GayandRight

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

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Should Xmas be downgraded???

A proposal from the UK...
Christmas should be downgraded in favour of festivals from other religions to improve race relations, says an explosive report.

Labour's favourite think-tank says that because it would be hard to 'expunge' Christmas from the national calendar, 'even-handedness' means public organisations must start giving other religions equal footing.

The leaked findings of its investigation into identity, citizenship and community cohesion also propose:

• 'Birth ceremonies', at which state and parents agree to 'work in partnership' to bring up children

• Action to 'ensure access' for ethnic minorities to 'largely white' countryside

• An overhaul of Britain's 'imperial' honours system

• Bishops being thrown out of the House of Lords

• An end to 'sectarian' religious education

• Flying flags other than the Union Jack.

The report by the Institute for Public Policy Research was commissioned when Nick Pearce, now head of public policy at Downing Street, was its director.

IPPR has shaped many Labour policies, including ID cards, bin taxes and road pricing.

The Naive Archbishop of Canterbury...

How can he believe the security fence is the cause of the decline of the Christian population in the West Bank???

We've blogged many times about the incredible problems the muslims are causing and the violence towards Christians, but Mr. Williams just can't see the forest for the trees.
Socioeconomic hardships caused by the West Bank security barrier are contributing to the decline in the Christian population in the Holy Land, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.

"I recently met with Christians in Bethlehem, people by no means extreme, and they told of the daily burdens driving in and out of the city that were created by the wall," Williams said by telephone during a break in his 24-hour visit to these parts.

Williams did not mention other, long-standing, explanations for the exodus from traditionally Christian towns.

Muslim violence against Christians coupled with Hamas's victory in the latest Palestinian Authority election and economics hardships caused, in part, by Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel, are the most commonly cited
reasons for the steady decrease in the number of Christians living in the PA.

Palestinian Rules....

Barry Rubin on the rules of game, Palestinian style..

(1) Palestinians cannot stop other Palestinians from attacking Israel. To do so would be betraying the cause, becoming Israel's lackey.

(2) He who is most militant is always right. Extremism equals heroism. This is one reason why Fatah has such a difficult time competing with Hamas. It cannot denounce these rivals for being too intransigent. Suicide bombers along with those who manage them are role models, not misled individuals, much less evil ones.

(3) More violence is good and a "victory" if it inflicts casualties or damage on Israel. Other than ritual denunciations for the foreign media, these are matters for pride, with the implication being that they advance the cause rather than sabotage it.

(4) No Israeli government can do anything good. Olmert is no better than anyone else even as he offers to accept a Palestinian state, and is ready to give up east Jerusalem. Some Palestinian leaders can talk privately to Israeli counterparts about cooperation (and even their dream of peace) but don't tell this to their own people.

(5) Since Palestinians are the perpetual victim they are entitled to everything they want and never need to give anything in exchange for Israeli concessions. Thus, the preferred PA diplomatic option is that Israel withdraws from the West Bank and east Jerusalem, recognizes an independent Palestinian state, releases all Palestinian prisoners, and then talks can begin. (6) No Palestinian should be imprisoned for attacks on Israel one minute longer than required by international public relations‚ needs. After all, if they are doing heroic deeds against an evil enemy - even by murdering civilians on purpose - why should they be punished?

(7) Fatah won't discipline or expel anyone for launching attacks.

(8) Wiping Israel off the map is morally correct. If anyone says anything different they will be scared or ashamed, justifying their lapse as a temporary tactical measure or way to fool enemies.

(9) The movement sets as top priority the so-called "right of return," the demand that all Palestinian refugees or their descendents must be allowed to live in Israel. It is better not to get a state than to give up this demand.

(10) It is more important to be steadfast and patient with a terrible status quo than to make big gains by ending the conflict forever. To do so would give up future Palestinians' chance to seek total victory. Their right to all of the land cannot be given away.

Where are all the storms???

Another mid autumn for hurricanes...

Noel, which already has killed 20 people in the Dominican Republic, might yet turn into a hurricane. And it's hard to know what the last month of the hurricane season, beginning Thursday, will bring.

But Ryan Maue of Florida State University's Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies says it looks like 2007 will go down as a lamb. "Unless a dramatic and historical flurry of activity occurs in the next nine weeks," Maue writes, "2007 will rank as a historically inactive tropical cyclone year for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole."

In the past 30 years, Maue adds, only 1977 had less hurricane activity when comparing periods beginning Jan. 1 and lasting through Oct. 30. What's more, this past September had the lowest activity since 1977 while the Octobers of 2006 and 2007 had the lowest activity since 1976 and 1977.

In case the data so far are unconvincing, we add this: The North Atlantic hurricane season is 29% below normal, the Northern Hemisphere 33% below normal. The Western Pacific is off 27% while the Eastern Pacific is 60% behind its typical rate of activity.

We concede that next year might be the worst hurricane season on record. But it's just as likely to be a repeat of this year. No one can reasonably predict what the storm count and intensity will be in 2008.

What we can expect is the alarmists' storm of nonsense to keep coming. They won't give up on global warming until they've found a new calamity they can use to scare everyone.

The Next EU Climate Conference - in Bali....

Yes, Bali...those poor environmental ministers will have to fly to, get this, Bali for their conference....I wonder if they'll be staying in 5-star hotels...
Environment ministers from the EU's 27 member states have put the final touches on the bloc's official negotiating position for a UN conference in December, where world leaders are to discuss the outlines of a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol.

The ministers approved, on 30 October, a resolution on climate change that confirms the Union's hopes that international climate talks in Bali from 3-14 December will lead to commitments from all developed countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2020, compared to 1990 levels.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Anti-semitism at the football match in the UK....

This is pretty repugnant stuff....
'Spurs are on their way to Belsen, Hitler's gonna gas 'em again...' It's not a song you would expect to hear on a family day out at a Premier League game, but it is one of several anti-Semitic chants still heard at some top-flight grounds. While the message about anti-black abuse is in the public consciousness, campaigners say that anti-Semitism is alive - and unchecked.

The past few months have featured several high-profile recorded incidents of anti-Semitic abuse, alongside growing evidence from lower levels of the game. The problem centres around clubs in London - where there are large Jewish communities - where songs about concentration camps and gas chamber hissing noises are a regular feature at certain games. The government recently reported a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in wider society and, with the appointment of Avram Grant as Chelsea manager, the issue in football has been brought into focus after the club received anti-Semitic hate mail.

Britain's Jewish sports group says action is overdue. Martin Berliner, chief executive of Maccabi GB, says: 'I'm a Chelsea fan and I can't listen to songs about concentration camps any more. My father's parents died in the Holocaust. When Avram Grant was appointed, fans came on Chelsea TV and asked why they had appointed a Jew who would not work on Yom Kippur. There's a lot of Jewish conspiracy-theory talk kicking about, like Ben Haim only being picked because he's Jewish. The other week Haim made a mistake and someone behind me stood up and shouted, "You stupid Yid!" Nobody complained.'

Comedian and author David Baddiel agrees. 'Literally every week there is some anti-Semitic chanting at Stamford Bridge. It often takes place regardless of whether Tottenham are playing or not. It's even happened to me. I went to get a hotdog in an area where I don't usually sit and they started chanting "Yiddo" at me.' Baddiel says he can understand the humour in some of it, but feels that a serious side of the issue is too often overlooked. 'Can you imagine if the Chelsea crowd was shouting "Nigger" or "Paki"? People would actually be talking about taking legal action.'

Education in Pakistan...

One of the sources of THE problem...

Like many younger pupils at Karachi's Jamia Binoria madrassa, 12-year-old Imran Mohammed is a shy, quietly spoken child who is all but tongue-tied in front of his elders. One thing can get him talking though – for hours if need be.

"God is one and he is our creator," he intones, his faltering voice suddenly breaking into fluent Arabic. "He has not given birth of anyone, nor did anyone give birth of him."

It is a verse from the Koran, a tiny part of four entire chapters he has learnt by heart since arriving at the madrassa, or religious school, two years ago. Four chapters is roughly 60 pages, and to recite it fully – as he can do – takes up to two hours.

However, when it comes to non-religious learning, such as the alphabet or multiplication tables, Mohammed is somewhat behind for his age. Asked to add 10 and 11 together, he uses his fingers to reach the right answer, and the only words he can write are his own name and his father's.

For much of the past two decades, though, this has been what passes as education for hundreds of thousands of young Pakistanis. With secular, state schools all but non existent in much of the country – six million children never see a classroom – growing numbers of parents "opt out" their children for religious education instead.

That, though, is what makes Pakistan's estimated 20,000 madrassas the country's biggest threat. By teaching religion to the exclusion of almost everything else, they are blamed for training a generation of youngsters whose only job prospects lie in preaching and zealotry, fuelling the Islamic fundamentalism that many Pakistanis fear could turn their country into another Afghanistan. The more militant madrassas are also accused of recruiting volunteers for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, among them Britons such as Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Sidique Khan, who are thought to have attended them before going on to commit the July 7 London bombings in 2005.

Is this coming to Canada???

Automatic fines for too much garbage??? This is from the UK, but I can see the garbage police coming to Canada, no?
Millions of families are to be given barcoded wheelie bins in a computerised system to spy on people's rubbish.

It will be used to send automatic £100 fines to people who put out too much refuse or break strict rules on when they leave their bins out.

The barcodes, to be brought in by a group of 27 councils, can also be used to enforce pay-as-you-throw taxes.

Binmen will carry handheld barcode readers on which they can record details of any rulebreaking by the bin's users.

At the end of their round, theywill return the scanners to a docking station which downloads the information to a central computer.

The computer can then send out tax bills or "education leaflets" and warnings to first-time rulebreakers. Those who offend several times will automatically be sent £100 fines.

And, from Australia....

Again, no link between droughts and global warming...
OST farmers believe climate change is a natural phenomenon and not man-made, senior delegates to a farmers' conference said today.

NSW Farmers Association (NFA) executive councillors Howard Crozier and Ian McClintock's comments were applauded by the 60 fellow NFA councillors at their bi-annual meeting in Sydney today.

The pair say they do not accept the widely endorsed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finding that man-made carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming.

They rely on what they say is an emerging and eminent alternative school of climate change research which says global warming is almost entirely a natural occurrence.

Mr Crozier, a broadacre farmer near Canberra, is representing the views of farmers in his area at the two-day meeting which began today.

"The majority of farmers believe that climate change is really a natural cycle process," he told AAP.

"There is no possible link between this drought and man-made climate change."

His climate change ally, crop and sheep farmer Mr McClintock, represents farmers in the Cootamundra area.

"Farmers by and large are far more sceptical about the claims being made that climate change is almost 100 per cent man-induced, simply because we work the land and we know what goes on," he told AAP.

California's Fires and Global Warming....

Some interesting data from the Heartland Institute..

"Attempts by activists to make the ongoing California wildfires a global warming issue are patently ridiculous. The modest warming of the twentieth century has resulted in moister soil conditions and reduced drought frequency and severity. Arguing that global warming is causing more drought and wildfires is like arguing that increasing crop yields is causing more starvation.

"The May 25, 2007 issue of Geophysical Research Letters reports that for twentieth century soil moisture trends, 'An increasing trend is apparent in both model soil moisture and runoff over much of the U.S.' The study adds, "This wetting trend is consistent with the general increase in precipitation in the latter half of the twentieth century. Droughts have, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the country over the last century.'

"The July 2004 issue of International Journal of Climatology reports, 'it is now clear that many places in the Northern Hemisphere, and in Australia, have become less arid,' and 'in these places, the terrestrial surface is both warmer and effectively wetter.' The study concludes, 'A good analogy to describe the changes in these places is that the terrestrial surface is literally becoming more like a gardener's greenhouse.'

Some family values!

What a hypocrite...
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced Tuesday that he is severing all ties with his adopted daughter because she is a lesbian and living with another woman.

He made the remark in a speech at graduation ceremonies at a Phnom Penh university.

But Hun Sen, who is usually silent about his family life, told students they should not discriminate against gays.

"I'd like to take this opportunity to appeal to parents and society not to discriminate against them," he told the graduating class, adding that "Most [gays] are good people and are not doing alcohol, drugs or racing vehicles [like many young people]."

He did not say why he felt his suggestion should not apply to his own family.

"My adopted daughter now has a wife. I'm quite disappointed," Hun Sen said.

The Prime Minister said that he intends to go to court to have his daughter, who he did not name, formally disowned so that she could not claim any inheritance.

"We are concerned that she might one day cause us trouble ... and try to stake her claim for a share of our assets," he said.

Bernard Lewis in the Atlantic

A terrific quote from Bernard Lewis, the noted Middle-East history specialist...

The better part of my life was dominated by two great struggles—the first against Nazism, the second against Bolshevism. In both of these, after long and bitter conflict, we were victorious. Both were a curse to their own peoples, as well as a threat to the world, and for those peoples, defeat was a liberation.

Today we confront a third totalitarian perversion, this time of Islam—a challenge in some ways similar, in some ways different. On our side, I see the same initial unwillingess to confront realities—to realize who we are, who they are, and what is at stake. But there is also a difference in the very nature of what we face. The Axis had no weapons of mass destruction. The Soviets had them, but were deterred from using them by what came to be known as “mutual assured destruction.” Our present adversaries either have or will soon have weapons of mass destruction, but for them, with their apocalyptic mind-set, mutual assured destruction would not be a deterrent; it would be an inducement.

Terror suspects in Scotland...

Up to 1,000 people to be placed under surveillance...

A hard core of 20 Islamic extremists with links to foreign terror groups is operating north of the Border and poses a "significant" risk to public safety, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

Senior intelligence insiders have revealed the suspects - many of them born and brought up in Scotland - pose a similar threat to that of Mohammed Atif Siddique, the Scottish Asian who was last week given an eight-year prison sentence for terrorist offences.

Scotland on Sunday can also reveal that concern at the terror threat is now so great that up to 1,000 Scottish Asians will be placed under surveillance in coming months because they associate with known radicals.

Monday, October 29, 2007

A potential 3,000 Al-Qaeda terrorists in Spain....

Now, who can say how accurate this report is...
Around 3,000 people in Spain regularly consult Al Qaeda Web sites and Internet forums as well as affiliated organizations working to recruit extremists not only in Spain but all over the world, Spanish daily El Pais writes today citing Security Services sources. According to the article, people consulting the Web sites are either young muslims or citizens converted to Islamic Jihad who usually go to cybercafes where controls are more difficult to take place. Security Services sources explain that the recruiters, operating mainly from Pakistan and Afghanistan but also from France, pick the "right' people and then let them enter the restricted Internet forums where discussions are held using a secret code created by Al Qaedàs computer scientists called 'Mujaheddin's Secret'. The Global Islamic Media Front is one of the most popular forums, the paper says.

An agenda of hate....

I wonder what's being distributed in mosques in Canada...
Extremist literature calling for the execution of gays and the oppression of women is being distributed in British mosques.

Researchers found radical or hate-filled books and pamphlets at a quarter of the 100 Islamic religious institutions they visited.

They said much of the literature is linked to agencies of the Saudi Arabian government.

The revelations come at the start of a state visit to the UK by Saudi King Abdullah, who immediately triggered controversy by accusing Britain of not doing enough to tackle terrorism. The claims were hotly denied by the Government.

The material found in the mosques urges Muslims to lead separate lives from 'nonbelievers' and makes repeated calls for gays to be killed.

Women should be subjugated and are warned not to pluck their eyebrows or wear perfume.

In the alarming report, drawn up by the Policy Exchange thinktank, the Saudis were accused of having a 'powerful and malign' influence.

The contentious pamphlets are either written by the country's Wahhabite religious establishment, published by official or semi-official institutions or found in Saudi-funded or linked mosques.

Terror attack thwarted in Azerbaijan???

I'd like to know more about this plot...
The U.S. and British embassies suspended operations Monday in Baku, where the government said it thwarted a radical Islamic group's plot to conduct a "large-scale horrifying terror attack" against diplomatic missions and government buildings.

The Azerbaijani National Security Ministry said one suspect was killed and several others were detained in a weekend sweep in village outside the capital. The ministry said the Islamic group included an army lieutenant who stole 20 hand grenades, a machine gun, four assault rifles and ammunition from his military unit and made them available for the planned attack.

Coal use is growing in China...

As I have continually said, CO2 emission reductions aren't in the cards - the growth of Chinese emissions precludes any serious world-wide reductions...
Almost nonstop, gargantuan 145-ton trucks rumble through China's biggest open-pit coal mine, sending up clouds of soot as they dump their loads into mechanized sorters.

The black treasure has transformed this once-isolated crossroads nestled in the sand-sculpted ravines of Inner Mongolia into a bleak boomtown of nearly 300,000 people. Day and night, long and dusty trains haul out coal to electric power plants and factories in the east, fueling China's explosive growth.

Coal is big, and getting bigger. As oil and natural gas prices soar, the world is relying ever more on the cheap, black-burning mainstay of the Industrial Revolution. Mining companies are racing into Africa. Workers are laying miles of new railroad track to haul coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.

And nowhere is coal bigger than in China.

The Greening of CNN....

You won't hear any skepticism on CNN....or on most mainstream media outlets - one exception is the National Post...

Compare skeptic Stossel to Anderson Cooper. For his laughably one-sided "Planet in Peril" special last week, Cooper jetted to Greenland's treacherous ice sheets to demonstrate, ad nauseam, that global warming is causing glaciers there to melt at a faster rate than 10 years ago.

In their journalism snow job, Cooper and his producers made sure to include the media's pet climate alarmist, NASA's James Hansen, but they left out the elements invariably left out when global warming issues are reported: balance and perspective.

No ice chip of skepticism threatened CNN's scary story line. Cooper -- who made a major gaffe when he said 40 percent of Greenland's ice sheet had gone away in the last 40 years -- did manage to admit it was not likely the island's 630,000 cubic miles of ice were going to melt anytime soon.

But for perspective's sake, he might have noted how Greenland got its name -- because it was hotter -- and greener -- 900 years ago than it is today. So couldn't its current warming be part of a natural long-term cycle? Sorry, doesn't fit the standard story line.

Cooper's up-close-and-personal encounter with polar bears was just as journalistically sloppy. He rode along with a scientist who used a helicopter to chase down and dart a mother bear and her two cubs, who then were weighed and had who knows what else in the name of science done to them to see how they are coping with the shrinking polar ice cap that has liberaldom's top journalists in such a panic.

Polar bears -- the official charismatic poster mammals of catastrophic global warming -- are under stress, underweight, acting strange and in danger of becoming extinct by 2050, Cooper said somberly.

How many polar bears are there in the Arctic? How many separate bear populations? Are they all losing bears? Are they maybe under stress because they are being terrorized by helicopters, shot full of drugs and manhandled by mad scientists?

Don't ask Anderson. He was too busy playing Nanook of the North and exploiting polar bears the same way most of his fellow journalists in the unfair and unbalanced news media do -- as cliched props in a propaganda war.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

You gotta love this -- reducing CO2 emissions speeds up global warming...

Hey...what do you know??? No matter what we do..it's bad...
A rapid cutback in greenhouse gas emissions could speed up global warming, the veteran environmental maverick James Lovelock will warn in a lecture today.

Prof Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia theory that the planet behaves like a single organism, says this is because current global warming is offset by global dimming - the 2-3ºC of cooling cause by industrial pollution, known to scientists as aerosol particles, in the atmosphere.

His lecture will be delivered as Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, launches the results of a public consultation on the Government's proposed Climate Change Bill which is intended to cut Britain's greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2050.

Prof Lovelock will say in a lecture to the Royal Society: "Any economic downturn or planned cutback in fossil fuel use, which lessened aerosol density, would intensify the heating.

"If there were a 100 per cent cut in fossil fuel combustion it might get hotter not cooler. We live in a fool's climate. We are damned if we continue to burn fuel and damned if we stop too suddenly."

From Australia - a warning or a threat????

It's just a matter of time before they want Australia to change it's policies towards Israel...

AUSTRALIA faces a "London-type bombing" if relations between Muslims and the intelligence and police authorities do not improve, an influential Islamic youth leader has warned.

Fadi Rahman, who runs one of Sydney's biggest youth centres at Lidcombe in the city's west, said overseas Islamic elements were attempting to radicalise Muslim youth with their hardline ideologies.

But in a warning that will resonate with Australian authorities, Mr Rahman said Muslims did not trust ASIO or the Australian Federal Police and that the bungled terror case against Gold Coast doctor Mohamed Haneef had worsened the situation. "The biggest problem ASIO and the federal police have is that no one in the Islamic community trusts them enough to give them a heads-up about anything," Mr Rahman told The Australian.

"Look at the Haneef thing - why would we trust these guys when all you see is one fumble after another? People are afraid."

Dr Haneef, an Indian national, was detained in July on suspicion of having played a role in the foiled terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow, but the case fell apart after a series of prosecution mistakes.

Mr Rahman said a battle for the hearts and minds of young Muslims was under way in Australia between influences from overseas wanting to radicalise youths and more moderate influences in Australia.

Mr Rahman said he believed he had been the target of a recruitment attempt but when he responded "defensively" those talking to him said they had merely been joking.

Asked about the anatomy of a recruitment, he said: "Most of the time they start at the local mosque in small groups - they move quickly into the garage, then people's homes. You get sucked in."

He said the typical recruiter was in their 40s or 50s, "from overseas, well-educated and tapping into young people's frustrations and anger".

"I think we are very similar to London," he said. "There are these individuals from overseas who are basically in their mid-life who have these ideologies and because of the animosity they have experienced in their own countries have deep hatred of the Western world. It's very easy to tap into the mind of someone who has a low education level, unemployment and who has basically given up on life.

"The right ingredients are there. We need to do something or what happened in London, a London-type bombing, will happen here."

A sneak attack on humanity???

How low can the mainstream press go????

On Saturday, the Toronto Star ran a book review of Bjorn Lomborg's new book, "Cool It".

Ok, they didn't like it. I'm not surprised. But get this quote...
By empathizing with those who are concerned about climate change and poverty, and trying to persuade them to divert their energies, Cool It is a stealth attack on humanity's future.
Really? Just because Lomborg doesn't buy into the current 'thought' on climate change, he isn't just wrong..but is attacking humanity's future????

And, why are they so upset? Just because Lomborg wants more research into clean technologies. And, that's just heresy to the Toronto Star.

Please help Ayaan Hirsi Ali....

Providing Financial Assistance for Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Security Detail

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, former Dutch parliamentarian and an outspoken defender of women's rights in Islamic societies, is at risk from a variety of extremist threats in both Europe and the United States. She has needed constant security protection since her life was originally threatened in 2002. Up until October 1, 2007, this protection was provided by the Dutch government.

Now a permanent resident of the United States and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Ms. Hirsi Ali must raise her own funds to finance her costly—but necessary—protection. In response to the numerous private citizens who have expressed interest in helping Ms. Hirsi Ali fund her security detail, the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust has been established.

The preferred and most immediate way to assist Ms. Hirsi Ali in the financing of her private security protection is through the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust. This private trust fund can accept non-tax deductible donations from within the United States and internationally, and is entirely dedicated to financing Ms. Hirsi Ali's security.

Checks should be made payable to the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust and sent to:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust
Bank of Georgetown
1054 31st Street, N.W.
Suite 18
Washington, DC 20007
Ayaan Hirsi Ali Trust Tax Identification Number: 75-6826872

Thank you for your interest in assisting Ayaan Hirsi Ali.


Wire Transfer information

Account Name: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust
Account Number: 1010054748
Bank Name: Bank of Georgetown
Bank Address: 1054 31st Street, N.W.
Suite 18
Washington, DC 20007
Bank Telephone: 202-355-1200
Bank Routing Number: 054001712

Iranians are studying nuclear physics in the UK...

Finally, they are going to look into vetting sensitive areas of study....
The UK Foreign Office has approved the entry of dozens of Iranians to British universities to study advanced nuclear physics and other subjects which could be applied to the creation weapons of mass destruction, The Sunday Times reported Sunday.

The British newspaper reported that in the past nine months about 60 Iranians had been admitted to study postgraduate courses considered "proliferation-sensitive" by the British security services. The courses ranged from nuclear physics to some areas of electrical and chemical engineering and microbiology.

Additionally, the newspaper continued, figures obtained by David Willetts, shadow secretary for innovation, universities and skills, showed that in 2005-06, 30 Iranians were doing postgraduate degrees in subjects covering nuclear physics and nuclear engineering.

The Sunday Times quoted Willetts as saying: "Given that we need to have tougher sanctions against Iran, it does seem extraordinary that the government is not yet stopping Iranians coming here to study nuclear physics. There is legitimate concern about what some students have been studying."

The Foreign Office admitted during the weekend it was reviewing the vetting for sensitive areas of study and planned to announce new, more rigorous procedures in the next few weeks.

Currently, vetting is carried out only when a university chooses to inform the government that a candidate from outside the EU has been admitted to study a sensitive subject.

According to the new procedures, said The Sunday Times, universities would be obliged to inform the government if any non-European applies study such a subject. They would also need to give details about what is included in the course.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Stupidity in Zimbabwe.......

What a ridiculous story......

When Nomatter Tagarira, a spirit medium, claimed that she could conjure refined diesel out of a rock by striking it with her staff, ministers in Robert Mugabe’s Government believed that they might have found the solution to Zimbabwe’s perennial fuel shortage.

After witnessing her apparently miraculous gift they gave her five billion Zimbabwean dollars in cash (worth £1.7 million at the start of the year but now worth one seven-hundredth of that) in return for the fuel. Ms Tagarira was also given a farm, said to have been seized from its white owner during Mr Mugabe’s lawless land grab, as well as food and services that included a round-the-clock armed guard on the rock in the district of Chinhoyi 60 miles (100km) from Harare, the capital.

More than a year later officials realised they had been duped. Ms Tagarira is now in custody, awaiting trial on charges of fraud or, alternatively, of being “a criminal nuisance”. Details from court papers published this week said that over 15 months, until July this year, Ms Tagarira convinced Cabinet ministers, ruling party heavy-weights and top army and police officers that by striking the rock with her staff she could produce enough fuel to supply the country for 100 years.

Global warming and the fires in California...

Is there a link....well, no...but that doesn't stop the fearmongers...

During the period 1900-2005, precipitation seems to have actually increased in areas above 30 degrees north latitude — including California and the rest of the U.S. — according to the most recent assessment from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

This does not mean, of course, that droughts haven't occurred in North America over the last 100 years, but it doesn't support a link between rising global temperature and increased drought.

Examining the occurrence of drought in southern California since 1900 is also illuminating.

According to data maintained by the federal National Climatic Data Center, drought conditions are no stranger to southern California.

During the period 1900 to 2005, moderate-to-severe drought conditions occurred in Southern California during 34 of those 106 years — that is, about one-third of the time.

Comparing the southern California drought record against the global temperature record reveals the following:

— During the period 1900-1940, when most of the 20th century's one-degree Fahrenheit temperature increase occurred, there were 7 years of moderate-to-severe drought.

— During the period 1941-1975, when global temperatures cooled, giving rise to concerns of a looming ice age, there were 11 years of moderate-to-severe drought.

— During the period 1976 to 1990, when global temperatures rose back to the 1940 level, there were 8 years of moderate-to-severe drought.

— Since 1991, when global temperatures rose slightly past the 1940 levels, there have been 7 years of drought.

It's a record that would seems to largely prevent any simple conclusions from being drawn — that is, rising temperatures with few drought years, followed by falling temperatures and increasing drought frequency, followed by temperatures rising back to the original levels with increased drought frequency, followed by a leveling off of drought occurrence despite higher temperatures.

Though there is no obvious relationship between global temperature and drought in southern California, the alarmists nevertheless advocate the quixotic task of preventing drought and wildfires by controlling greenhouse-gas emissions.

Global warming, it seems, also makes a good excuse for federal and state bureaucrats and politicians who have failed to properly manage high-risk areas, at least in part because of pressure from anti-logging and anti-development environmental groups.

We can be better prepared for drought and wildfires by improving forest management — as this column previously suggested in the aftermath of the deadly California wildfires of 2003.

Geo-political expert comments on US-Australian ties...

I love it when these experts decide to comment...

CATE Blanchett wants the winner of next month's federal election to free Australia from its "embarrassing" relationship with the US.

The Oscar winning actress says Australia is too closely tied to the US and has made a mistake by isolating itself from its Asian neighbours.

“Whoever gets in will have to deal with this climate of paranoia,” she told London's Guardian newspaper.

“We're so in America's back pocket it's embarrassing.

“We have to claim our individualism, but also reconnect to the world in a better way.

“We've really isolated ourselves from Asia.

“I think that's politically and culturally very foolish.

“The problem with Australia is that it's uranium- and coal-rich, so whoever gets in needs to be really responsible.”

And, he's from a country at peace with Israel....

I don't really care about the handshake...but I just wish more Egyptians would show the world that peace really means peace...
An Egyptian player for Belgian football champion RSC Anderlecht refused to shake hands with Israeli players of Hapoel Tel Aviv at Thursday’s UEFA Cup match in Brussels, witnesses said.

Before the beginning of the match and at the end, 32-year-old midfielder Ahmad Hassan avoided any handshake with the Israeli team although the match took place correctly.

“He put himself on the side so as to avoid any handshake,” one witness," told EJP. "I was shocked," he said.

The first European Car Fire Championships...

It's about time for a formal competition, no??? While the French are favorites to win, the Dutch are catching up....
Another two cars were set on fire in Amsterdam-West on Thursday night. The vehicles were parked in the Antony Moddermanstraat in the district of Geuzenveld-Slotermeer.

The police say it is unclear whether there is a connection with the other car fires that have plagued Amsterdam-West for the past two weeks after a police officer shot and killed an area resident.

Cars have been set on fire in the districts of Osdorp, Slotervaart and Geuzenveld-Slotermeer almost daily since 15 October. On Wednesday night another car in the Buitenveldert neighbourhood went up in flames.

The police still have not arrested any suspects for the recent fires. A number of young men suspected of planning arson attempts were arrested last weekend.

Financial Post gets it right...

A terrific comment on Bjorn Lomborg's new book, Cool It...which I strong recommend to everybody.

Consider the case of a persistent cause of more than 1.2 million deaths, 50 million injuries and a half-trillion dollars in damages worldwide every year. Then ponder that a simple policy change could eliminate nearly all of this harm. The cause: automobile accidents. The remedy: Lower the speed limit to five miles per hour. But of course no nation would ever do this, because it would make us so much poorer. The benefits of auto use outweigh the risks, such that we don't even consider a modest reduction in speed limits, which studies show would significantly reduce auto-accident casualties. Instead, we invest in safer highways, air bags, seat belts and other means to reduce the human cost of driving.

The use of fossil fuels presents the same tradeoff. As Lomborg states, "the benefits from moderately using fossil fuels vastly outweigh the costs." If anything, Lomborg understates this point. The tradeoff for arguably increasing the average global temperature by 0.6 degrees in the 20th century has been nearly a doubling in life expectancy, a huge decline in infant mortality, and the steadily increasing spread of middle-class prosperity across the planet's population. Does anyone outside the tiny ranks of environmental extremists really wish we had not made this progress, which depended vitally on cheap energy? Acknowledging this calculus is environmentally incorrect, but it is the silent ground upon which practical policymakers will build policy. There simply is no near-term, large-scale alternative to fossil fuels. Deal with it.

Yemen frees a terrorist...

One of the Cole bomb plotters at that....
Yemen has set free one of the Al Qaeda masterminds of the bombing that killed 17 American sailors aboard the destroyer Cole in 2000, a senior security official said Thursday.

Jamal Mohammed Ahmad Ali Badawi, who is wanted by the FBI, was convicted in 2004 of plotting, preparing and helping carry out the Cole bombing in the Yemeni port of Aden. He received a death sentence that was commuted to 15 years in prison.

He and 22 others, mostly Al Qaeda fighters, escaped from prison last year. But Badawi was granted his freedom after turning himself in 15 days ago and pledging loyalty to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Witnesses said Badawi was receiving well-wishers at his home in Aden.
It warms my heart that he is receiving well-wishers.

Friday, October 26, 2007

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

Well, now we know the law...
Egyptian ulema (Muslim scholar) Mohamed El Mongui has issued a fatwa against marriage between Egyptian men and Israeli women. The news appeared on Al Goumhoureya daily, which explains that El Monguìs decision came after talks with an Egyptian man, who asked for his opinion on the matter. "The marriage between Egyptians and Israelis is 'haram' (illegal) and this is not only my opinion but also the opinion of all Sheikhs and ulema," El Mongui said. El Mongui explained that a Muslim can marry a non-Muslim "only if she does not belong to a country which fights against Muslims" and given the fact that Israel is a nation "based on war", as all its citizens who go to military service fight against Muslims, therefore Egyptians should not marry "enemies of Islam", which represent "40% of the Israeli army". Whoever marries an Israeli woman, the ulema says, "will be considered as a traitor and enemy of Islam and Muslims". The fatwa issued by El Mongui was also supported by the dean of the faculty of Shariah and member of the Academy of Islamic Research at the Al-Azhar University, Mohammed Raafat Osmane, who added an important detail. "Islam does not ban and has never banned the marriage with non-Israeli Jewish women or with Christians like those living in the Arab or European states and who have nothing to do with the state of Israel," the Al-Azhar dean explained. Therefore, Egyptians must only avoid "women who are Israeli citizens".

Build the mosque or else!

Knowing the Dutch...they'll cave in and build the mosque...
If Amsterdam city council bars construction of the Westermoskee mosque, a great demonstration of Turks from throughout Europe will be held. The possibility of this degenerating into violence cannot be ruled out, the Turkish organisation Milli Gorus warns.

The controversial Westermoskee in Amsterdam will be built come what may, said Fatih Dag of the Turkish mosque organisation in Trouw newspaper. If the government blocks its building, Milli Gorus will call on Turks throughout the whole of Europe to demonstrate. Dag hopes this would be a peaceful procession, but fears it could get out of hand. "Our people are emotional and someone crazy can just be walking among them," he said in the newspaper.

Can someone check the CBC????

I bet the same results would happen for the CBC.....
The BBC has frequently been accused of having a liberal bias.

But now the corporation's own staff appear to have confirmed this by revealing their political views on the networking website Facebook.

A survey of BBC employees with profiles on the site showed that 11 times more of them class themselves as "liberal" than "conservative".

Critics seized on the figures as evidence that the supposedly impartial corporation, paid for by the licence fee, is dominated by liberals.

All Facebook members can record their political views in their profile – choosing between very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal, very lib "other".

They can also keep their stance a secret.

Research by the conservativehome. com website showed that 1,340 staff put themselves in the "liberal" or "very liberal" category, compared with just 120 who were "conservative" or "very conservative". Some 340 regard themselves as "moderate".

Is this a human rights case????

And, some of these people are probably jihadists who wouldn't hesitate to cut your throat...
Scores of Muslim inmates at a high security prison are set to launch a multi-million pound claim for compensation after they were offered ham sandwiches during the holy month of Ramadan.

They say their human rights were breached when they were given a special nightly menu - drawn up to recognise their specific dietary requirements - by officers at HMP Leeds last month.

More than 200 Muslim inmates at the jail are believed to have been offered the meat which is strictly forbidden by Islam.

The sandwich was one of three options on the menu card which was created to cover the religious festival during which Muslims are required to fast during daylight.

They later complained to prison officers on duty but say they were told that the menus had been printed in error.

The David Suzuki - Patrick Moore Feud

I am a huge fan of Patrick Moore - ex-founder of Greenpeace...and now a huge supporter of nuclear energy. Here are his thoughts on David Suzuki..
MOORE ON SUZUKI
On Suzuki’s policies: “A lot of things he’s saying I think are bang on. We disagree on some really major issues, one of which is nuclear energy, another is genetic modification. He’s the geneticist who’s against genetics.”

On Suzuki’s opposition to salmon farming: “What David is engaging in is trying to destroy one of the most sustainable industries we have in this province.”

On Suzuki’s fall from grace: “He was a brilliant teacher of genetics. I owe some of my understanding of biology to David . . . Yet at the same time he has joined the populist movements, which are based more on sensation and fear tactics, and are not based on science.”

On Suzuki calling him an industry "shill": “That’s name-calling that’s not a argument . . . Most of David’s support, as far as we can see, is from wealthy U.S. foundations.”

On no-nukes vs. good-nukes: Moore, then Greenpeace president, recalls trying to conscript Suzuki into the anti-nuclear movement, circa 1981. “At this time David was full-time CBC. The irony of the situation in light of today’s circumstances was that I was trying to convince him to join the anti-nuclear movement—and he had to decline, citing his journalistic objectivity.”

On the fatal flaw in the tactics of Al Gore and Suzuki: “They are very popular with the man on the street. But because so many of their policies are so out of tune with what is practically possible, they don’t really have the kind of influence on public policy they could have if their policies were more science-based and logical. The way I see it, the environmental movement got stuck in an abolitionist approach to campaigning.”

The CBC gets a surprise....

The National Post is running a series of articles written by Canadians about one thing they'd like to change in Canada. I'd like to privatize the CBC...

I had been back from Afghanistan for a few months when I saw a television news report on the CBC that had me screaming at the TV set.

Somehow, a veteran CBC reporter had found the proverbial needle in a haystack -- a Kabul shopkeeper who said he didn't like having foreign troops in Afghanistan.

When I got into the newsroom the next morning my phone rang almost immediately.

It was an angry Garth Pritchard, an independent and fearless documentary film maker from Alberta I first met in Kabul in December 2003.

Together we saw the wells Canadian soldiers had dug, the schools they built, the orphanages they supplied with food, cooking and heating oil, school supplies and hope and the resulting affection from Afghanistan's grateful citizens.

"Did you watch the CBC news last night?" asked Garth. "Do you believe what was reported? It's the exact opposite of what we know is the truth," he said.

In the two weeks I spent as a non-embedded reporter in Afghanistan I spoke to at least 10 Afghan adults a day and sometimes as many as 30. I asked all adults a variety of questions, but always one question remained the same: "What do you think about having foreign troops in your country?"

Of the about 200 Afghan adults I spoke with they all told me they appreciated our troops being there, that they didn't want them to leave and that their lives were vastly improved.

I have written that in at least 10 columns since I returned from that troubled country filled with hospitable, resilient and handsome people.

Turns out my informal 200-person poll conducted in Kabul and the northern town of Kholm, located 40 km south of the Uzbekistan border, was more accurate than the picture the CBC has been feeding Canadians for half a decade.

My writings about how the Afghan people view our troops being in their country has recently been proven correct by a CBC/Environics poll released last week.

The poll, which interviewed 1,600 Afghan men and women, found that 60% of those questioned said the presence of foreign troops in the country was a good thing, with only 16% saying it was bad.

CBC commentators told viewers last week that they would be "surprised" by the poll results. That's not surprising. After all, if those viewers get most of their news from the Corporation they would have been hearing the polar opposite.

I also asked virtually every adult what they thought about the Taliban. They used words like: I hate them, they are demons, they should be killed. That kind of thing.

Again, the poll backs up what I reported. Some 73% have a negative opinion of the Taliban.

More than 70% said they had a positive opinion of President Hamid Karzai's government.

"The CBC seemed shocked by this poll," said Pritchard yesterday. "But you have to wonder why. All they would have had to do to know the truth themselves is go out and talk to Afghanis, like I have on five separate occasions.

Separate laws for aboriginals....

It's hard to believe this story...but this is what multiculturalism has come to...
A previously convicted drunk driver will not serve a day behind bars for an alcohol-fueled crash which killed his fiancé on Valentine's Day and left three other innocent motorists seriously injured.

Edward Sinclair, 51, was handed a two-year-less-a-day conditional sentence Thursday which allows him to remain free in the community.

Provincial court Judge Linda Giesbrecht cited Sinclair's claims of being a "role model" in the native community as a key factor in her decision to reject the Crown's bid for a two year jail term.

Giesbrecht said she was also following a Supreme Court edict which tells judges to give special consideration to some Aboriginal offenders based on their troubled upbringing.

Sinclair had told a probation officer he began drinking at a young age after seeing his father do it and has fought a losing battle with the bottle ever since because of his culture.

"His perception of inequality in his younger years has contributed to his use and abuse of alcohol," said Giesbrecht.

Thanks to James for sending me this clip.

He's for it...but he's against it...

Of course, veiled women must show their faces...but why is Ignatieff against this???

"I do not want this debate imported into the House of Commons,'' said Liberal deputy leader Michael Ignatieff.

While he supports requiring all voters to identify themselves, Ignatieff added: "What I don't like about this whole project is the idea that we take a bunch of women wearing veils and we make a whole big deal about this . . . Let's not have politicians fishing around and creating divisions between Canadians about this.''

He's for it, but he's against it. I guess that somes up Ignatieff...

A report on the Jewish Community in the Netherlands...

The situation is worrying....

Violence against Jews

Anti-Semitic violence by part of the Muslim community poses the most important challenge to the Jewish community. In particular, individuals of Moroccan ethnicity-most of them Berbers from northern Morocco-play a disproportionately large role in physical and verbal violence against the Jewish community.[9]

There have also been many expressions of anti-Semitism in mosques. For instance, in 2001 the El Tawheed mosque had to remove extreme anti-Semitic statements from its website.[10] In 2007, it became known that in the Turkish Milli Görüs mosque in Amsterdam one could find many journals full of "anti-Western, antidemocratic and anti-Semitic texts."[11]

Evers relates how, being easily recognizable as a Jew by his attire, he is regularly insulted for being a Jew, sometimes by Muslims and sometimes by autochthonous Dutch. On one occasion a tram conductor called the police because Muslims threatened the rabbi.[12] In conversations with Jews who are recognizable as such by their physical appearance or clothes, they frequently mention that they have been threatened.

Over the past years, anti-Semitic incidents have occasionally been mentioned in the general press.[13] Many occur in Amsterdam, where more than half of Dutch Jewry and an even larger part of those recognizable as Jews live. In 2003, Rabbi Menachem Sebbag told the Volkskrant daily that his wife had been threatened with a screwdriver by a Moroccan Dutch youngster who said he would cut her heart out. Sebbag, who understands Arabic, also related that someone told him in that language: "I'm going to slaughter you like a pig."[14]

Removing One's Kippa

Ruben Vis, secretary of the NIK, the umbrella organization of the Dutch Ashkenazi community, was quoted in the same article saying he was regularly insulted when wearing a kippa in public. Sometimes he was pushed in the tramway. He noted that since then he never wears his kippa in the western and eastern quarters of Amsterdam, and rarely in the center of the city-places where there are many Dutchmen of Moroccan descent.[15]

A Jewish leader who visited this author in a hotel in the southern part of town was wearing a kippa, but said that in central Amsterdam and neighborhoods where many Muslims live, he wears a cap. Another Dutch Jewish leader mentioned how his son, who wears a kippa, phoned him for help when he was threatened by young Moroccans.

Motti Wolf, a youngster who has left the Netherlands and studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, tells how at the Amsterdam South train station a group of Dutch Moroccans followed him while shouting "Jews to the gas." He mentions that one always had to be alert when wearing a kippa in certain parts of Amsterdam.[16] Wolf also notes that when he was a student at the Jewish high school, he preferred not to visit certain areas where many Muslims live. If he had to go there, he put on a cap instead of a kippa.

The mother of another kippa-wearing youngster who now lives in Israel recounted that her son had been insulted about ten years ago in an Amsterdam museum by a group of young Muslim girls who called out "to the gas." Although kippa wearers are few in the Netherlands, many of them have similar experiences.

Please read the whole report...it is quite disturbing...

Leftists disrupt Horowitz's speech...

Shame on them....I am a huge fan of David Horowitiz...I hope Canadian Universities will put on Islamo-Fascism Awareness weeks..
On Wednesday evening, the Emory University Chapter of the College Republicans hosted acclaimed author and activist David Horowitz for a lecture on radical Islam as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week . From the beginning of Horowitz’s speech, rowdy protesters continually interrupted him and less than half an hour into the event, the crowd became so disruptive that police were called in and Horowitz had to be escorted off stage.

The event was part of the Terrorism Awareness Project , a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center dedicated to waking up American college students to the threat of militant Islam. As soon as Horowitz was introduced, protesters began their efforts with loud boos and chants of “Heil Hitler.” Despite the people who stood with their backs to Horowitz and the shouting of obscenities and other remarks from audience members, Horowitz attempted to deliver his speech that covered academic freedom and radical Islam. Considering the actions of the audience and the problem of universities only giving students half the story, Horowitz asked the audience, “How can you learn if you can’t see the arguments?” This event was a perfect example of the left’s intolerance to other points of view. Students who had the opportunity to ask questions they wrote down on index cards were never given the chance to hear them answered because of the actions of those who do not believe in free speech for those who hold opposing points of view.

Over 300 people – what appeared to be a cross-section of students, professors, and Atlanta community members – packed into White Hall where the event was held. The audience included a wide range of Leftists from Amnesty International, Veterans for Peace, and Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as Muslim groups such as the Muslim Student Association. In addition, members of “National Project to Defend Dissent & Critical Thinking in Academia,” an organization dedicated to opposing Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week events throughout the country, participated in the protests dressed in orange attire as a reference to Guantanamo Bay. There was also a sizable group of men and women dressed in traditional Muslim garb as well as students wearing Kafiyehs, a symbol of Arab solidarity.

Before Horowitz came onto the stage, the audience members were respectfully asked that if they were going to wave signs or stand up that they move to the back as to not disrupt the view of others. Signs were abundant. Some had pictures of bloodied, bandaged children; others read “Stop Islamophobia.” Another sign read “Axis of evil” and had pictures of Horowitz along with Rick Santorum and Ann Coulter.


Throughout the lecture, many protesters were waving their signs, and yelling “Does George Bush respect anybody’s rights?” and “Are we going to talk about who killed JFK?” The colorful expressions shouted by protesters included the generic, “Racist, sexist, anti-gay. David Horowitz, go away!” and “stop the war for oil,” as well as more creative “why don’t we talk about fascism in America?” and “no more torture in our name.” When Horowitz warned the audience of the threat of a nuclear attack, someone yelled, “Be afraid, be very afraid,” nearly bursting out into an impromptu dance. The audience used a lot of rancorous laughter to disrupt the speech.

As soon as Horowitz commented on radical Islam waging war against the West, someone predictably yelled, “do you think it has anything to do with Israel's treatment of Palestine?” When Horowitz talked about Christians burning Jews at the stake during the crusades and Jews finding Muslims to be more hospitable, someone shouted “That’s exactly what Ann Coulter is calling for now.” When Horowitz mentioned that Jews and Christians are now treated as second class citizens in much of the Muslim world, a loud applause shot up from the audience. When Horowitz tried to bring up the treatment of women and issues such as female genital mutilation (FGM), the audience chanted, “That’s not Islam.”

“I’ve spoken at Emory University several times and I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Horowitz responding to the crowd as they shouted and jeered. “This is exactly what the fascists did in Germany in the 1930s.” The loud chants, sign-waving, and disruptive gestures continued to escalate from audience members until the atmosphere was so chaotic that even the police present were unable to subdue the crowd. Horowitz was led off stage and left the campus under tight security, and the event came to an abrupt end. After Senior Vice Provost for Community and Diversity Ozzie Harris announced that audience members should sit down and let the speech continue or risk being forcibly removed, protesters shouted, “Everybody stand up, they can't take us all!” and “Stand up in solidarity!” At the end, when Horowitz’ speech could no longer continue, chants of “This is what democracy looks like” shot up throughout the audience.

Predicting climate change????

Climate is way too complex for our simple models...this article is from the New Scientist....

Climate change models, no matter how powerful, can never give a precise prediction of how greenhouse gases will warm the Earth, according to a new study.

The result will provide ammunition to those who argue not enough is known about global warming to warrant taking action.

The analysis focuses on the temperature increase that would occur if levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled from pre-Industrial Revolution levels. The current best guess for this number – which is a useful way to gauge how sensitive the climate is to rising carbon levels – is that it lies between 2.0 C and 4.5 C. And there is a small chance that the temperature rise could be up to 8C or higher.

To the frustration of policy makers, it is an estimate that has not become much more precise over the last 20 years.

Ultimately, the papers also illustrate the limits to which models, even those produced by powerful supercomputers, can help politicians make decisions.

"This finding reinforces not only that climate policies will necessarily be made in the face of deep, irreducible uncertainties," says Roger Pielke, a climate policy expert at the University of Colorado at Boulder, US. "But also the uncomfortable reality – for climate modellers – that finite research dollars invested in ever more sophisticated climate models offer very little marginal benefit to decision makers."

More on the IPCC

Good article about Dr. Vincent Gray on the IPCC...

But Dr. Gray, who knows as much about the IPCC's review processes as anyone, has been troubled by what he sees as an appalling absence of scientific rigour in the IPCC's review process.

"Right from the beginning, I have had difficulty with this procedure. Penetrating questions often ended without any answer. Comments on the IPCC drafts were rejected without explanation, and attempts to pursue the matter were frustrated indefinitely.

"Over the years, as I have learned more about the data and procedures of the IPCC, I have found increasing opposition by them to providing explanations, until I have been forced to the conclusion that for significant parts of the work of the IPCC, the data collection and scientific methods employed are unsound. Resistance to all efforts to try and discuss or rectify these problems has convinced me that normal scientific procedures are not only rejected by the IPCC, but that this practice is endemic, and was part of the organization from the very beginning."

Dr. Gray has detailed extensively the areas in which global warming science falls down. One example that this New Zealander provides comes from his region of the globe: "We are told that the sea level is rising and will soon swamp all of our cities. Everybody knows that the Pacific island of Tuvalu is sinking. Al Gore told us that the inhabitants are invading New Zealand because of it.

"Around 1990 it became obvious that the local tide-gauge did not agree -- there was no evidence of 'sinking.' So scientists at Flinders University, Adelaide, were asked to check whether this was true. They set up new, modern, tide-gauges in 12 Pacific islands, including Tuvalu, confident that they would show that all of them are sinking.

"Recently, the whole project was abandoned as there was no sign of a change in sea level at any of the 12 islands for the past 16 years. In 2006, Tuvalu even rose."

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Syrians wipe the slate clean...

Well, at least they know how to clean up...
New commercial satellite photos show that a Syrian site that Israel bombed last month no longer bears any obvious traces of what analysts said appeared to have been a partly built nuclear reactor.

Two photos, taken Wednesday from space by rival companies, show the site near the Euphrates River to have been wiped clean since August, when imagery showed a tall square building there measuring about 150 feet on a side.

The Syrians reported an attack by Israel in early September, which the Israelis have not confirmed. Senior Syrian officials continue to deny that a nuclear reactor was under construction, insisting that what Israel hit was a largely empty military warehouse.

But the images, federal and private analysts said Thursday, suggest that the Syrian authorities rushed to dismantle the facility after the strike, saying its removal could be interpreted as a tacit admission of guilt.

“It’s a magic act — here today, gone tomorrow,” said a senior intelligence official. “It doesn’t lower suspicions; it raises them. This was not the long-term decommissioning of a building, which can take a year. It was speedy. It’s incredible that they could have gone to that effort to make something go away.”

Arson in California....

Gee, what will the global warming people say about this????
As firefighters struggled to control wildfires that have driven half a million people from their homes in southern California and caused $1bn in damage, police shot and killed one suspected arsonist and arrested another.

After discovering a suspicious man in brush area on the San Bernardino campus of California State University, police attempted to detain the 27-year-old on suspicion of arson.

Following a chase, officers opened fire and killed him, police said.

Hours later in Hesperia, police arrested a motorcyclist near the San Bernardino foothills who authorities say set a small fire by the side of the road in the scrub. He is being held on suspicion of arson but authorities said they did not know if he was connected to any of the larger fires.

State officials believe a 30-square-mile Orange County fire that destroyed nine homes was started deliberately after finding three different ignition points.

Syria helping to re-arm Hezbollah...

The Syrians are increasingly part of the axis of evil...
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a report Wednesday strongly suggesting that Syria has helped smuggle weapons to the Shiite movement Hezbollah and other armed groups, and that it sponsored Islamic militants involved in a military confrontation with the Lebanese army earlier this year. The report also cites Israeli assertions that Hezbollah has rebuilt its fighting capacity to a level not seen since its 2006 war with Israel.

The 17-page assessment portrays Lebanon as a country facing threats to its survival not only from Syria but also from an array of armed groups linked to Islamic extremists and pro-Syria opposition parties. It says that a series of targeted killings of Lebanese lawmakers, including the September assassination of Antoine Ghanem, is gradually eroding the government's thin majority in the Lebanese parliament.

"The pattern of political assassinations in Lebanon strongly suggests a concerted effort aimed at undermining the democratic institutions of Lebanon," according to the report, which was written by Ban's special envoy on Lebanon, Terje Roed-Larsen.

A routine drive-by-shooting....

This is from Thailand...yet more brutal murders of children...
Two children were killed and four adults were wounded in a Narathiwat shooting Tuesday night.

Suspected insurgents in a pick-up truck opened fire at local villagers walking along a road in Lamai village in Rangae district.

A 10-year-old girl was killed, while her father and her 11-month-old baby brother were severely wounded. The infant died later at hospital, while the father and three other persons wounded in the attack were hospitalised.

Palestinians deny Western Wall part of temple...

They keep on denying Judiasm's ties to Jerusalem...
The former mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrema Sabri, has made the claim that there never was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, and the Western Wall was really part of a mosque.

"There was never a Jewish temple on Al-Aksa [the mosque compound] and there is no proof that there was ever a temple," he told The Jerusalem Post via a translator. "Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make Al-Aksa if there were a temple there for others beforehand."

Sabri rejected Judaism's claim to the Western Wall as part of the outer wall of the Second Temple.

"The wall is not part of the Jewish temple. It is just the western wall of the mosque," he said. "There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews."

Asked if Jews would ever be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount under Muslim control, he replied: "It is not the Temple Mount, you must say Al-Aksa. And no Jews have the right to pray at the mosque. It was always only a mosque - all 144 dunams, the entire area. No Jewish prayer. If the Jews want real peace, they must not do anything to try to pray on Al-Aksa. Everyone knows that."

"Zionism tries to trick the Jews claiming that this was part of a Jewish temple, but they dug there and they found nothing," Sabri added.

Archeologists overseeing Islamic infrastructure work on the Mount announced this week that they had unveiled a sealed archeological level dating back to the First Temple period.

The First Temple was built by King Solomon in the 10th century BCE, and destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The Second Temple was built 70 years later, enlarged dur

ing the first century BCE by Herod, and destroyed by the Romans in the year 70.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

The Turkish-Swedish hacking war....

This all stems from the cartoons of Muhammed...
An ongoing struggle between Turkish and Swedish hackers gathered renewed force this week as websites belonging to Linköping Cathedral and Gothenburg Council were both defaced.

Earlier this month, attacks on Swedish web hosts by Turkish hackers led to difficulties for an estimated 5,000 websites. Swedish hackers then retaliated by stealing a database containing thousands of user names and passwords from a Turkish online forum.

The most recent attacks would seem to suggest that Turkish hackers are readying themselves for a protracted hacking war. With rumours of revenge already circulating on Swedish internet forums, Stefan B Grinneby, head of the Swedish IT Incident Centre (SITIC), is calling on domestic hackers to exercise restraint.

How's this for a police chief???

He doesn't have to just uphold the law, he has to uphold the koran....
The head of Iran's police has attacked Western countries for giving gay people rights and criticised opponents of Sharia Law.

Speaking at Friday prayer service in Tehran last week, General Ismail Ahmadi Moghadam said that nations that tolerate homosexuality "challenge God's law and deny spirituality."

There has recently been crackdown on "moral crime" in the Islamic republic.

Iranian police and militia known as basiji have launched a nationwide operation against people they accuse of deviating from official standards of dress or behaviour.

General Moghadam told the semi-official Mehr News Agency in April that law enforcement agents detained 150,000 people during the campaign and forced the majority of them to sign "commitment letters," to observe official dress codes before being released.

Positive discrimination???

Here's a story from the UK - shame on this police officer...

Black and Asian police officers should benefit from positive discrimination to get promoted into top jobs, a conference has heard.

Keith Jarrett, the president of the National Black Police Association (NBPA), said they should be appointed to senior roles even if they are less qualified than their white counterparts.

Palestinian TV: NO Need for Israel...

A clip broadcast by Fatah-controlled Palestinian television this week shows a map in which Israel is painted in the colors of the Palestinian flag, symbolizing Israel turned into a Palestinian state.

He's Baaaaack.......

My god, Hans Blix sees nothing as a threat...

Former United Nations' chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has challenged U.S. President George Bush's assertion that Iran poses a nuclear threat and the world should take pre-emptive action.

Bush has recently renewed calls for a missile defence shield in Europe, issuing grim warnings that Iran could have a ballistic missile capable of reaching Europe and the U.S. by 2015.

Blix, who is the executive chair of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission and headed the search for WMDs in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion, acknowledged Iran has a nuclear enrichment program and has long-range missile capability. But he told CTV's Canada AM that Bush is over-reacting.

"Right now, I don't think it's a threat," Blix said.

"President Bush talks about 2015. There's time to negotiate with Iran and to carry out those negotiations in a sensible manner. I think they use too much sticks and they should use more carrots, just as they've done in the case of North Korea where they are making some headway."

The Europeans have been negotiating with Iran for years now and have made NO headway. Of course, this is the man who totally missed Iraq's biological weapons when he was an inspector.

Iran's new nuclear negotiator...

He's from the same messianistic sect as Ahmadinejad...

While the world catches its breath after the sudden resignation of Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, questions are being asked about the background and beliefs of his successor, Saeed Jalili. The answers, it turns out, are troubling.

Until today, not much has been known about the 41 year-old gray-haired official. He has a Ph.D from Imam Sadegh University in Teheran. As a soldier during the Iraq-Iran war, he apparently survived a chemical attack by Saddam Hussein's forces.

Sometime later during the war he was shot in his right leg, which according to one report, had to be amputated. According to the same report, since then Jalili has worn an artificial leg. He is a known follower of Khomeini's "simple living" lifestyle philosophy. During his stint as a Foreign Ministry official, he served at a number of departments where, apparently, he did not make use of amenities made available to employees. For example, he continued to drive an inexpensive KIA Pride to work instead of trading it in for a more luxurious car.

As the deputy head of the American and European section at the Foreign Ministry, Jalili is known to have worked until the early hours of the morning in his office in his efforts to strengthen the co-operation of Iran with Southern hemisphere countries. This was part of the "south-south" strategy, according to which it was believed that Ahmadinejad's government would be able to look for and find alliances with countries such as Venezuela.

It is also reported that that Ahmadinejad has consulted Jalili on a number of key moves - according to one report, Ahmadinejad's infamous 18-page letter to President George W. Bush was, in fact, Jalili's idea.

THE MOST worrying revelation about Jalili's past appeared recently in the Iran Diplomacy Web site. This Teheran-based news agency, in an article titled "Dr Ali Leaves, Dr Saeed Enters" revealed that for most of his career at the Foreign Ministry, Jalili worked closely with Mojtaba Hashemi Samare, a leading messianic and a close ally of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, the most well-known and high-ranking messianic cleric in Iran.

The article talks about how Jalili cooperated with Hashemi Samare in the Inspectorate department of Ministry. It also mentions that for a short time, Jalili also worked with Ahmadinejad.

Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi is a former member of the Hojattieh, a messianic splinter group which was disbanded by Ayatollah Khomeini in the early 1980s because of its extremist views. The sect's goals are to sow chaos - the goal of which is to incite a massive war, presumably necessary to speed up the return of the Shi'ite messiah, known as the Mahdi.

After the forced disintegration of the sect, Mesbah Yazdi moved to the holy city of Qom, where he ran the Imam Khomeini Foundation and the Haghaniye school. From there, he passed on his messianic beliefs to young clerics and revolutionaries whom he hoped one day would reach senior government levels.

One of his early successes was Hashemi Samare, who in the early 1990s managed to find a position inside Iran's Foreign Ministry. He soon rose through the ranks and became one of the key officials at the ministry. His main job there was to make sure that Iranian ambassadors were staying true to revolutionary beliefs and Islamic ways while serving abroad.

He soon developed a much-feared reputation for recalling diplomats and even ambassadors whom he suspected of becoming Westernized. Some were said to have been locked inside the basement of the Foreign Ministry for days, where, using interrogation techniques including physical violence, he "re-educated" them.

ANOTHER IMPORTANT characteristic of Hashemi Samare was that in his office, instead of a picture of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, he hung a portrait of the messianic Mesbah Yazdi. He showed no fear about showing where his true allegiances lay.

Stossel on global warming...

If you search YouTube, you can find his spot on global warming from last Friday's 20/20.
John Christy and Roy Spencer, who won NASA's Medal for Exceptional Achievement for figuring out how to get temperature data from satellites, agree that Earth has warmed. "The thing that we dispute is, is it because of mankind?" Spencer says.

Some scientists say the warming may be caused by changes in the sun, or ocean currents, or changes in cloud cover, or other things we don't understand. If it's all man's fault, why did the Arctic go through a warm period early last century? Why did Greenland's temperatures rise 50 percent faster in the 1920s than they are rising now?

The media rarely ask such questions.

The media also treat the IPCC as impartial scientists, but Reiter and Christy, who were members of the IPCC, say it is not what the public thinks it is. Many of the people involved in writing its report "are not scientists at all," Reiter says. "They were essentially activists." Members of groups like Greenpeace were involved. Skeptics were often ignored.

Christy says, "We were not asked to look at a particular statement and sign our names to it."

Adds Reiter, "I resigned."

But the IPCC still listed him as part of the so-called consensus of scientists. He says he had to threaten to sue to get his name removed from the report, although the IPCC denies that.

Skeptics like Reiter, Christy, Spencer and Tim Ball, who studies the history of climate change and heads the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, are often smeared as "deniers," lumped in with Holocaust deniers and accused of being "on the take" from energy businesses." Gore impugns skeptical scientists by saying "the illusion of a debate has been purchased."

But the scientists I interviewed don't get money from business.

Some get threatened. Ball received an e-mail that said: "You will not live long enough to see global warming!"

Is this what the global-warming debate has come to?

Gore's Nobel Price Acceptance Speech...

Cartoon: Michael Ramirez in Investor's Business Daily.

Neo-Nazis to march through Prague's Jewish Quarter....

Authorities in Belgium last month wouldn't allow a demonstration against Islamicization....but here we have neo-Nazis marching in Prague.
A court in the Czech capital Prague has given the go-ahead for a neo-Nazi march through the city’s Jewish quarter on 10 November, coinciding with the anniversary of the Nazis’ “Kristallnacht” pogrom in 1938. This is the second time that the court has overturned a City Hall ban on the march by the so-called National Resistance movement. Prague city officials had banned the march, saying it would contribute to inciting intolerance and hatred against citizens on the basis of their ethnicity, origin and religious conviction. Prague’s Jewish community will gather the same day for prayers to remember the victims of the pogrom, according to Lidove noviny.
I'm all for free speech...so let the Nazis march. But, if people want to demonstration against islamicization, then that should be legal too. I hope the Czech courts are tested on the latter, too.

And, the recruiters are active in France too...

Perhaps Iraq is a magnet for terrorists...and thus making Europe safer...
Five men have been arrested in southwestern France on suspicion of helping to recruit Islamic extremist fighters for combat missions in Iraq, police said Tuesday.

Three of the five men were arrested in the city of Toulouse and two in the nearby region of Lot, in a joint operation by French and Belgian police.

The eldest of the suspects, aged from 25 to 45, is suspected of providing close-combat training to several suspected extremists arrested in an anti-terrorist swoop in February.

At least they were sending them to Iraq...

Probably better they go to Iraq then terrorize the Spanish...
Six people suspected of recruiting Islamic militants to send to Iraq were arrested by Spanish police on Wednesday, the interior ministry said.

Paramilitary police were searching the homes of the suspects in the northern Burgos region, it said.

The cell is alleged to have operated through Internet chat roms and discussion groups.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Let's re-evaluate the role of CO2....

Some new scientific evidence on the role of CO2...
Its the strongest evidence for the Greenhouse Gas theory of global warming -- that warm periods in the earth's past were typically accompanied by rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide. But that evidence is under serious attack, from new research funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The research team, led by Paleoclimatologist Lowell Stott, demonstrated CO2 levels after the last Ice Age started to rise some 1,300 years after the warming began. According to Stott, earlier researchers had cause and effect reversed -- CO2 increases were the result of warming, and not the original cause. Stott's paper is not the first to show CO2 rises followed warming trends, but it is one of the most detailed and thorough rebuttals of the linkage.

The work comes hot on the heels of other research downgrading CO2's importance in climate change. Earlier this year, the Belgian Royal Meteorological Institute issued a study saying CO2 effects had been "grossly overstated." Dr. Steven Schwartz of Brookhaven National Labs concluded that CO2-based warming had been overstated by some 400%, and a pair of Chinese researchers used mathematical modeling to demonstrate the majority of current warming was natural in origin.

Stott's findings are important for two reasons. First, they directly challenge the correlation between CO2 and warming. As Stott himself points out, CO2 is still likely a contributor to climate change, but its role needs to be reevaluated.

The results also weaken the belief that present-day atmospheric CO2 increases must be anthromorphic -- human-induced. Stott's model showed how the warming generated changed ocean conditions, which then generated massive releases of CO2 from the ocean into the atmosphere. As natural CO2 sources still constitutes more than 97% of all emissions, this may not come as much of a surprise.

But if CO2 didn't cause the warming, what did? Stott's model links the forcing to periodic changes in the Earth's orbit which increase solar radiation over Antarctica. This eventually causes ice sheet retreat, which lowers ocean albedo, reflectivity. Additional warming is generated, a feedback effect which over 1,000 or more years, transports heat via deep-sea currents to the Northern Hemisphere. The model also explains why surface measurements of solar insolation fail to correlate with warming ... the heat transport process is very slow, and thus surface warming lags centuries behind changes in solar output.

Stott is a professor at the University of Southern California, and a reviewer for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

And, he lost his job...

What a horrible mistake!
The Afghan government has sacked an official from its embassy in Germany for inviting an Israeli diplomat to an event.

Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry said the invitation was "a technical mistake" made by a political employee. It said the unnamed official had sent the invitation card to the Israeli Embassy in Berlin by "mistake" on the occasion of Afghanistan's Independence Day in August, and that the Afghan ambassador was not aware of the invitation. Afghanistan, like most Muslim-majority countries, does not recognize the Jewish state.

Keep this guy out of Canada!

A former advisor to Tony Blair would like to extend the nanny state....
Smokers should be forced to apply for an annual £200 licence in order to purchase cigarettes, a Government advisor has suggested.

The scheme would ensure smokers had to make a conscious decision to continue the habit and require people to become "registered addicts".

Prof Julian le Grand, a former advisor to Tony Blair, floated the idea during a speech this week. He also proposed banning food manufacturers from adding salt to products, an exercise hour for all employees during the working day and free fruit in offices.

The smoking permits were immediately lambasted as an excessive nanny state measure and "political suicide", given that their introduction would alienate the one quarter of British adults who smoke.
Could we put him on a no-fly list, so that he can't come here...