Science behind global warming is not settled...

An opinion piece by Richard Lindzen of MIT...

The IPCC's Scientific Assessments generally consist of about 1,000 pages of text. The Summary for Policymakers is 20 pages. It is, of course, impossible to accurately summarize the 1,000-page assessment in just 20 pages; at the very least, nuances and caveats have to be omitted. However, it has been my experience that even the summary is hardly ever looked at. Rather, the whole report tends to be characterized by a single iconic claim.

The main statement publicized after the last IPCC Scientific Assessment two years ago was that it was likely that most of the warming since 1957 (a point of anomalous cold) was due to man. This claim was based on the weak argument that the current models used by the IPCC couldn't reproduce the warming from about 1978 to 1998 without some forcing, and that the only forcing that they could think of was man. Even this argument assumes that these models adequately deal with natural internal variability—that is, such naturally occurring cycles as El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, etc.

Yet articles from major modeling centers acknowledged that the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years was due to the failure of these models to account for this natural internal variability. Thus even the basis for the weak IPCC argument for anthropogenic climate change was shown to be false.
The Climate Emails

The Economics of Climate Change
Rigging a Climate 'Consensus'
Global Warming With the Lid Off
Climate Science and Candor

Of course, none of the articles stressed this. Rather they emphasized that according to models modified to account for the natural internal variability, warming would resume—in 2009, 2013 and 2030, respectively.

But even if the IPCC's iconic statement were correct, it still would not be cause for alarm. After all we are still talking about tenths of a degree for over 75% of the climate forcing associated with a doubling of CO2. The potential (and only the potential) for alarm enters with the issue of climate sensitivity—which refers to the change that a doubling of CO2 will produce in GATA. It is generally accepted that a doubling of CO2 will only produce a change of about two degrees Fahrenheit if all else is held constant. This is unlikely to be much to worry about.

Yet current climate models predict much higher sensitivities. They do so because in these models, the main greenhouse substances (water vapor and clouds) act to amplify anything that CO2 does. This is referred to as positive feedback. But as the IPCC notes, clouds continue to be a source of major uncertainty in current models. Since clouds and water vapor are intimately related, the IPCC claim that they are more confident about water vapor is quite implausible.

There is some evidence of a positive feedback effect for water vapor in cloud-free regions, but a major part of any water-vapor feedback would have to acknowledge that cloud-free areas are always changing, and this remains an unknown. At this point, few scientists would argue that the science is settled. In particular, the question remains as to whether water vapor and clouds have positive or negative feedbacks.

The notion that the earth's climate is dominated by positive feedbacks is intuitively implausible, and the history of the earth's climate offers some guidance on this matter. About 2.5 billion years ago, the sun was 20%-30% less bright than now (compare this with the 2% perturbation that a doubling of CO2 would produce), and yet the evidence is that the oceans were unfrozen at the time, and that temperatures might not have been very different from today's. Carl Sagan in the 1970s referred to this as the "Early Faint Sun Paradox."

For more than 30 years there have been attempts to resolve the paradox with greenhouse gases. Some have suggested CO2—but the amount needed was thousands of times greater than present levels and incompatible with geological evidence. Methane also proved unlikely. It turns out that increased thin cirrus cloud coverage in the tropics readily resolves the paradox—but only if the clouds constitute a negative feedback. In present terms this means that they would diminish rather than enhance the impact of CO2.

There are quite a few papers in the literature that also point to the absence of positive feedbacks. The implied low sensitivity is entirely compatible with the small warming that has been observed. So how do models with high sensitivity manage to simulate the currently small response to a forcing that is almost as large as a doubling of CO2? Jeff Kiehl notes in a 2007 article from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the models use another quantity that the IPCC lists as poorly known (namely aerosols) to arbitrarily cancel as much greenhouse warming as needed to match the data, with each model choosing a different degree of cancellation according to the sensitivity of that model.

What does all this have to do with climate catastrophe? The answer brings us to a scandal that is, in my opinion, considerably greater than that implied in the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit (though perhaps not as bad as their destruction of raw data): namely the suggestion that the very existence of warming or of the greenhouse effect is tantamount to catastrophe. This is the grossest of "bait and switch" scams. It is only such a scam that lends importance to the machinations in the emails designed to nudge temperatures a few tenths of a degree.

The notion that complex climate "catastrophes" are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors.

Olmert's Peace Proposal....

Ehud Olmert made an amazing peace proposal to the Palestinians...they never even replied. Here are details of what he offered..

Olmert explains this position to me in unprecedented detail. His offer to Abbas represents a historic watershed and poses a serious question. Can the Palestinian leadership ever accept any offer that an Israeli prime minister could ever reasonably make?

It is important to get Olmert's full account of this offer on the record: "From the end of 2006 until the end of 2008 I think I met with Abu Mazen more often than any Israeli leader has ever met any Arab leader. I met him more than 35 times. They were intense, serious negotiations."

These negotiations took place on two tracks, Olmert says. One was the meetings with the two leaders and their senior colleagues and aides (among them Kadima leader Tzipi Livni on Olmert's side). But Olmert would also have private, one-on-one meetings with Abbas.

"On the 16th of September, 2008, I presented him (Abbas) with a comprehensive plan. It was based on the following principles.

One, there would be a territorial solution to the conflict on the basis of the 1967 borders with minor modifications on both sides. Israel will claim part of the West Bank where there have been demographic changes over the last 40 years."

This approach by Olmert would have allowed Israel to keep the biggest Jewish settlement blocks which are mainly now suburbs of Jerusalem, but would certainly have entailed other settlers having to leave Palestinian territory and relocate to Israel.

In total, Olmert says, this would have involved Israel claiming about 6.4 per cent of Palestinian territory in the West Bank: "It might be a fraction more, it might be a fraction less, but in total it would be about 6.4 per cent. Israel would claim all the Jewish areas of Jerusalem. All the lands that before 1967 were buffer zones between the two populations would have been split in half. In return there would be a swap of land (to the Palestinians) from Israel as it existed before 1967.

"I showed Abu Mazen how this would work to maintain the contiguity of the Palestinian state. I also proposed a safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza. It would have been a tunnel fully controlled by the Palestinians but not under Palestinian sovereignty, otherwise it would have cut the state of Israel in two.

"No 2 was the issue of Jerusalem. This was a very sensitive, very painful, soul-searching process. While I firmly believed that historically, and emotionally, Jerusalem was always the capital of the Jewish people, I was ready that the city should be shared. Jewish neighbourhoods would be under Jewish sovereignty, Arab neighbourhoods would be under Palestinian sovereignty, so it could be the capital of a Palestinian state.

"Then there was the question of the holy basin within Jerusalem, the sites that are holy to Jews and Muslims, but not only to them, to Christians as well. I would never agree to an exclusive Muslim sovereignty over areas that are religiously important to Jews and Christians. So there would be an area of no sovereignty, which would be jointly administered by five nations, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Palestinian state, Israel and the United States.

"Third was the issue of Palestinian refugees." This issue has often been a seeming deal-breaker. The Palestinians insist that all Palestinians who left Israel - at or near the time of its founding - and all their spouses and descendants, should be able to return to live in Israel proper. This could be more than a million people. Olmert, like other Israeli prime ministers, could never agree to this: "I think Abu Mazen understood there was no chance Israel would become the homeland of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian state was to be the homeland of the Palestinian people. So the question was how the claimed attachment of the Palestinian refugees to their original places could be recognised without bringing them in. I told him I would never agree to a right of return. Instead, we would agree on a humanitarian basis to accept a certain number every year for five years, on the basis that this would be the end of conflict and the end of claims. I said to him 1000 per year. I think the Americans were entirely with me.

"In addition, we talked about creating an international fund that would compensate Palestinians for their suffering. I was the first Israeli prime minister to speak of Palestinian suffering and to say that we are not indifferent to that suffering.

"And four, there were security issues." Olmert says he showed Abbas a map, which embodied all these plans. Abbas wanted to take the map away. Olmert agreed, so long as they both signed the map. It was, from Olmert's point of view, a final offer, not a basis for future negotiation. But Abbas could not commit. Instead, he said he would come with experts the next day.

"He (Abbas) promised me the next day his adviser would come. But the next day Saeb Erekat rang my adviser and said we forgot we are going to Amman today, let's make it next week. I never saw him again."

Muslim uncle burns niece for wearing lipstick...

BBC ignored global warming scandal...

They knew about climategate but did nothing...

The BBC has become tangled in the row over the alleged manipulation of scientific data on global warming.

One of its reporters has revealed he was sent some of the leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia more than a month ago – but did nothing about them.

Despite the explosive nature of some of the messages – which revealed apparent attempts by the CRU’s head, Professor Phil Jones, to destroy global temperature data rather than give it to scientists with opposing views – Paul Hudson failed to report the story.

This has led to suspicions that the scandal was ignored because it ran counter to what critics say is the BBC’s unquestioning acceptance in many of its programmes that man-made climate change is destroying the planet.

Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: ‘We need to know more about the BBC’s role in this affair. Was Mr Hudson told by the BBC not to use the story?’

Global warming data destroyed...

More bad science from the global warming alarmists...

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

Thomas Friedman on the Narrative....

For once, I agree with Friedman...

The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books — and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes — this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand “American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy” to keep Muslims down.

Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving.

Although most of the Muslims being killed today are being killed by jihadist suicide bombers in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia, you’d never know it from listening to their world. The dominant narrative there is that 9/11 was a kind of fraud: America’s unprovoked onslaught on Islam is the real story, and the Muslims are the real victims — of U.S. perfidy.

Have no doubt: we punched a fist into the Arab/Muslim world after 9/11, partly to send a message of deterrence, but primarily to destroy two tyrannical regimes — the Taliban and the Baathists — and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics. In the process, we did some stupid and bad things. But for every Abu Ghraib, our soldiers and diplomats perpetrated a million acts of kindness aimed at giving Arabs and Muslims a better chance to succeed with modernity and to elect their own leaders.

The Narrative was concocted by jihadists to obscure that.

It’s working. As a Jordanian-born counterterrorism expert, who asked to remain anonymous, said to me: “This narrative is now omnipresent in Arab and Muslim communities in the region and in migrant communities around the world. These communities are bombarded with this narrative in huge doses and on a daily basis. [It says] the West, and right now mostly the U.S. and Israel, is single-handedly and completely responsible for all the grievances of the Arab and the Muslim worlds. Ironically, the vast majority of the media outlets targeting these communities are Arab-government owned — mostly from the Gulf.”

This narrative suits Arab governments. It allows them to deflect onto America all of their people’s grievances over why their countries are falling behind. And it suits Al Qaeda, which doesn’t need much organization anymore — just push out The Narrative over the Web and satellite TV, let it heat up humiliated, frustrated or socially alienated Muslim males, and one or two will open fire on their own. See: Major Hasan.

“Liberal Arabs like me are as angry as a terrorist and as determined to change the status quo,” said my Jordanian friend. The only difference “is that while we choose education, knowledge and success to bring about change, a terrorist, having bought into the narrative, has a sense of powerlessness and helplessness, which are inculcated in us from childhood, that lead him to believe that there is only one way, and that is violence.”

What to do? Many Arab Muslims know that what ails their societies is more than the West, and that The Narrative is just an escape from looking honestly at themselves. But none of their leaders dare or care to open that discussion. In his Cairo speech last June, President Obama effectively built a connection with the Muslim mainstream. Maybe he could spark the debate by asking that same audience this question:

“Whenever something like Fort Hood happens you say, ‘This is not Islam.’ I believe that. But you keep telling us what Islam isn’t. You need to tell us what it is and show us how its positive interpretations are being promoted in your schools and mosques. If this is not Islam, then why is it that a million Muslims will pour into the streets to protest Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, but not one will take to the streets to protest Muslim suicide bombers who blow up other Muslims, real people, created in the image of God? You need to explain that to us — and to yourselves.”

George Carlin on environmentalists...

On strike....

Muslim suicide bombers in Britain are set to begin a three-day strike on Monday in a dispute over the number of virgins they are entitled to in the afterlife. Emergency talks with Al Qaeda management have so far failed to produce an agreement.

The unrest began last Tuesday when Al Qaeda announced that the number of virgins a suicide bomber would receive after his death will be cut by 25% next January from 72 to only 60. The rationale for the cut was the increase in recent years of the number of suicide bombings and a subsequent shortage of virgins in the afterlife.

The suicide bombers' union, the British Organisation of Occupational Martyrs (or B.O.O.M.) responded with a statement that this was unacceptable to its members and immediately balloted for strike action. General secretary Abdullah Amir told the press, "Our members are literally working themselves to death in the cause of jihad. We don't ask for much in return but to be treated like this by management is a kick in the teeth."

Mr Amir accepted the limited availability of virgins but pointed out that the cutbacks were expected to be borne entirely by the workforce and not by management. "Last Christmas Abu Hamza alone was awarded an annual bonus of 250,000 virgins," complains Amir. "And you can be sure they'll all be pretty ones too. How can Al Qaeda afford that for members of the management but not 72 for the people who do the real work?"

Speaking from the shed in the West Midlands where he currently resides, Al Qaeda chief executive Osama bin Laden explained,

"We sympathise with our workers' concerns but Al Qaeda is simply not in a position to meet their demands. They are simply not accepting the realities of modern-day jihad, in a competitive marketplace. Thanks to Western depravity, there is now a chronic shortage of virgins in the afterlife. It's a straight choice between reducing expenditure and laying people off. I don't like cutting wages but I'd hate to have to tell 3,000 of my staff that they won't be able to blow themselves up." He defended management bonuses by claiming these were necessary to attract good fanatical clerics. "How am I supposed to attract the best people if I can't compete with the private sector?" asked Mr. Bin-Laden.

Talks broke down this morning after management's last-ditch proposal of a virgin-sharing scheme was rejected outright after a failure to agree on orifice allocation quotas. One virgin, who refused to be named, was quoted as saying "I'll be buggered if I'm agreeing to anything like that........it's too much of a mouthful to swallow".

Unless some sort of agreement is reached over the weekend, suicide bombers will down explosives at midday on Monday. Most branches are supporting the strike. Only the North London branch, which has a different union, is likely to continue working. However, some members of that branch will only be using waist-down explosives in order to express solidarity with their striking brethren.

Hamas continues its Islamist ways...

More rules for Gaza...

The Islamic Hamas movement banned girls last month from riding behind men on motor scooters and forbade women from dancing at the opening of a folk museum. Girls in some public schools must wear headscarves and cloaks.

Signs of Hamas’s creeping Islamization are everywhere in Gaza, the Mediterranean coastal enclave that Hamas has run by itself since 2007. Gaza is already politically divided from the West Bank, the Palestinian territory administered by the secular Fatah movement.

“Ruling by itself, Hamas can stamp its ideas on everyone,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political science professor at Gaza’s al-Azhar University. “Islamizing society has always been part of Hamas strategy.”

Harper tells Uganda Canada deplores anti-gay laws..

Good for Stephen Harper....

Uganda's president got an earful from Prime Minister Stephen Harper over the African nation's proposed law targeting gays.

The Ugandan "anti-homosexuality bill" would imprison and even execute homosexuals.

But the proposed law barely drew a mention at this weekend's Commonwealth summit in Trinidad and Tobago - despite calls before the conference for the country's suspension from the organization.

Harper said leaders generally don't talk about specific laws during the Commonwealth meetings.

But he said he pulled aside Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and "indicated Canada's deep concern, strong opposition of the fact we deplore these kinds of measures."

"We find them inconsistent with, frankly, I think any reasonable understanding of human rights, and I was very clear on that with the president of Uganda," Harper told reporters on the final day of the Commonwealth meetings.

Hat tip: Scott...

Kick a Jew Day....

Not a joke....this really happened in Florida...

Ten middle school students in Naples, Florida have been suspended after taking part in what they termed "Kick a Jew Day" at their school, school district officials reported.

The one day in-school suspensions were served earlier this week.

The incident occurred a day before red-haired students were targeted at a California middle schoool in what was a Facebook group called "Kick a Ginger Day," which some say was inspired by the popular American animation series South Park.

It's not just us...the Americans are going after some Seals....

You'd think we weren't at war....

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

Matthew McCabe, a Special Operations Petty Officer Second Class (SO-2), is facing three charges: dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee, making a false official statement, and assault.

Petty Officer Jonathan Keefe, SO-2, is facing charges of dereliction of performance of duty and making a false official statement.

Petty Officer Julio Huertas, SO-1, faces those same charges and an additional charge of impediment of an investigation.

The three SEALs will be arraigned separately on Dec. 7. Another three SEALs — two officers and an enlisted sailor — have been identified by investigators as witnesses but have not been charged.

FoxNews.com obtained the official handwritten statement from one of the three witnesses given on Sept. 3, hours after Abed was captured and still being held at the SEAL base at Camp Baharia. He was later taken to a cell in the U.S.-operated Green Zone in Baghdad.

The SEAL told investigators he had showered after the mission, gone to the kitchen and then decided to look in on the detainee.

"I gave the detainee a glance over and then left," the SEAL wrote. "I did not notice anything wrong with the detainee and he appeared in good health."

Lt. Col. Holly Silkman, spokeswoman for the special operations component of U.S. Central Command, confirmed Tuesday to FoxNews.com that three SEALs have been charged in connection with the capture of a detainee. She said their court martial is scheduled for January.

United States Central Command declined to discuss the detainee, but a legal source told FoxNews.com that the detainee was turned over to Iraqi authorities, to whom he made the abuse complaints. He was then returned to American custody. The SEAL leader reported the charge up the chain of command, and an investigation ensued.

An interesting look at France....

40 lashes for a pair of trousers...

She managed to escape the Sudan and is now in France...

Sudanese journalist Lubna Ahmed Hussein said Tuesday she had donned a full Islamic veil to sneak out of Sudan and travel to France, two months after she was freed from jail for wearing trousers.

On a visit to Paris to promote her new book, Hussein accused Khartoum of trying to block her departure and said she was determined to exercise her right to travel freely as she met Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

"They wanted to prevent me from leaving, I resorted to the niqab and managed to leave," said Hussein, who was jailed for a day in September for violating Sudan's clothing decency laws by wearing trousers.

"I requested documents to be able to leave, to be able to travel, and this is the only means I found to be able to leave Sudan," she told journalists. "I did not flee Sudan. I am a Sudanese citizen."

Hussein faced a punishment of 40 lashes when she was convicted in July for wearing her green trousers in public.

But a Sudanese court in September ordered her to pay a fine instead, while 10 of the 12 other women arrested with her at a Khartoum restaurant on July 3 were lashed.

After she refused to pay the fine, Hussein served a one-day jail sentence.

Hussein arrived in Paris last week to promote her new book "40 coups de fouet pour un pantalon" (Forty Lashes for a Pair of Trousers) released in French. The book is to be translated in English and other languages.

She has been hosted by the French women's rights group "Ni Putes Ni Soumises" (Neither Whores Nor Submissives) which has been outspoken on issues dealing with the repression of Muslim women.

According to the chairwoman of the group, Sihem Habchi, Hussein left Sudan by air on September 18 and flew first to Sanaa in Yemen, before travelling on to Cairo and then Amman before arriving in France.

At each stage of the trip she met with local women's rights groups. She is due to leave France on December 4 to go again to Egypt, where she is to receive an award, and does not intend to leave Sudan for good, Habchi said.

At her meeting with Kouchner, Hussein took another swipe at the Sudanese judges who told her that wearing trousers was banned by Sharia law.

"I told them: 'Show me the text that justifies this repression of women based on their clothing.'

"But no one was able to, because such a text does not exist. It only exists in their heads."

Will Sudan let her back in?

Too many Jews???

Oh my God and one member of the UK panel is.....a Zionist!

A British diplomat has criticized the appointment of two leading Jewish academics to the UK's Iraq Inquiry panel, stating it may upset the balance of the inquiry.

Sir Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, told The Independent newspaper this week that the appointment of Sir Martin Gilbert, the renowned Holocaust historian and Winston Churchill biographer, and Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies and vice-principal of King's College London, would be seen as "ammunition" that could be used to call the inquiry a "whitewash."

Miles said the two academics were Jewish and that Gilbert was an active Zionist. He also said they were both strong supporters of former prime minister Tony Blair and the Iraq war.

"Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream British and American media, but the Jewish Chronicle and the Israeli media have no such inhibitions, and the Arabic media both in London and in the region are usually not far behind," he told the newspaper.

"It is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available," he added. "Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced."

The Hamas Children's web site incites violence....

Hamas is encouraging children around the world to jihad...

The educational content of the Hamas children's Web site Al-Fateh (The Conqueror) is not a form of pedagogy, but an "indoctrination to suicide bombing," said David Oman, the director of communications for the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE) on Tuesday at a press conference at the Regent Hotel.

Gert Weisskirchen, a former Social Democratic Party MP and chairman of the OSCE on combating anti-Semitism between 2004-2008, introduced the IMPACT-SE study, and said that "there is a chance to prevent the indoctrination of children and youngsters in Germany and all over Europe."

The study "Al-Fateh - The Hamas Web Magazine for Children: Indoctrination to Jihad, Annihilation and Self-Destruction" took place from September 2002 to April of this year.

Oman cited the "friends of Al-Fateh" entry of the young German-Palestinian child Muhammad Warad as growing evidence of the spread of radical, anti-Western Hamas ideology.

The Hamas Web site, according to the IMPACT-SE study, serves to demonize Israel through the use of anti-Semitic cartoons and tries to strip the country of its right to exist.

The promotion of violence is a standard theme of Al-Fateh. A telling example, said Oman, is the glorification of female suicide bomber Zeynab Abu Salam, who murdered two Jerusalem police officers in 2004.

Al-Fateh claims to receive millions of visitors, according to Oman. He said the Al-Fateh server, which has been tracked to Russia and Malaysia, frequently relocates its operation to prevent closure. The United Kingdom is listed as the site's current host.

The educational material on the site contravenes "all of the International Educational Standards based on UNESCO Resolutions," noted the study. Moreover, the authors of the study wrote that the site violates the International Convention on the Rights of the Child affirming that "every child has the inherent right to life," by inciting children to commit suicide bombings.

The pro-violence ideology of Hamas will have "implications for the West and Israel," said Oman.

"What will happen in 10 or 15 years from these children after their exposure to this type of hate?" asked Oman.

The Iranian-Hamas connection appears on Al-Fateh. The study highlighted the role of the founder of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, in stoking hatred against the West and Israel.

"The Web site often uses stories of shahids [martyrs] or their last wills and testaments to convey the message of violent jihad till victory or death - a message found in the teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini," wrote the authors.

"Child abuse" was the term Oman invoked to describe the effect of Hamas's educational site on adolescents and children.

Idiotic Profs at University of Ottawa thinks anti-semitism silences them....

Here's a letter that was sent out today to a variety of Professors at the University of Ottawa. These profs somwhow believe that the 'New anti-semtism' may limit their freedom of speech, and are asking University of Ottawa President Alan Rock not to participate in a Parliamentary inquiry.

I have a few questions for these Profs:

1. How on earth are your rights threatened? Can you provide specifics?

2. Are you having a hard time getting out your anti-Israel message?

3. Are you not concerned about anti-semitism at all?

I can just imagine the type of courses that Ms. Spronk teaches...well, I think it's time for some research! Stay tuned.

Dear colleagues/chers colleagues,

I am writing to ask if you would be willing to sign a letter addressed to Alan Rock expressing our concern about the University of Ottawa's participation in the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA). For more information on this standing committee, please feel free to contact me and I can direct you to various sources (see, for example, http://www.cpcca.ca/about.htm, and statements available on the websites of Independent Jewish Voices http://ijvcanada.org/sign-signez-petition-audiences-cpcca-hearings/, amongst others).

I apologize in advance for the short notice, but if you would like to sign the letter, please respond to this message by 16h30 today and I will forward it to Alan Rock's office by email at 17h00. This is not an open letter; it will only be sent to President Alan Rock and copied to the signatories.

Yours truly,

Susan Spronk, Assistant Professor, School of International Development and Global Studies.

PS Any volunteers willing to translate the letter into French?

University of Ottawa
President Allan Rock

We, a group of professors from the University of Ottawa, are writing to you to express our concerns related to the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA). First of all, we are deeply troubled by the community concern that there is a rise of anti-semitism on university campuses and we share a deep commitment to fighting racism in all of its forms in the university community. However, we are concerned that the way that “new anti-Semitism” is being interpreted by this committee might be used to curtail the academic freedom and freedom of speech of faculty and students regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict.

We have understood that university presidents from major universities on campus were invited to address the CPCCA. The CPCCA website lists Ms. Francine Page the Director, Centre for Equity and Human Rights, as one of six 'representatives from' certain Canadian universities' appearing before the Panel' on November 24. We would like to know a) if you intend to represent the University during the hearings b) if Ms. Page’s submission will represent the view of the Administration of the University of Ottawa, and c) if the submission is being put forward on behalf of the University if it was approved by the Board of Governors or another governing council.

We thank you in advance for responding to our concerns.

Yours sincerely,

Pierre Beaudet
Susan Spronk
Sylvie Paquerot
Sophie Thériault


Susan Spronk, PhD
Assistant Professor / Professeure adjointe
School of International Development and Global Studies/ École de développement international et mondialisation
University of Ottawa / Université d'Ottawa
Pavillon Tabaret, pièce 378H
550 rue Cumberland
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5
Canada

Iranian newspaper shut down for....

...publishing a Ba'hai picture...

A popular conservative newspaper critical of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been closed down for carrying a photograph of a temple of the banned Bahai faith, media reported on Tuesday.

At the same time, the publishers of another daily, Khabar, linked to a conservative rival of Ahmadinejad, have decided to stop publication due to unspecified pressure, the Etemad newspaper said.

Etemad quoted deputy culture minister Mohammad Ali Ramin as saying both newspapers had violated media laws and had received warnings from the Islamic Republic’s press supervisory board.

Government opponents may see such action by the authorities as an attempt to muzzle criticism of the hard-line president after his disputed re-election in June, which plunged Iran into months of political turmoil.

Earlier in November, the press supervisory body banned the publication of a leading business daily, Sarmayeh, which has been critical of the government’s economic policies.

Hamshahri, which belongs to the Tehran municipality and is Iran’s highest-circulation newspaper, was closed down after it carried a front-page advertisement for tourism travel to India showing a Bahai temple of worship, media said.

An honour killing in the making????

It does look like this woman is in imminent danger...

A Federal Court judge has ordered the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration to consider the credibility of a woman's claim that she will be the victim of an "honour killing" if deported to her home country of Pakistan.

Justice Michael Kelen found that an immigration officer reviewing evidence in the case of Roohi Tabassum, a 44-year-old Mississauga hair stylist who has been fighting to stay in Canada since 2001, made a mistake by characterizing as "not threatening" letters purportedly from Ms. Tabassum's husband in which he promised to "finish" Ms. Tabassum if she returned to Pakistan.

According to documents submitted to Citizenship and Immigration obtained by the National Post, Ms. Tabassum claims her husband, Faisal Javed, thought to be living in Dubai, began sending her letters and emails in 2006 in which he threatens to kill her for "dishonouring" his family by touching other men's hair while working at a Mississauga salon.

She also claims her husband and his family have become erroneously convinced that she is living with another man in Canada, after a friend's husband answered the phone at her apartment one night.

"What you are doing there, does it look better to you and does your religion allow you to touch other men? It is better to die hungry," says one 2006 letter translated from Urdu and allegedly written by Mr. Javed.

"Tell me everything true otherwise you know that I can do anything for my honour. Do you know how much I believed in you? Other than this you are also aware that your life is seriously in danger in Pakistan.... Everybody is against you. I am also very combative to you. If you are here, I could not leave you alive."

After asking her husband for a divorce, Ms. Tabassum received another letter dated February 2007 in which Mr. Javed alledgedly writes: "My doubts about you are real and right but keep this in mind that now I will finish you myself."

Terror recruiters charged in the US....

We've been blogging about Somalis leaving the US to fight the jihad for a while...

Federal officials on Monday unsealed terrorism-related charges against men they say were key actors in a recruitment effort that led roughly 20 young Americans to join a violent insurgent group in Somalia with ties to Al Qaeda

With eight new suspects charged Monday, the authorities have implicated 14 people in the case, one of the most extensive domestic terrorism investigations since the Sept. 11 attacks. Some of them have been arrested; others are at large, including several believed to be still fighting with the Somali group, Al Shabaab.

The case represents the largest group of American citizens suspected of joining an extremist movement affiliated with Al Qaeda, senior officials said. Many of the recruits had come to America as young refugees fleeing a brutal civil war, only to settle in a gang-ridden enclave of Minneapolis.

The men named on Monday face federal charges including perjury, providing material support to a terrorist organization and conspiring to kill, maim, kidnap or injure people outside the United States.

Law enforcement officials are concerned that the recruits, who hold American passports, could be commissioned to return to the United States to carry out attacks here, though so far there is no evidence of such plots.

New suspect linked to cartoon plot...

This keeps on getting bigger and bigger...

The fast-moving international case against a Pakistani-Canadian businessman charged with plotting a terror attack in Denmark and suspected of others in India moved into Pakistan on Monday night with news of the capture of another suspect.

Illyas Kashmiri, a former Pakistani military officer and now a reputed commander of the Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) militant group, is believed to have been detained by Pakistan at the behest of the FBI, according to an unconfirmed report in The Times of India.

It's not clear when and where Kashmiri may have been taken into custody or if he is among as many as five people reportedly arrested by Pakistan in connection with the plot in recent weeks, including some former or current Pakistani military officials.

If confirmed, Kashmiri's arrest will expand the global nature of the case, which already has connections to Chicago, Copenhagen, Mumbai and Kanata. It would also highlight the intercontinental reach of suspected terrorist operations.

Canadian Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, and Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley, 49, were arrested in Chicago by the FBI last month and accused of plotting the murder of an editor and cartoonist at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which ran controversial cartoons of the prophet Mohammad in 2005. They face charges of conspiring to provide material support for terrorism and providing material support to terrorism.

The pair live in the Chicago area, though Pakistan native Rana has family in Kanata, including an ailing father and a brother, Abbas, a well-known Parliament Hill journalist with The Hill Times.

According to U.S court documents, Headley, who is co-operating with authorities, posed as an employee of Rana's immigration consultancy in Chicago to travel to Denmark and carry out reconnaissance of the newspaper. The FBI alleges they reported on the plot to a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba and al-Qaeda linked Kashmiri.

Lashkar, once nurtured by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency to fight India in Kashmir, also talked to them about possible attacks in India and suggested these should be given priority over the alleged plot in Denmark, according the FBI evidence, based largely on intercepted telephone conversations and e-mail traffic.

Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram recently confirmed to the Washington Post that police in India are investigating whether the two men had links to last November's Mumbai attack that killed 166, including two Canadians.

Monckton on climategate...

One of my favorite writers on global warming...

This is what they did — these climate “scientists” on whose unsupported word the world’s classe politique proposes to set up an unelected global government this December in Copenhagen, with vast and unprecedented powers to control all formerly free markets, to tax wealthy nations and all of their financial transactions, to regulate the economic and environmental affairs of all nations, and to confiscate and extinguish all patent and intellectual property rights.

The tiny, close-knit clique of climate scientists who invented and now drive the “global warming” fraud — for fraud is what we now know it to be — tampered with temperature data so assiduously that, on the recent admission of one of them, land temperatures since 1980 have risen twice as fast as ocean temperatures. One of the thousands of emails recently circulated by a whistleblower at the University of East Anglia, where one of the world’s four global-temperature datasets is compiled, reveals that data were altered so as to prevent a recent decline in temperature from showing in the record. In fact, there has been no statistically significant “global warming” for 15 years — and there has been rapid and significant cooling for nine years.

Worse, these arrogant fraudsters — for fraudsters are what we now know them to be — have refused, for years and years and years, to reveal their data and their computer program listings. Now we know why: As a revealing 15,000-line document from the computer division at the Climate Research Unit shows, the programs and data are a hopeless, tangled mess. In effect, the global temperature trends have simply been made up. Unfortunately, the British researchers have been acting closely in league with their U.S. counterparts who compile the other terrestrial temperature dataset — the GISS/NCDC dataset. That dataset too contains numerous biases intended artificially to inflate the natural warming of the 20th century.

Finally, these huckstering snake-oil salesmen and “global warming” profiteers — for that is what they are — have written to each other encouraging the destruction of data that had been lawfully requested under the Freedom of Information Act in the UK by scientists who wanted to check whether their global temperature record had been properly compiled. And that procurement of data destruction, as they are about to find out to their cost, is a criminal offense. They are not merely bad scientists — they are crooks. And crooks who have perpetrated their crimes at the expense of British and U.S. taxpayers.

I am angry, and so should you be.

What have the mainstream news media said about the Climategate affair? Remarkably little. The few who have brought themselves to comment, through gritted teeth, have said that all of this is a storm in a teacup, and that their friends in the University of East Anglia and elsewhere in the climatological community are good people, really.

No, they’re not. They’re criminals. With Professor Fred Singer, who founded the U.S. Satellite Weather Service, I have reported them to the UK’s Information Commissioner, with a request that he investigate their offenses and, if thought fit, prosecute. But I won’t be holding my breath: In the police state that Britain has now sadly become, with supine news media largely owned and controlled by the government, the establishment tends to look after its own.

At our expense, and at the expense of the truth.

CO2 continues to increase...

No matter what we do, it will still go up...

Concentrations of greenhouse gases, the major cause of global warming, are at their highest levels ever recorded and are still climbing, the U.N. World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said on Monday.

Barry Rubin on the terrorist trial...

More reasons why a trial in New York is a bad idea...

In the trial, the terrorists will almost certainly base their defense on the concept of "defensive Jihad." They will argue that the Islamic world was acting in self-defense in retaliating. They will give a long list of real or alleged American misdeeds, long lists of civilians killed (in Aghanistan alone they could come up with thousands), alleged sufferings during the embargo on Iraq when Saddam Hussein was rejecting his commitments after the Kuwait war.

This defense will inflame large numbers of Muslims. It will provide a great platform for the defensive Jihad theory which, most recently, persuaded Major Khalid Hasan to kill 13 American soldiers. There will be specific terrorist attacks inspired by the speeches made in New York. People will join Islamist and terrorist groups, not necessarily al-Qaida, as a result of this inspiration. You can bet on it.

In addition, the high-profile of the trials could well inspire terrorists to seize Americans as hostages to exchange for the imprisoned Jihadists. The terrorists don't have to expect the United States to make such a deal. They want the publicity and will be quite happy to kill the hostages and blame it on the Americans' stubborness.

The Arab regimes won't like it because the defendants will spend a lot of time blasting Egypt and Saudi Arabia as American puppets and urge their overthrow. Of course, the terrorists will bring in Israel, too. It will be interesting to see how much time is devoted to each of the many topics they will use to attack America.

Naively, the Administration apparently believes that this show of American fair play, equal justice for all, innocent until proven guilty, trial by a jury of their peers (if the entire jury isn't Muslim, of course, most Middle East Muslims won't accept that notion), and the rules of evidence will impress Muslims worldwide about how great a system the United States has and what great people Americans are.

Yes, a few highly educated liberals will write about such things but that will appeal to less than five percent. By the time the trial is through the masses to a large extent will not conclude that the defendents are dastardly people who murdered 3,000 innocent victims but that the prosecutors and the government behind them are dastardly villains who murdered millions.

Lord Lawson calls for public inquiry into global warming data...

I doubt he'll succeed...

In response to recent revelations contained in leaked e-mails originating from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Lord Lawson, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the GWPF, has called for a rigorous and independent inquiry into the matter. While reserving judgment on the contents of the e-mails, Lord Lawson said these are very serious issues and allegations that reach to the heart of scientific integrity and credibility:

"Astonishingly, what appears, at least at first blush, to have emerged is that (a) the scientists have been manipulating the raw temperature figures to show a relentlessly rising global warming trend; (b) they have consistently refused outsiders access to the raw data; (c) the scientists have been trying to avoid freedom of information requests; and (d) they have been discussing ways to prevent papers by dissenting scientists being published in learned journals."

"There may be a perfectly innocent explanation. But what is clear is that the integrity of the scientific evidence on which not merely the British Government, but other countries, too, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, claim to base far-reaching and hugely expensive policy decisions, has been called into question. And the reputation of British science has been seriously tarnished. A high-level independent inquiry must be set up without delay."

Lord Lawson added:

"Since the CRU is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and is part of the University of East Anglia, we call on Edmund Wallis, the chairman of the NERC and Brandon Gough, the Chancellor of the UEA, to jointly commission an independent inquiry into the revelations, including, of course, their veracity."

Algerian suspected of vandalizing synagogue...

Nothing like surveillance videos...

Dresden police announced on Monday that they have found a suspect in the defacement of a synagogue that took place two days ahead of the 71st anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht pogrom this month.

The 39-year-old Algerian man is accused of daubing swastikas and anti-Jewish statements along several metres of a wall outside the synagogue on November 7, the Saxony state office of criminal investigation said.

Eyewitness accounts and surveillance videos helped them reconstruct the crime and apprehend the Dresden resident on Saturday.

“But there were no grounds for arrest,” spokesman Christian Avenarius said.

The man is not known to have previously committed politically motivated crimes.

He is now being investigated for incitement of hatred with symbols used by unconstitutional organisations, the spokesperson said. The swastika and other Nazi symbols are illegal in Germany.

I don't understand...why are there no grounds for arrest???

Homosexuals recruiting in Africa....

Gee, nobody told me that the recruitment is on....I would have gone...

Uganda President Yoweri Museveni mixed homophobia with anticolonial sentiments recently, warning a group of youths in his country that “European homosexuals” were recruiting in Africa.

Museveni spoke at an event in Kampala for high-achieving youths on November 14, according to the Monitor.

“I hear European homosexuals are recruiting in Africa,” said Museveni, according to the Monitor. “We used to have very few homosexuals traditionally. They were not persecuted but were not encouraged either because it was clear that is not how God arranged things to be.”

Last month, a bill was introduced in parliament that would make Uganda, a devoutly Christian country, one of the most dangerous places in the world for gay people and their The “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” would completely outlaw gay sex and the “promotion of homosexuality,” with prison sentence

s of up to seven years for people convicted of aiding and abetting gay activities.

Water..

Making Israel Disappear....

Thanks to Palestinian Media Watch, we know what the Palestinians tell themselves...

If you sit down with Itamar Marcus, you had better brace yourself for a jarring refresher course on Mideast reality. That's especially true if you tend to think like the current administrationif you believe, for example, that the Israeli-Palestinian impasse is all about borders and settlements and that the construction of 900 housing units in southern Jerusalem "could end up being very dangerous," as President Barack Obama said last week.

If it's "very dangerous" to construct Jewish housing in a city that Israel will never, ever relinquish, what should we call the effort to brainwash children into believing that Israel itself doesn't exist?

How should we describe the claim that not only East Jerusalem — captured by Israel in the 1967 war — belongs to the Palestinians, but that every other Israeli city, from Haifa to Ashkelon, belongs to them, too?

"In the world inhabited by Palestinian children," Marcus tells me, "there is no Israel." And if you give him time, the director of Palestinian Media Watch (palwatch.org) in Jerusalem will subject you to a barrage of depressing evidence for his contention.

He'll show you snippets from TV quiz shows for Palestinian kids predicated on the non-existence of Israel.

Host: "Which mountain is the tallest in Palestine? ..." Child contestant: "Mount Meron (in Israel)."

On another show, a host asks, "Which Palestinian city is called 'the flower of Galilee'?" and then names three Israeli cities!

Then Marcus will show you school geography lessons that use maps on which Israel is missing.

Do any Palestinian textbooks acknowledge the existence of Israel, I wonder. "No," Marcus replies.

The anti-Israeli content of Palestinian textbooks has been a longstanding concern for anyone who yearns for a permanent political settlement, but surely those books have improved since Yasser Arafat's death in 2004. Not really, says Marcus. If anything, he says, they devote more space than ever to depicting conflict with Israel as a solemn religious duty aimed at liberating a Muslim land.

Remember, we're talking about textbooks chosen by the Palestinian government led by the allegedly moderate President Mahmoud Abbas, not the overtly jihadist Hamas. The Palestinian Authority media, meanwhile, are full of similar Islamist references that offer no room for compromise, and that honor terrorists and suicide bombers as national heroes.

No less ominous is what Marcus describes as the Palestinian Authority's "infrastructure of hate," the relentless depiction of Jews as sinister and evil — as conspirators spreading AIDS, for example, or undermining the very foundations of the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Naturally, Jews poisoned Yasser Arafat, too — or at least that is what children are told.

In a TV tribute to Arafat earlier this month, one youngster unconsciously presented the essence of this paranoid vision: "He died from poisoning by the Jews. Well, I don't know what he died from, but I know it was by the Jews."

Rockets to continue from Gaza...

Surprise, surprise...some Palestinian factions just can't stop...

Despite Hamas's announcement that Palestinian groups have agreed to halt the attacks on Israel, three factions in the Gaza Strip said they were not aware of any agreement in this regard.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine strongly denied that its members were part of a cease-fire agreement. The group's armed wing, the Abu Ali Mutapha Brigades, said it remained committed to the "option of confrontation and resistance against the occupation in all forms."

Islamic Jihad also denied that it had agreed to stop attacks on Israel. A spokesman for the organization in the Gaza Strip said he did not know of any Egyptian-brokered cease-fire agreement.

The spokesman said that it was inconceivable that the Palestinians would agree to stop the "resistance" while Israel was continuing its "aggression" against the Palestinians.

"We stick to our right to confront the occupiers for as long as they are on our Palestinian lands," he said. "We won't accept the principle of security for security. The enemy will leave only through resistance."

When they say leave...they mean that Israel should not exist at all...

Burka Barbie...

Finally, the perfect Christmas gift, no???

One of the world's most famous children's toys, Barbie, has been given a makeover - wearing a burkha.

Wearing the traditional Islamic dress, the iconic doll is going undercover for a charity auction in connection with Sotheby's for Save The Children.

More than 500 Barbies went on show yesterday at the Salone dei Cinquecento, in Florence, Italy.

Makers Mattel are backing the exhibition which is the work of Italian designer Eliana Lorena.

The auction is part of Barbie celebrations for her 50th anniversary this year. The UK's biggest Barbie fan Angela Ellis, 35, has a collection of more than 250 dolls.

The company director of Laird Assessors from The Wirral, Cheshire, said: 'Bring it on Burkha Barbie, I think this is a great idea.

'I think this is really important for girls, wherever they are from they should have the opportunity to play with a Barbie that they feel represents them.

More on the upcoming film about Mohammed....

Good to see them using orthodox Islamic advisors, no???

The producer of the blockbuster trilogies “The Matrix” and “The Lord of the Rings,” Barrie Osborne, is now working on a $200 million movie about the founder of Islam, the Prophet Mohammed. Helping to guide the project is Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, a radical Muslim Brotherhood theologian. One quick look at this so-called “moderate” should raise serious questions among those investing in Osborne’s film and spark a call to boycott should his involvement continue.

Osborne describes his film as “an international epic production aimed at bridging cultures. The film will educate people about the true meaning of Islam.” He has chosen to use the Qatar-based Alnoor Holdings production company, which has decided to have Sheikh al-Qaradawi “oversee all aspects of the shoot,” according to The Guardian. If Osborne’s goal is to combat anti-Muslim bigotry and portray a positive image of Islam, then the influence of al-Qaradawi on the film will only do the opposite.

Al-Qaradawi is only a bit less radical than Al-Qaeda. He has repeatedly expressed support for Hamas, a terrorist group that was birthed from the Muslim Brotherhood organization to which he belongs. The Israelis believe he has directly financed Hamas by donating $21 million to a “charity” knowing that it’d be used to help the group buy land. In November 2008, the Treasury Department blacklisted a network of charities called the Union of Good for acting as fronts for Hamas. Al-Qaradawi serves as the group’s president.

He was condemned by the Islamic Council of Norway and imams in Denmark and Sweden in February of this year after the Middle East Media Research Institute translated remarks he made the previous month.

“The only thing I hope for is that as my life approaches its end, Allah will give me an opportunity to go to the land of jihad and resistance, even if in a wheelchair. I will shoot Allah’s enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus, I will seal my life in martyrdom,” he said.

Al-Qaradawi doesn’t even bother to hide his anti-Semitism by replacing the word “Jews” with “Zionist” or some other term to differentiate between Israeli soldier and civilian, or between Israeli Jews and non-Israeli Jews. He even accuses Jews of exaggerating Hitler’s crimes and describes his treatment of them as Allah’s judgment—a judgment that he hopes will be carried out by Muslims the next time around.

“Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jewish] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them—even though they exaggerated this issue—he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers,” he said.

Iraq accuses Syria of terrorism....

The Syrians are pretty bad, in many different ways...

Iraq on Sunday for the first time said that the bombers who killed more than 150 people in Baghdad on October 25 came from neighbouring Syria, but steered well clear of accusing Damascus of collusion.

"The group came from Syria but we are not accusing Syria again," said government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh on state television.

His comments followed the broadcast of confessions from three men said to have plotted the two massive bombings in the Iraqi capital that killed 153 people and wounded hundreds.

Iraq's relations with Syria plummeted when it accused Damascus of sheltering suspects whom Baghdad said orchestrated similar deadly attacks on government buildings in Baghdad on August 19, killing 100 people.

Time to free Jonathan Pollard...

He just began his 25th year of imprisonment...

Yesterday, Jonathan Pollard began the twenty-fifth year of his life sentence for passing to Israel during the 1980s classified US data concerning various Arab states, including evidence of Saddam Hussein's development of chemical weapons. This distressing anniversary is an appropriate moment to take stock of the bona fides of Jonathan's unprecedented punishment and the continued obsession of many in the US government with insuring, in the words of Jonathan's lead prosecutor, that Jonathan "never see the light of day."

One of the cornerstones of Barack Obama's presidency has been an expressed intent to make a clear break with a purported American policy of acting like a bully to the world. We would do well then to consider just who the United States was bullying and which countries it was coddling when the Pollard affair broke and whether US behavior is any different today under President Obama.

PRIOR TO the Khomeini revolution in 1979, US Middle East policy was anchored in the "Twin Pillars" of Iran and Saudi Arabia. With the overthrow of the Shah, the US sought a replacement for one of its now fallen pillars. It turned to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, the brutal dictator of a country that was on America's list of state sponsors of terror.

This US policy shift was the genesis to the Pollard. Throughout the 1980s, continuing until one week before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990, theUS government pursued a policy of craven appeasement of Iraq. America turned a blind eye to Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, it allowed the transfer of billions of dollars of US taxpayer backed credits to Iraq via the Atlanta branch of an Italian bank to secretly finance Hussein's purchase of both agricultural goods and weaponry, and cooperated in the sale to Iraq by third parties of a wide variety of military equipment, including US military rocket cluster bombs, chemical weapons technology and missile technology.

Every sane government in the world today looks with grave concern at the nuclear weapons capability that Iran is on the threshold of acquiring. And they shudder at the thought of what might have been if Iraq had a nuclear weapon when it invaded Kuwait in 1990. That power was denied Saddam Hussein when Israel destroyed Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor in June 1981. But at the time, Israel was not thanked, but rather was subjected to near-universal condemnation, including from the United States.

In the Reagan White House, there was a consensus among vice president George Bush, defense secretary Caspar Weinberger and chief of staff James Baker that Israel needed to be punished. Weinberger persuaded Reagan to delay delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Israel and the similarly incensed Deputy CIA Director Bobby Ray Inman ordered withholding from Israel all satellite photography and other similar materials involving areas more than 250 miles from Israel's borders. This ban was then formally approved by Weinberger and converted what was until then a routine intelligence transfer into a criminal violation.

Thus, transmittal to Israel of photographs of the eastern sections of Syria and Iraq, including chemical weapons plants in eastern Iraq built and financed by US companies, became the grounds for Pollard's life sentence.

The background behind Jonathan's actions is not presented as grounds for exoneration, but rather as a reason for the mitigation of the severity of his punishment. For it is uncontestable that Jonathan is in a party of one who has been singled out from all other Americans who spied for non US adversaries.

Thus, of the more than 20 Americans caught spying for friendly or neutral countries, both before and after Jonathan's arrest, none received a sentence even remotely close to life, the average sentence being between two and four years. These included cases of spies for supposed US allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who were receiving very generous American foreign aid or military protection at the time they were spying on the United States.

Most recently, Ronald Montaperto, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who admitted passing classified intelligence to the Chinese during a 14-year period, was sentenced to three months in prison.

And of the more than 60 spies for US adversaries over the past quarter-century, many of whom caused massive and demonstrable harm to the US, barely a handful received life terms.

CIA agent David Barnett, who sold the Soviets the names of 30 American agents, was given an 18-year sentence and paroled after 10 years. Michael Walker, for many years a key figure in the Walker family Soviet spy ring, was sentenced to 25 years and released after serving 15. William Kampiles, a CIA officer who sold the Soviets the operating manual to the KH-11 satellite, America's eye in the sky, received a 40-year sentence and was released after 18 years.

Abdul Kedar Helmy, an Egyptian-born American, transmitted classified materials to Egypt that were used in a joint weapons program with Iraq to vastly increase the range of ballistic missiles, including Iraq's Scud missiles, which were later fired on US troops during Desert Storm. Helmy received a prison term of less than four years. John Paul Lindh, an American who joined the Taliban terrorists fighting the United States, received a 21-year sentence.

9/11 defendants want a platform....

Oh, we are in for a circus...

The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday.

Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but "would explain what happened and why they did it."

The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the nation's deadliest terrorist attack will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the World Trade Center site.

Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, is a nephew of professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Mohammed, Ali and the others will explain "their assessment of American foreign policy," Fenstermaker said.

"Their assessment is negative," he said.

Double standard for women with HIV...

She only gets house arrest...a man in her position would get years in prison...

A woman with HIV was sentenced to two years house arrest for having sex with a man and not disclosing her positive status.

Robin St. Clair, 28, who pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault, cried in court yesterday when she was told she would be registered as a sex offender for life and would be made to provide a DNA sample.

Prior to going into the Finch Ave. courtroom, St. Clair was all giggles and was ogling a picture of shirtless men in the Toronto Sun.

She didn't speak in court, and at times looked bored and picked her teeth.

Justice Paul Taylor said the victim "won't find favour with my decision."

"No sentence could restore (his) confidence in fellow human beings."

The man -- who can't be named because of a publication ban -- met St. Clair in March, 2007, at a Toronto house and asked St. Clair for oral sex.

St. Clair said no but agreed to have intercourse with a condom.

The man had intercourse with St. Clair twice and on the second occasion the condom ripped.

That was when St. Clair told the man she was HIV-positive, even though in 2004 she was issued with a so-called "Section-22" from public health officials that details her responsibility to disclose her status.

Hat tip: Jeremy.

The confiscation of a Jewish property....

At long last, perhaps some justice...

In a downtown Manhattan courtroom, where the lawyers and clients up front outnumbered the observers seated in the back, where a forgotten Jewish Egyptian victim challenged an omnipresent multibillion-dollar multinational corporation; in a case where history itself was both on trial and being made, the Coca-Cola Company was publicly accused of being criminally enriched following the Nasser regime's Nazi-style expropriation of Jewish property. More than that, Coca-Cola was accused of obstructing, belittling and stonewalling a decades-long effort to obtain justice, and indeed trying to create a new revisionism that questions whether anti-Jewish persecution actually took place in Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s.

On November 10, 2009, Egyptian exile Refael Bigio drove down from Montreal, his attorneys Nathan Lewin and Sherrie Savett trained in from Washington DC and Philadelphia, Coca-Cola's chief of litigation John Lewis flew up from Atlanta and the company's defense counsel Richard Cirillo only needed to make a short trip from midtown to argue whether the Coca-Cola Company quietly but consciously benefited when the Nasser regime nationalized Jewish property. The Bigios' property had long been leased by Coca-Cola and their bottle-cap factory made the caps for Coke's products. This factory, the property and related business ultimately became a multimillion dollar asset in the giant Atlanta beverage conglomerate's overseas portfolio.

The Egyptian government takeover of the Bigio family bottle-cap and tin plating factory occurred in 1962, during the openly anti-Jewish regime of president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Egypt's government subsequently ruled its Nasser-era seizure of the Bigio property was indeed illegal. Later, however, over the Bigios' objections, Coca-Cola entered into a joint venture to operate what is now the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Egypt on the Bigios' seized property, without compensating the Bigios, according to court papers. The Bigios claim that Coke is and has been trespassing on stolen property.

Now, after years of litigation and fruitless negotiation, Bigio's attorneys have fired a stinging motion for summary judgment, asserting that the uncontradicted facts surrounding Coca-Cola's actions were so blatant that the court should immediately find the corporation liable.

"Coca-Cola is not," wrote attorney Nathan Lewin in his motion, "as it likes to portray itself, a trusting and guileless American corporation that in 1994 innocently purchased a 'minority interest' in some remote business entity that utilizes the Bigios' property. The undisputed evidence establishes that Coca-Cola witnessed how the Bigio family - with which it was intimately bound in a mutually profitable business relationship between the 1940s and 1962 - was victimized by Nasser's ethnic-cleansing policy of taking Jewish property and expelling Jews from Egypt."

Years later, Lewin asserts, after the Egyptian government took minimal steps to remedy the religiously discriminatory brutality of the Nasser regime, Coca-Cola happily took control - through entities which it now claims cannot be "pierced" - of property that Coca-Cola knows was immorally and illegally plundered from the Bigios."
10,000 square meters, the...

Lewin made the point simple: "Coca-Cola is, we submit, the occupier of stolen property. If this case concerned personalty [personal property] that had been taken in violation of international law from the Bigios, and Coca-Cola knowingly received and used that personal property in order to make enormous profits in Egypt, there would be no doubt that Coca-Cola would be civilly - and possibly even criminally - liable. The rule of law is no different when the stolen goods that are being used by the defendant are land and businesses. The receiver and user of such stolen merchandise cannot claim immunity on the ground that the entity that is directly using the stolen goods is only a subsidiary or an affiliate. Principles governing the tort of trespass and of aiding-and-abetting liability make all who partake in the illegal exploitation - and particularly the head of the entire enterprise - liable to the victims."

In response, Coca-Cola apparently has extensively disputed that the Nasser regime was actually engaged in anti-Jewish persecution, but was merely a socialist government seizing the property of many citizens. The company argues that it had no way of knowing that the property and businesses the Atlanta corporation acquired were made available only as the result of Nasser's anti-Jewish ethnic cleansing.

Bigio's lawyers answered by comparing Coca-Cola to someone witnessing a rape and murder, and then buying the jewelry stolen from the victim. Plaintiff attorneys added in their court filing that for Coca-Cola to deny persecution of Jewish citizens in Egypt is akin to "Holocaust denial."

While Coca-Cola asked the judge to dismiss the case, Bigio's attorneys asked for summary judgment immediately finding the company liable, saying that Coca-Cola's "only hope of prevailing in thislitigation is to pervert and misstate the plaintiff's legal claims." After a two-and-a-half-hour oral hearing, which included lengthy oral arguments from both sides and direct questions from federal Judge Barbara S. Jones, the judge said she would soon narrow the diverse issues and make a ruling.

Please read the whole story about the Bigio's. Jews had similar experiences all throughout the Middle East...

The Bizarre world of carbon credits....

Ukraine can both generate C02 and sell C02 credits....

Vladimir Gapor is a plumber by trade, but now he's a scavenger, prying bits of scrap steel from the ruins of his old factory and selling them for a pittance.

For others beyond this manufacturing graveyard, however, Ukraine's economic collapse has produced a potential multibillion-dollar bonanza. In an era of climate change regulation and carbon trading, Ukraine, ironically, is profiting from the smokeless smokestacks of its industrial shutdown.

How well and how long it will profit is an under-the-radar issue complicating negotiations for a worldwide climate accord being sought at a 192-nation conference in Copenhagen next month.

Gapor's old factory, which made glass for the Soviet military and space program, shut down in the early 1990s after the Soviet Union disintegrated. Private wrecking crews and desperate jobless people like Gapor then turned the town's industries, which once employed 16,000 workers, into heaps of bricks.

In the days when Ukraine was a Soviet republic, Konstantinovka was a booming town of 100,000 with 25 factories. Concert music filled its Palace of Culture, its workers were rewarded with trips to Crimea's beaches, and its children with stays at mountain "pioneer camps." Today just five workshops still operate, and the population is down to 60,000, many unemployed having migrated to Moscow, Kiev or Western Europe to find jobs, leaving families behind.

The surrounding province in eastern Ukraine, plagued by bad management and lack of investment, has lost 10 percent of its population, said Vladimir Morozov, an environmental engineer in the regional capital, Donetsk. Wealthy oligarchs, not communists, now rule the economy, he said, and they show no interest in rebuilding a wretched backwater.

The industrial collapse has been bad for jobs but good for the climate. Ukraine produces less than half the greenhouse gases it did 20 years ago, and under a trading system devised in the negotiations for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, curbing the gases blamed for global warming, it is allowed to sell credits for every ton of carbon dioxide saved.

Countries or companies that cannot meet commitments to reduce emissions can buy these "allowances" from those that have cut emissions more than required and have a surplus to sell. Point Carbon, a Norwegian-based consulting firm, estimates 9 billion allowances are available, mostly in Russia.

Earlier this year, each one-ton allowance sold for $10 when Ukraine signed a $300 million deal with Japan. The Kiev government has almost 1 billion more tons to put on the market, said Irina Stavchuk of the National Ecological Center of Ukraine.

"The hot air business is the main goal of the government," Stavchuk said.

Income from such deals is supposed to be earmarked for clean-energy and other "green" projects. But critics have questioned how well that guideline is followed.

While Western industrial powers must cut carbon emissions, and many developing nations are asked to shift to low-carbon economic growth, a few Eastern European countries have little incentive to constrain their polluting, since they're already far below emissions limits.

In a way, these nations have the best of both worlds. They can make millions selling carbon credits, while enjoying a comfortable cushion to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere without worrying about energy efficiency or cleaning up their factories.

Muslim Scout Troops???

This is what happens when we take 'diversity' too far...

At the website of the Norwegian royal family we can read that “H.R.H. the Crown Princess yesterday visited 14 young scouts who meet at the mosque on Calmeyers Street. Both reading from the Koran and tying of scout knots were on the schedule the kids had planned for the Crown Princess.”

We are further told that the Rabita scout troop was formed a year ago as a part of the Norwegian Guide and Scout Association’s diversity program (my emphasis), and that the troop’s meetings, which take place at a mosque, focuses both on ordinary scouting activities, such as hiking and first aid, and learning about Islam and the Koran. The scouts have also apparently put on what is described as “a thoroughly special variation” on the fairy tail of Little Red Riding Hood, which was dramatized with elements drawn both from scout life and from Islam.

After her visit, the Crown Princess tweeted about it:

Have just visited Rabita scout troop in Grønland, Oslo. They were so clever! I learned to tie scout knots.

It may be that the Crown Princess learned to tie scout knots, but it would have been interesting to know if she considers it a good idea to have separate scout troops for Muslims. When rights.no wrote about this state of affairs earlier this year, in connection with the establishment of a Muslim scout troop in Stavanger, we received reactions from the parents of scouts – specifically, the parents of ethnic Norwegian scouts. These parents could not see that separating Muslim from non-Muslim children served the purpose of integration in the slightest. On the contrary, they felt that it could only serve to weaken any sense of community. One of these parents, a mother in eastern Norway, raised the problem with the Norwegian Guide and Scout Association, but didn’t feel that the answer she received was satisfactory. As I understand it, she became so outraged that she removed her own child from the scouts – she simply didn’t want to help finance such segregation.

Read the whole thing. The Norwegian Human Rights Service is an important stop on the web - please go there often.

Leftist protesters turn fascist....

They won't let people enter to see a film about Israel in Germany...

Prominent French Jewish filmmaker Claude Lanzmann expressed "shock" last week that German leftists in Hamburg had violently prevented the showing of his debut documentary film, Why Israel, about the role of the Jewish state as a homeland for refugees.

In late October, the 1973-produced film was scheduled to be shown at the B-Movie cinema, but roughly 50 left-wing activists from diverse anti-Israel groups affiliated with the anti-Zionist International Center B5 barred visitors from entering themovie house.

In Why Israel, Lanzmann - perhaps best known for his groundbreaking documentary Shoah - depicts Israelis who found refuge in Israel after the Holocaust.

The movie house said in a statement that it had been compelled to cancel the film screening and a podium discussion because "we were threatened with violence."

According to eyewitness reports in the German media, left-wing protesters ranging in age from 16 to 70 shouted "Jewish pigs" and "faggots" to the cinema attendees. A pro-Israel left-of-center group, Kritikmaximierung, cosponsored the showing of the film.

Werner Pomrehn, a radio host for the Hamburg-based station FSK, told the The Jerusalem Post on Friday that an anti-Israel activist had struck him in the face at the screening event. Asked about the International Center B5 demonstrators, Pomrehn, who reports on anti-Semitism in Hamburg, termed the group the "Pol-Pot Left."

The protesters propagate an "anti-Semitic position" that views "Zionism as racist," said Pomrehn.

The International Center B5 activists staged an agitprop performance to block the guests' entry, setting up an Israeli military checkpoint with wooden military rifles. The protesters were armed with bicycle locks and wore fingerless fighting gloves.

Terming the film showing a "pro-Zionist event," the International Center B5 justified its protest in a statement: "Zionism proves to be a racist project that aims to artificially preserve the Jewish character and thereby maintains the present colonial culture."

Political correctness...

Stupid ads from a stupid group...

This group wants to limit travel by plane...

Airline pollution activists Plane Stupid are on a collision course with the advertising regulator after launching a graphic cinema campaign that sees CGI polar bears falling to bloody deaths to highlight the impact of carbon emissions.

Plane Stupid's ad, which breaks in cinemas and online today, features dozens of animated polar bears falling from the sky onto a city centre, bouncing off skyscrapers and landing in the street and on the roof of a car, accompanied by blood-spurting special effects.

The only sound, apart from the bone-crunching thump of the impacts, is the steadily increasing whine of a jet airliner's engines.

Plane Stupid's campaign, developed by the ad agency Mother, aims to show the impact that global warming is having on polar ice caps.

The group is aiming to point out that even short flights to the continent have a major impact on carbon emissions. Plane Stupid said that the ad was inspired by the fact that an average European flight produces 400kg of carbon, which it claims is the same weight as an average female polar bear.

Egyptian Muslims burn Christian shops...

It gives them something to do...

Hundreds of Muslim protesters on Saturday burnt Christian-owned shops in southern Egypt and attacked a police station where they believed a Christian accused of raping a Muslim girl was being held, a police official said.

Police repelled the demonstrators in the town of Farshut using tear gas and also arrested 60 people during the clashes in which seven Coptic Christian-owned shops were destroyed, the official said.

The protesters hurled stones at the police station after they heard that a Coptic Christian man accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 12-year-old Muslim was being held there, he said.

Immigration scam in the UK...

Is anything like this happening here???

Immigrants who don’t understand English have been able to buy language certificates that give them the right to settle in Britain.

An investigation by The Sunday Times has found that staff at English language colleges in London and Birmingham have been offering migrants who speak little or no English Home Office-regulated English and Citizenship certificates for £250 each. Tests are rigged to allow almost anyone to pass.

Staff hand out crib sheets with questions and answers in English. Others let candidates write the sound of English words on the sheets in their own tongue, so the answers appear right, but they don’t know what they are saying.

At the UK Learning Academy in Birmingham, a staff assessor told an undercover reporter that candidates did not have to take any courses or speak any English to pass the tests. The assessor simply asked if the candidate knew their own name, date of birth and address. When told that they did, the assessor replied: “That’s all right then. That’s a guaranteed pass.”

Al Gore does it again...

More errors in his new book...

Former vice president Al Gore has always been one of the more divisive figures in the debate about manmade climate change. As one of the most visible people sounding the alarm on climate change, he is quick to come under fire. His new book “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis” provides plenty of ammunition for global warming skeptics without them having to read even the first page.

The new tome, seen as a follow up to the Nobel laureate’s “An Inconvenient Truth” provides Gore’s solutions to end rising temperatures. Half of the cover folds back to show the earth in its relatively pristine condition today while the other side depicts how it would look after being ravaged by climate change.

When you unfold the cover, the image you see if the earth as we know it today with its deep blue oceans, rich soil, and green forests. This side of the cover reveals an artist’s rendering of an earth where unchecked global warming has wreaked havoc. We are at a crossroads. We must choose which earth will be home to future generations.
~ Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis

Hurricane expert Ryan Maue of Florida State University first noticed something wrong with the images. It is there on the cover that inaccuracies and impossibilities are depicted thus providing skeptics a chance to jump on Gore much like they did the inaccuracies in his previous works.

The retouched image depicting our planet at some point in the future, contains images of five hurricanes. One storm off the coast of Florida is turning in a clockwise motion, an impossibility in the northern hemisphere. Another hurricane is shown near Peru and the equator, a place where hurricanes cannot form. It is also a bit ironic that so many storms are depicted when hurricane activity is currently at a 30 year low.

BBC propaganda on wind farms....

They're trying to sell farmers on the idea...

When the BBC runs one of its propaganda campaigns in favour of windfarms, as Farming Today was again doing recently, the only point of interest is how many of the basic facts they leave out. One thing they invariably try to conceal is how derisory is the amount of electricity these windmills produce.

Although Farming Today interviewed one of the sternest technical critics of wind turbines, Dr John Etherington, a retired environmental academic who has just published an excellent book on the nuts and bolts of wind power, they asked him with seemingly wide-eyed disbelief how he could justify his claim that turbines generate less than 30 per cent of their capacity.

Yet, as any half-way competent journalist should know, this information is freely available on the climate change department's website. The very last thing the BBC ever wants to admit – though the information is available from the same source – is that the total amount of power produced by all the 2,300 turbines so far built in Britain amounts on average to a mere 900 megawatts, barely the output of a single medium-size conventional power station.

The other point the BBC is always careful to conceal is how much money the developers make from these windmills, thanks to the near 100 per cent hidden subsidy we all pay them through our electricity bills. Farming Today was quite happy to encourage farmers to lease their land by telling them that they could hope to make up to £20,000 a year from each 2 megawatt turbine. What they did not explain was that the same turbine will yield its developer around £400,000 a year –a cool £10 million over its 25-year life. Something else Farming Today neglected to mention was the title of Dr Etherington's book, The Wind Farm Scam.

A fashion shoot at a Holocaust Memorial.....

Talk about bad taste...

The November issue of easyJet In-flight contained two pictures of models posing at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, also known as the Field of Stelae.

The memorial is Germany's most prominent monument to the six million Jews killed in the Nazi genocide. The pictures accompanied a feature marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.

Denis MacShane, the former Europe Minister and head of the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary anti-Semitism, criticised the airline for allowing the pictures to be published.

“This is further evidence of the banalisation of anti-Semitism and the trivialisation of the genocidal massacre of Jews in the Second World War,” Mr MacShane said.

Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, said: "easyJet appear to have been crass in the extreme".

The Foundation for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which oversees the Berlin memorial, said that it was not asked for permission and “does not support commercial shoots” at the site.

All copies of the issue were removed from the airline’s planes after it was alerted to existence of the pictures. EasyJet could not confirm a total number. A copy is provided for all the airline's 3.5 million monthly flights, with many re-used.

A spokesman for easyJet accepted that the pictures were “completely inappropriate” but added: “It’s not particularly obvious where they were shot. That’s why it’s taken 20 days for anyone to notice.”

In a statement, the airline said: “easyJet profusely apologises to anyone who may be offended by the inappropriate fashion photo shoot at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin featured in this month’s issue of the in-flight magazine.