands for “Every.” The third letter stands for “Penny.” A penny means any small coin you receive and don’t know what to do with. Pay it to “Saving” I — “Israel.” In other words, pay every small coin you receive in order to save Israel. They don’t want money from you — they want your small change, your pennies. If I’m not mistaken, in American economics, a penny is one-thousandth of the dollar. It’s not even worth a piaster. It’s only a millime. At least I think it’s worth a millime, not even a piaster.

They say: “Donate the small change you don’t need, but give it to the right cause. If you collect small change, you can buy this drink.” They took the first letter of each word — “Pay Every Penny Saving Israel” — and they formed the word “Pepsi.” When you pay [to buy Pepsi], you are saving Israel. I am not talking about Pepsi, but about Coca-Cola and all of them. I don’t want to specify the products. See for yourselves. You are Muslims. You can tell me. I don’t know. My little son knows more about the boycott than me. When we go shopping, he says to me: “Buy this, don’t buy that.” He knows them by heart. He has become an expert in this.

A halal-only Domino's Pizza....

I support their right to offer what they think sells...but this is a sign of the times...

Residents have threatened to boycott a Domino's Pizza - after it took pork off its menu and now only offers halal food.

Customers in Blackburn are angry that the managers of the store - which is located in a heavily populated Asian area - made the move in a bid to attract more Muslim clients.

Toppings now include halal pepperoni, halal spicy beef sausage, and customers wanting a Hawaiian pizza traditionally topped with ham will be offered the new version which features halal cured turkey along with pineapple and mushrooms.

There are now two halal-only Domino's Pizza restaurants in the country, causing anger with some nearby customers

The takeaway in the Roe Lee area of the town has secured accreditation from the Halal Food Authority (HFA) in a bid to widen its appeal to nearby Asian residents.

Franchisee of the Blackburn store, Slawomir Szulc, said the move towards halal pizzas was vital if the takeaway was going to have a viable future.

He said: 'I am delighted to be opening a 100 per cent halal Domino's Pizza store to better serve the needs of local residents.

'The store originally opened in October 2005 and has never performed particularly well.

'We realised that we needed to widen our appeal and target the local Muslim community.

'We tried adding in some additional pork-free toppings, but this still did not stimulate the business, potentially forcing us to close permanently.

'But, after further consideration, we chose to go all the way and reopen as a 100 per cent halal store.'

Iranian security forces fire at protesters....

The latest from Iran...

Security forces in Iran violently clashed with protesters near parliament house in the capital of Tehran Wednesday afternoon, unofficial reports said.

Police officers are said to have used live ammunition against the crowd attending a rally protesting the disputed election results. According to one report, a young woman has been shot by security forces and could not be evacuated to a hospital.

Other protesters have been beaten with batons and the cellular network in the area has been completely cut off, to prevent participants from reporting about the violence or send images to others.

Sources in Tehran said that the protesters attempted to move towards Baharestan Square near parliament while holding hands. Many were wearing black bracelets in memory of Neda Soltani, the young woman who was shot to death by security forces last Saturday and became a symbol for the opposition's struggle. Other carried pictures of Soltani, or candles.

Wait till the muslims hear about this....

This is from Malmo - the source of a lot of Muslim violence....

The question of topless bathing at public swimming pools has been rather a hot potato in Sweden in the last couple of years. The Swedish network “Bara Bröst”, or “Bare Breasts” in English, has actively been lobbying for equality between the sexes at public swimming pools. The network wants women’s chests to be as desexualized as men’s and they protest against this inequality by ignoring regulations. Lately supporters had targeted swimming pools in Malmö on a number of occasions turning up for a topless swim.

The issue had already been up for discussion in Malmö at an administration meeting in April, but no decision was reached. But after the presence of “Bara Bröst” supporters in many of Malmö’s pools, the board felt that there was a pressing need address the issue.

According to Swedish News Agency TT, it was decided by a unanimous board at Wednesday’s meeting that all swimmers must wear swim gear but that women may choose for themselves whether or not they wish to wear a bikini-top.

Hitchens on Obama and Iran...

Hitchens does it again...

1. There is nothing at all that any Western country can do to avoid the charge of intervening in Iran's internal affairs. The deep belief that everything—especially anything in English—is already and by definition an intervention is part of the very identity and ideology of the theocracy.
2. It is a mistake to assume that the ayatollahs, cynical and corrupt as they may be, are acting rationally. They are frequently in the grip of archaic beliefs and fears that would make a stupefied medieval European peasant seem mentally sturdy and resourceful by comparison.
3. The tendency of outside media to check the temperature of the clerics, rather than consult the writers and poets of the country, shows our own cultural backwardness in regrettably sharp relief. Anyone who had been reading Pezeshkzad and Nafisi, or talking to their students and readers in Tabriz and Esfahan and Mashad, would have been able to avoid the awful embarrassment by which everything that has occurred on the streets of Iran during recent days has come as one surprise after another to most of our uncultured "experts."

That last observation also applies to the Obama administration. Want to take a noninterventionist position? All right, then, take a noninterventionist position. This would mean not referring to Khamenei in fawning tones as the supreme leader and not calling Iran itself by the tyrannical title of "the Islamic republic." But be aware that nothing will stop the theocrats from slandering you for interfering anyway. Also try to bear in mind that one day you will have to face the young Iranian democrats who risked their all in the battle and explain to them just what you were doing when they were being beaten and gassed. (Hint: Don't make your sole reference to Iranian dictatorship an allusion to a British-organized coup in 1953; the mullahs think that it proves their main point, and this generation has more immediate enemies to confront.)

There is then the larger question of the Iranian theocracy and its continual, arrogant intervention in our affairs: its export of violence and cruelty and lies to Lebanon and Palestine and Iraq and its unashamed defiance of the United Nations, the European Union, and the International Atomic Energy Agency on the nontrivial matter of nuclear weapons. I am sure that I was as impressed as anybody by our president's decision to quote Martin Luther King—rather late in the week—on the arc of justice and the way in which it eventually bends. It was just that in a time of crisis and urgency he was citing the wrong King text (the right one is to be found in the "Letter From a Birmingham Jail"), and it was also as if he were speaking as the president of Iceland or Uruguay rather than as president of these United States. Coexistence with a nuclearized, fascistic theocracy in Iran is impossible even in the short run. The mullahs understand this with perfect clarity. Why can't we?

Australia starts to get some sense on global warming...

I had to post this in its entirety since it was so good...

As the US Congress considers the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, the Australian Senate is on the verge of rejecting its own version of cap-and-trade. The story of this legislation's collapse offers advance notice for what might happen to similar legislation in the US—and to the whole global warming hysteria.

Since the Australian government first introduced its Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) legislation—the Australian version of cap-and-trade energy rationing—there has been a sharp shift in public opinion and political momentum against the global warming crusade. This is a story that offers hope to defenders of industrial civilization—and a warning to American environmentalists that the climate change they should be afraid of just might be a shift in the intellectual climate.

An April 29 article in The Australian described the general trend—and its leading cause.

There is rising recognition that introduction of a carbon tax under the guise of "cap and trade" will be personally costly, economically disruptive to society and tend to shift classes of jobs offshore. Moreover, despite rising carbon dioxide concentrations, global warming seems to have taken a holiday….

With public perceptions changing so dramatically and quickly it is little wonder Ian Plimer's latest book, Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science, has been received with such enthusiasm and is into its third print run in as many weeks. [It's now up to the fifth printing.]

The public is receptive to an exposé of the many mythologies and false claims associated with anthropogenic global warming and are welcoming an authoritative description of planet Earth and its ever-changing climate in readable language.

One of the most remarkable changes occurred on April 13, when leading global warming hysteric Paul Sheehan—who writes for the main Sydney newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, which has done as much to hype the threat of global warming as any Australian newspaper—reviewed Plimer's book and admitted he was taken aback. He describes Plimer, correctly, as "one of Australia's foremost Earth scientists," and praised the book as "brilliantly argued" and "the product of 40 years' research and breadth of scholarship."

What does Plimer's book say? Here is Sheehan's summary:

Much of what we have read about climate change, [Plimer] argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modeling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as "primitive."…

The Earth's climate is driven by the receipt and redistribution of solar energy. Despite this crucial relationship, the sun tends to be brushed aside as the most important driver of climate. Calculations on supercomputers are primitive compared with the complex dynamism of the Earth's climate and ignore the crucial relationship between climate and solar energy.

To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable—human-induced CO2—is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly.

In response, this is Sheehan's conclusion: "Heaven and Earth is an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." This cannot be interpreted as anything but a capitulation. It cedes to the global warming rejectionists the high ground of being "evidence-based," and it accepts the characterization of the global warming promoters as dogmatic conformists.

The political impact has been manifested in a series of climb-downs as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government has been forced to delay its plans for cap-and-trade controls. On May 4, the government announced it would postpone the onset of the scheme until mid-2011, a year later than originally planned.

On June 4, this delayed emission trading scheme passed the House of Representatives despite a vote against it by the opposition. But it now faces almost certain defeat in the Australian Senate. Whereas the Labor government controls 32 votes in the Senate, the opposition Liberal-National coalition controls 37 and is committed to vote against it if the Rudd government will not grant more time to consider the outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference in December and US Senate deliberations. This itself is a compromise position, because many of the coalition parliamentarians now want to vote unconditionally against an ETS in any form.

There are 7 other votes in the Senate: five Greens who say the scheme doesn't go far enough but who could be induced to go along; one independent, Nick Xenophon, who has pledged to vote against the bill unless the government waits till after Copenhagen; and one other, Senator Steve Fielding of the Family First Party, who has decided to investigate the whole thing first hand. Fielding could turn out to be the single deciding vote.

His story is particularly interesting. Andrew Bolt, who has been leading the charge against the global warming hysteria for years, notes that Fielding's investigation "could blow apart the great global warming scare."

Fielding went to the US to assess the American evidence for global warming at close quarters. As Melbourne's Age reported on June 4:

Senator Fielding said he was impressed by some of the data presented at the [US Heartland Institute's] climate change skeptics' conference: namely that, although carbon emissions had increased in the last 10 years, global temperature had not.

He said scientists at the conference had advanced other explanations, such as the relationship between solar activity and solar energy hitting the Earth to explain climate change.

Fielding has issued a challenge to the Obama White House to rebut the data. It will be a novel experience for them, as Fielding is an engineer and has an Australian's disregard for self-important government officials. Here is how The Age described his challenge:

Senator Fielding emailed graphs that claim the globe had not warmed for a decade to Joseph Aldy, US President Barack Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, after a meeting on Thursday…. Senator Fielding said he found that Dr. Aldy and other Obama administration officials were not interested in discussing the legitimacy of climate science.

Telling an Australian you're not interested in the legitimacy of your position is a red rag to a bull. So here is what Fielding concluded:

Until recently I, like most Australians, simply accepted without question the notion that global warming was a result of increased carbon emissions. However, after speaking to a cross-section of noted scientists, including Ian Plimer, a professor at the University of Adelaide and author of Heaven and Earth, I quickly began to understand that the science on this issue was by no means conclusive….

As a federal senator, I would be derelict in my duty to the Australian people if I did not even consider whether or not the scientific assumptions underpinning this debate were in fact correct.

What Fielding's questioning represents is just the tip of the kangaroo's tail. He speaks for a growing number of Australians who will no longer take green propaganda on trust.

And that's what makes Plimer so influential—not just his credibility as a scientist, but the righteous certainty with which he dismisses man-made global warming as an unscientific dogma. He writes: "The Emissions Trading Scheme legislation poises Australia to make the biggest economic decision in its history"—Australia generates 80% of its electricity from coal, which would essentially be outlawed—"yet there has been no scientific due diligence. There has never been a climate change debate in Australia. Only dogma."

Plimer is not a "skeptic," a term which would imply that he merely has a few doubts about the global warming claims. Instead, he rejects the whole myth outright, and this seems to have emboldened and liberated a great many Australians who were already chafing under global warming conformity. As Plimer puts it:

[T]here are a large number of punters [Australian for "customers" or "gamblers"—in this case, skeptical customers who may or may not buy what the government's selling] who object to being treated dismissively as stupid, who do not like being told what to think, who value independence, who resile from personal attacks and have life experiences very different from the urban environmental atheists attempting to impose a new fundamentalist religion. Green politics have taken the place of failed socialism and Western Christianity and impose fear, guilt, penance, and indulgences onto a society with little scientific literacy.

Australia is not that different from America. If a shift in public opinion against the global warming dogma can happen on one side of the earth, it can happen on the other—especially when the US edition of Plimer's book, scheduled for July 1, hits the stands.

His role, Plimer says, is to show "that the emperor has no clothes." After three decades of relentless global warming propaganda, it's about time.

Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of The Intellectual Activist and TIADaily.com. Tom Minchin is a writer, researcher, and businessman in Melbourne, Australia.

Poland gets a gay rabbi....

Perfect for Poland, no???

When Rabbi Aaron Katz walks the streets of Warsaw's former Jewish quarter, scenes of that lost world fill his imagination: Families headed to synagogue, women in their kitchens cooking Sabbath meals, his father as a boy with the sidecurls of an Orthodox Jew.

But Katz's life could hardly be more different from that prewar eastern European culture, at least in one key respect: He is Poland's first openly gay rabbi.

Born in Argentina 53 years ago to parents who fled Poland before the Holocaust, Katz is the latest rabbi to play his part in reviving a once vibrant Jewish community that was all but wiped out by Hitler.

He settled into Warsaw's historic Jewish district in March with Kevin Gleason, a former Hollywood producer on such reality TV shows as "The Bachelor" and "Nanny 911," with whom he entered into a registered domestic partnership in Los Angeles two years ago.

They live only three streets from the birth home of Katz's father in a modern and spacious apartment with their dogs, two gentle brown boxers. Katz says he is moved by the links to his past, but keeps his focus on the future.

"I don't think we will come back to this great Jewish life," he said, referring to prewar Poland, a country where one person in 10 was Jewish and where synagogues, yeshivas and shtetls defined the landscape. "But I hope we will have a normal Jewish life in Poland."

Katz is certainly an anomaly in conservative Poland, where to be either Jewish or gay is challenge enough - at least outside the cities. Of a population of 38 million, about 5,000 are registered as Jews, while thousands more have part-Jewish ancestry, and some have returned to their roots since Poland shed its communist dictatorship.

Katz is the second rabbi to serve Beit Warszawa, a Reform community with 250 members that was founded in the capital 10 years ago by Polish and American Jews who felt little affinity with some Orthodox practices, such as separating men and women during Sabbath services. The Reform movement ordains gay rabbis.

Homosexuals have won acceptance at differing levels throughout post-communist Eastern Europe. The Czech Republic and Slovenia recognize same-sex partnerships, as will Hungary from July 1. Poland hasn't gone that far. It has an active gay rights movement and gay nightclubs in the cities, but the Catholic church and some conservative politicians still publicly describe homosexuality as abnormal and immoral.

Katz, a citizen of Argentina, Israel and Sweden, says so far he has not faced anti-Semitism or homophobia in Poland. But some community members, speaking in private, reveal a degree of discomfort.

One woman at a Sabbath service whispered that she found Katz's open sexuality too "aggressive." A longtime male member counseled against writing about the rabbi, lest anti-Semites use it against the community.

A third member, Piotr Lukasz, said he himself supports gay rights, and marched with an Israeli flag during a recent gay rights parade in Warsaw. But he said he had heard others complain that it would weaken an already small and fragile community.

"They say that Poland is not a ready for a gay rabbi because the outside society is very conservative," said Lukasz, a 23-year-old student of cultural anthropology. "An openly gay rabbi is something very controversial."

Iran....

Thanks to Tehran Bureau and Vlad Tepes blog for posting this.

Documents link Al-Qaeda to Saudi Royal Family....

Will these documents ever see the light of day???

Documents gathered by lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family, but the material may never find its way into court because of legal and diplomatic obstacles.

A German intelligence report described bank transfers made in the early 1990s by Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz and other members of the Saudi royal family to a charity that was suspected of financing militants’ activities in Pakistan and Bosnia.

The case has put the Obama administration in the middle of a political and legal dispute, with the Justice Department siding with the Saudis in court last month in seeking to kill further legal action. Adding to the intrigue, classified American intelligence documents related to Saudi finances were leaked anonymously to lawyers for the families. The Justice Department had the lawyers’ copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material.

The Saudis and their defenders in Washington have long denied links to terrorists, and they have mounted an aggressive and, so far, successful campaign to beat back the allegations in federal court based on a claim of sovereign immunity.

Allegations of Saudi links to terrorism have been the subject of years of government investigations and furious debate. Critics have said that some members of the Saudi ruling class pay off terrorist groups in part to keep them from being more active in their own country.

But the thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents compiled by lawyers for the Sept. 11 families and their insurers represented an unusually detailed look at some of the evidence.

Internal Treasury Department documents obtained by the lawyers under the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, said that a prominent Saudi charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, heavily supported by members of the Saudi royal family, showed “support for terrorist organizations” at least through 2006.

A self-described Qaeda operative in Bosnia said in an interview with lawyers in the lawsuit that another charity largely controlled by members of the royal family, the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, provided money and supplies to the terrorist group in the 1990s and hired militant operatives like himself.

Another witness in Afghanistan said in a sworn statement that in 1998 he had witnessed an emissary for a leading Saudi prince, Turki al-Faisal, hand a check for one billion Saudi riyals (now worth about $267 million) to a top Taliban leader.

China arrests top dissident for subversion...

A good reminder that the Chinese also live under a horribly repressive regime...

One of China's best known dissidents, Liu Xiaobo, has been formally arrested on suspicion of inciting subversion, following his detention late last year for promoting a petition calling for an end to one-party rule.

State news agency Xinhua said Wednesday that prosecutors approved Liu's arrest Tuesday for "alleged agitation activities aimed at subversion of government and overthrowing of the socialist system."

Liu has been one of China's most prominent dissidents since 1989, when he was heavily involved in pro-democracy protests in and around Tiananmen Square that were crushed on June 4 that year.

ACLU sues prison over muslim prayers....

Give me a break...I wish the ACLU would find better things to sue about...

Two Muslim inmates held in a special unit at the federal prison in Terre Haute say they aren't allowed to pray in groups as often as their religion commands and have asked a federal judge to ease worship limits imposed by the Bureau of Prisons.

The prison in western Indiana houses several high-security inmates, including American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh, who is serving a 20-year sentence for aiding Afghanistan's now-defunct Taliban government.

The June 16 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana challenges limits on Islamic worship in the prison's restrictive Communications Management Unit, where about 30 of the 40 inmates are Muslim.

Muslims are required to pray five times a day, but the lawsuit, filed on behalf of inmates Enaam Arnaout and Randall T. Royer, says inmates in the CMU are allowed to pray as a group just one hour a week. The ACLU claims that violates a federal law barring the government from restricting religious activities without showing a compelling need.

Good news...weather delays amputations....

Thank God it's summer...

An Islamic court in Somalia that sentenced four men to have a hand and a leg cut off postponed the punishment today, saying the sweltering weather could cause them to bleed to death.

700 NYC Teachers Paid to do Nothing...

I'd love to see the number of teachers nation-wide in both Canada and the US who are paid to do nothing...this can't be just New York...

Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that's what they want to do.

Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its "rubber rooms" — off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.

The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues — pretty much anything but school work. They have summer vacation just like their classroom colleagues and enjoy weekends and holidays through the school year.

"You just basically sit there for eight hours," said Orlando Ramos, who spent seven months in a rubber room, officially known as a temporary reassignment center, in 2004-05. "I saw several near-fights. `This is my seat.' `I've been sitting here for six months.' That sort of thing."

Ramos was an assistant principal in East Harlem when he was accused of lying at a hearing on whether to suspend a student. Ramos denied the allegation but quit before his case was resolved and took a job in California.

Because the teachers collect their full salaries of $70,000 or more, the city Department of Education estimates the practice costs the taxpayers $65 million a year. The department blames union rules.

An important environmental story that is being ignored...

It doesn't fit with CO2 so-called 'wisdom'...this article is written by Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger from Austrlia...

ALTHOUGH there are many doubters of man-made climate change, I am not yet one of them. But I remain unconvinced that carbon dioxide is the sole bete noire. Two decades ago, I pored over the spectral properties of the infra-red radiation of this gas, which is essential to plant life, and found that it was almost completely overshadowed by the radiative properties of water vapour, which is vital to all forms of life on earth.

Repeatedly in science we are reminded that happenings in nature can rarely be ascribed to a single phenomenon. For example, sea levels on our coasts are dependent on winds and astronomical forces as well as atmospheric pressure and, on a different time scale, the temperature profile of the ocean. Now, with complete abandon, a vociferous body of claimants is insisting that CO2 alone is the root of climatic evil.

I fear that many supporters of this view have become carried away by the euphoria of mass or dominant group psyche. Scientists are no more immune from being swayed by the pressure of collective enthusiasm than any other member of the human race. I do not believe for one moment that undisciplined burning of fossil fuels is harmless, but the most awful consequence of the burning of carboniferous fuels is not the release of CO2 but the large-scale injection ofminute particulate pollutants into the atmosphere.

Detailed studies led by internationally acclaimed cloud physicist Daniel Rosenfeld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have revealed that the minute water vapour droplets that form around some carbon particles are so small as to be almost incapable of being subsequently coalesced into larger precipitable drops. In short, the particulates prevent rainfall.

Rosenfeld's research group has shown that humans are changing the climate in a much more direct way than through the release of CO2. Rather, pollution is seriously inhibiting rain over mountains in semi-arid regions, a phenomenon with dire consequences for water resources in the Middle East and many other parts of the world, including China and Australia.

Rosenfeld is no snake-oil salesman. As an American Meteorological Society medallist, he has an internationally endorsed research record in cloud physics that no living Australian can claim to emulate. It is more than 20 years since Australia was a knowledgeable force in cloud physics and cloud seeding. CSIRO's relevant division has long been disbanded and its cloud-seeding techniques based on the use of expensive silver iodide have been superseded by the Israelis using an inexpensive and far more natural product: sea salt.

Chinese and Israeli researchers have shown that the average precipitation on Mt Hua near Xi'an in central China has decreased by 20per cent amid increasing levels of man-made air pollution during the past 50 years. The precipitation loss was doubled on days that had the poorest visibility because of pollution particles in the air. This explains the widely observed trends of decrease in mountain precipitation relative to the rainfall in nearby densely populated lowlands, which until now had not been directly ascribed to air pollution.

Some of the most chilling evidence was presented by Rosenfeld's Australian-based research associate Aron Gingis in a 2002 submission to the House of Representatives standing committee on agriculture, fisheries and forestry concerning future water supplies for Australia's rural industries and communities.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's satellite map of southeast Australia, enhanced by Rosenfeld, shows the frightening persistence and longevity of pollutant trails across vast areas, including the all-important Snowy Mountains catchments. It may well be concluded that the increasing emissions from the phalanx of brown coal-burning power stations at Hazelwood and other locations in Gippsland, Victoria, have substantially wrecked the natural precipitation processes over the once hydrologically rich Australian Alps.

If Rosenfeld's scientific interpretations are correct, then southern Australia would greatly benefit from the application of his discoveries. At the very least, Rosenfeld's conclusions should be accorded appropriate evaluation and testing by an unprejudiced panel of peers.

Yet his work so far has been ignored in Australia because it does not fit in with the dominant paradigm that holds CO2 responsible for reduced rainfall in semi-arid regions.