This is a very bad idea...

No one should get preferences....

Mayor Richard Daley said Wednesday that he would support an effort to give preferential treatment in city contracting to businesses owned by gays and lesbians.

The city already sets aside a portion of contracts for businesses owned by blacks, Hispanics, Asians and women, though the program has been plagued by cases where companies that claimed such status turned out to be owned by whites. African-African aldermen also have raised concerns that City Hall hasn't met the goals.

Now Ald. Thomas Tunney (44th), the City Council's openly gay member, wants companies owned by gays and lesbians to enjoy the same consideration in doing business with the city.

"I think it's good," said Daley, who enjoys strong support from gays and lesbians. "It helps businesses grow in the city, and that's what you want."

More on Human Rights Watch...

Their anti-Israel bias is in their bones....

Over the past two weeks, Human Rights Watch has been embroiled in a controversy over a fund raiser it held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. At that gathering, Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson pledged the group would use donations to “battle . . . pro-Israel pressure groups.”

As criticism of her remark poured in, Ms. Whitson responded by saying that the complaint against her was “fundamentally a racist one.” And Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, declared that “We report on Israel. Its supporters fight back with lies and deception.”

The facts tell a different story. From 2006 to the present, Human Rights Watch’s reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict have been almost entirely devoted to condemning Israel, accusing it of human rights and international law violations, and demanding international investigations into its conduct. It has published some 87 criticisms of Israeli conduct against the Palestinians and Hezbollah, versus eight criticisms of Palestinian groups and four of Hezbollah for attacks on Israel. (It also published a small number of critiques of both Israel and Arab groups, and of intra-Palestinian fighting.)

It was during this period that more than 8,000 rockets and mortars were fired at Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza. Human Rights Watch’s response? In November 2006 it said that the Palestinian Authority “should stop giving a wink and a nod to rocket attacks.” Two years later it urged the Hamas leadership “to speak out forcefully against such [rocket] attacks . . . and bring to justice those who are found to have participated in them.”

In response to the rocket war and Hamas’s violent takeover of Gaza in June 2007, Israel imposed a partial blockade of Gaza. Human Rights Watch then published some 28 statements and reports on the blockade, accusing Israel in highly charged language of an array of war crimes and human rights violations. One report headline declared that Israel was “choking Gaza.” Human Rights Watch has never recognized the difference between Hamas’s campaign of murder against Israeli civilians and Israel’s attempt to defend those civilians. The unwillingness to distinguish between aggression and self-defense blots out a fundamental moral fact—that Hamas’s refusal to stop its attacks makes it culpable for both Israeli and Palestinian casualties.

Meanwhile, Egypt has also maintained a blockade on Gaza, although it is not even under attack from Hamas. Human Rights Watch has never singled out Egypt for criticism over its participation in the blockade.

The organization regularly calls for arms embargoes against Israel and claims it commits war crimes for using drones, artillery and cluster bombs. Yet on Israel’s northern border sits Hezbollah, which is building an arsenal of rockets to terrorize and kill Israeli civilians, and has placed that arsenal in towns and villages in hopes that Lebanese civilians will be killed if Israel attempts to defend itself. The U.N. Security Council has passed resolutions demanding Hezbollah’s disarmament and the cessation of its arms smuggling. Yet while Human Rights Watch has criticized Israel’s weapons 15 times, it has criticized Hezbollah’s twice.

In the Middle East, Human Rights Watch does not actually function as a human-rights organization. If it did, it would draw attention to the plight of Palestinians in Arab countries. In Lebanon, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are warehoused in impoverished refugee camps and denied citizenship, civil rights, and even the right to work. This has received zero coverage from the organization.

Palestinians won't make peace with Israel...

Even Fatah is controlled by hardliners...

Of the Fatah Central Committee's 17 surviving members, only three can be classified as relative moderates. At least seven can be called radicals - many still oppose the original 1993 Oslo agreement - even in relation to the late PLO, Fatah, and PA leader Yasser Arafat. The remaining seven might be called hardliners whose views are close to those of Arafat, which makes any peace agreement with Israel impossible.

ONE THING that unites them all is a hatred of Hamas and a belief that Fatah is the natural and only conceivable leader of the Palestinian movement. They are eager to make a deal with Hamas, but only if the Islamists accept a subordinate role, which won't happen. Many in the younger Fatah generation, however, are sympathetic to a more equal coalition with their "brothers" to fight Israel.

At present, 14 of 17 members could never make a comprehensive peace treaty with Israel. Even the fifteenth, Abbas himself, is so firm on demanding all Palestinian refugees must be allowed to return to live in Israel, he could be added to this group.

Nothing like high school...

Gee, only 40 lashes for wearing pants...

I would have given her more than 100, no???

A Christian woman who faces 40 lashes for wearing trousers in Sudan made a dramatic appearance in court yesterday to fight her case.

Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein walked into the packed hearing in the same green slacks that got her arrested.

Under Islamic laws used in parts of the country, it is illegal for a woman to wear trousers rather than long skirts in public.

Lubna al-Hussein, along with several other women, was arrested for dressing indecently in trousers as she dined in a restaurant

But the law is not supposed to apply to non-Muslims like Miss Hussein, a former journalist who works for the United Nations.

And it is only imposed sporadically in the capital, Khartoum, where she was arrested.
Indecency cases are not uncommon in Sudan, but Miss Hussein has used hers to campaign against dress codes.

Yesterday journalists scuffled with police armed with batons outside the court and some reporters, who were briefly detained, had equipment confiscated.

Scores of women, some wearing slacks, attended to support Miss Hussein.

The case was adjourned as lawyers discussed whether her status as a UN employee gave her legal immunity.

Israel's report on Gaza...

They are pursuing 13 criminal investigations.....this is what you expect of a moral country - on the other hand, Hamas investigates only when Israeli civilians are NOT killed...

Israel's offensive against Hamas in Gaza at the beginning of the year was a "proportional response" to attacks by the Islamist group, the Foreign Ministry said in a defense brief on Operation Cast Lead released Thursday.

"Israel's resort to force in the Gaza Operation was both a necessary and a proportionate response to Hamas' attacks," the ministry said Thursday in a statement on the brief, which was published ahead of two harsh United Nations reports on the conflict expected to be released soon.

"While the Israel Defense Forces continues to investigate specific incidents during the Operation, the Paper demonstrates that Israeli commanders and soldiers were guided by International Humanitarian Law, including the principles of distinction and proportionality."

The ministry said the brief, titled "The Operation in Gaza - Legal and Factual Aspects," also details the context of the campaign.

According to the statement, the brief gives previously unpublished details of multiple Israel Defense Forces investigations into allegations made by various groups of violations of the law during Operation Cast Lead, the code-name for the 3-week offensive.

The paper reveals that IDF investigative teams are currently examining approximately 100 complaints, including 13 criminal investigations opened so far.

Click here for the entire report...

Violence at the grave...

The Iranian regime continues it's tortuous ways..

Iranian police fired tear gas and beat anti-government protesters with batons to disperse thousands at a graveside memorial Thursday for victims of post-election violence, witnesses and state television said.

Demonstrations that drew thousands more later spread to other parts of the capital Tehran and more clashes with security forces erupted. Witnesses said police fired tear gas at dozens of demonstrators on Valiasr Street who set tires and trash cans ablaze in response.

Police barred opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi from joining the crowd around the grave of Neda Agha Soltan, a young woman was shot to death at a June 20 to protest the disputed presidential election. The 27-year-old music student's dying moments on the pavement were filmed and circulated widely on the Web, and her name became a rallying cry for the opposition.

"Neda is alive, Ahmadinejad is dead," some of those at the ceremony chanted, referring to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who the opposition claims won the June 12 election by fraud. Witnesses said plainclothes forces charged at them with batons and tear gas, some of them chanting, "Death to those who are against the supreme leader." State television also reported that police used tear gas to disperse the demonstrators.

Is the Obama doctrine dead???

Well...it just never got off the ground...

But even lacking an ideology, the administration does have a doctrine. The defining principle of President Obama's foreign policy is engagement with America's adversaries. Much of the president's public diplomacy has been designed to clear a path for such talks -- expressing respect for legitimate grievances, apologizing for past wrongs and offering dialogue without preconditions.

Six months on, how fares the Obama doctrine? Concerning North Korea and Iran, the doctrine is on its deathbed.

North Korea responded to administration outreach by testing a nuclear weapon, firing missiles toward U.S. allies, resuming plutonium reprocessing and threatening the United States with a "fire shower of nuclear retaliation." During congressional testimony, Clinton admitted, "At this point [it] seems implausible, if not impossible, the North Koreans will return to the six-party talks and begin to disable their nuclear capacity again."

The Iranian regime's reaction to engagement was to cut the ribbon on a nuclear enrichment facility, add centrifuges, conduct a fraudulent election, and kill and imprison a variety of political opponents. Regarding administration overtures, Clinton recently told the BBC, "We haven't had any response. We've certainly reached out and made it clear that's what we'd be willing to do . . . but I don't think they have any capacity to make that kind of decision right now."

The problem is not engagement itself -- which was, after all, attempted in various forms by the previous administration. The difficulty is that the Obama foreign policy team has often argued that the reason for tension and conflict with nations such as North Korea and Iran is a lack of adequate American engagement -- which is absurd, and which has raised absurdly high expectations.

During the 2008 campaign, for example, Obama adviser P.J. Crowley (now State Department spokesman) argued, "Hard-liners on both sides have dominated that relationship and made it very difficult for the United States and Iran to come together and have a serious conversation." But can the lack of a serious conversation with Iran -- or with North Korea -- now credibly be blamed on the previous administration? Obama's diplomatic hand has been extended for a while now. Fists remain clenched. This is not because some magical diplomatic words remain unspoken. It is because of the nature of oppressive regimes themselves.

Such regimes are often internally preoccupied. Precisely because they lack genuine legitimacy, they spend large amounts of time and effort maintaining their fragile authority, consolidating power and managing undemocratic transitions. North Korea confronts a succession crisis. Iran deals with growing dissent and clerical division. Both tend to make calculations based on internal power struggles, not some rational calculation of their external image and interests. They are so inwardly focused that they do not have, as Clinton said, "any capacity" to respond to engagement. It is questionable in these cases whether we currently have any serious negotiating partners at all.

And the inherent instability of oppressive regimes also leads them to tighten control by invoking threats from abroad -- particularly from the United States. Because anti-Americanism is a central commitment of North Korean and Iranian ideologies, any softening of this resentment requires a kind of voluntary regime change. Pyongyang and Tehran would need to find a new source of legitimacy -- a new prop for their power -- other than hatred for America. Not easy or likely.

The Obama administration's public campaign of engaging enemies is headed toward an entirely unintended consequence. Eventually it will raise expectations for action. As the extended hand is slapped again and again, the goals of North Korea and Iran will be fully revealed and the cost to American credibility will rise. Already the administration has given Iran a September deadline to respond to the offer of talks and has threatened "crippling action" if Iran achieves nuclear capabilities. Congress is preparing sanctions on Iranian refined petroleum, which would escalate tensions significantly.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Try?

Organic food offers no benefits...

But, it is more expensive...

Organic food lovers may insist their produce, meat and milk are fresher, tastier, and better for the environment. But a new study suggests they aren't any more nutritious.

The study, commissioned by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), an independent department set up by the British government, found no significant differences in the nutrition content of organic food compared with conventionally made food.

The study was a systematic review, or meta-analysis, of dozens of studies on organic foods, published over the past 50 years, and was conducted by a team of researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The researchers say they found more than 52,000 articles on organic food, and narrowed them down to 162 studies analyzing the nutrient content of organic versus conventionally produced foods.

They found no evidence of a difference between organic and conventional crops in terms of their content of a number of nutrients, including:

* vitamin C
* magnesium
* calcium
* potassium
* zinc
* copper

Conventional crops were found to contain more nitrogen than organics, and organic crops had higher phosphorus and acidity content than conventional crops.

Gay man attacked in Swindon, UK...

I used to work in Swindon, so this is close to home...but why won't the article say who the perpetrators are????

A Swindon man who was attacked after a night out in the town has said he was beaten because he was gay.

The victim, who did not want to be named, said he had been walking home with another man who was not gay from the Pink Rooms nightclub in the Old Town at around 4:30am on Sunday.

He told the Swindon Advertiser he was stopped by two men who asked why he had red glitter on his face.

He said this led to an angry exchange which included homophobic insults and he was then punched repeatedly by one of the men and kicked on the floor by the other.

The victim, who said he suffered back pain and bruising to his neck and right side, told the newspaper: “It was horrific. I have never experienced anything like this before.

“It was a hate crime. They hated me because I’m gay and that is the thing that makes it worse for me.”

He described one of the men as being white, quite broad and around 25 years old, with short black spiky hair. He was wearing knee-length shorts and a t-shirt.

The other man, who was said to be of mixed race, was also in his mid-20s and was wearing trousers and a t-shirt.

Hmmm...mixed race...I'd like to know more, no?

Murdered because of a cell phone...

The gall...she owned a cell phone...

A Gaza man is being held on suspicion he bludgeoned his daughter with an iron chain, cracking her skull in a particularly brutal family "honor killing," two human rights groups said Wednesday, citing police and forensics reports.

The assault was triggered by Jawdat Najjar's discovery that his daughter Fadia -- a 27-year-old divorced mother of five -- owned a cell phone, the groups said. He suspected she used it to speak to a man outside the family, according to the groups' reports.

Dr. Mohammed Sultan, who examined the victim, told The Associated Press that her head and face were bloodied, her body covered by bruises and that she suffered internal bleeding.

Wente's latest column....

She highlights another horrible human rights decision in Canada...

In March, 2005, Constable Michael Shaw was on patrol in the Bridle Path, an ultra-affluent Toronto neighbourhood he knew well. He was showing a female trainee the ropes. Down the street, he spotted an unfamiliar letter-carrier delivering the mail. He asked him for ID, ran his name through the computer, thanked him for his trouble and verified with a regular postie that the new guy was a fill-in. The letter-carrier was not insulted, detained or charged with any crime.

Innocuous? Not to Ronald Phipps, the fill-in letter-carrier. He is black. The cop is white. Mr. Phipps decided he'd been a victim of racial profiling, and took his case to the Human Rights Tribunal. In a ruling last month, the adjudicator agreed.

The decision makes for scary reading, because it says someone can be found guilty just for making someone else feel bad. “There is no need to establish an intention or motivation to discriminate,” it says. “[T]he focus of the enquiry is on the effect of the respondent's action on the complainant.”

According to the tribunal, “unconscious” discrimination is no different from “conscious” discrimination. And the onus is on the accused to prove he's innocent. “Once a prima facie case of discrimination has been established, the burden shifts to the respondent to provide a rational explanation which is not discriminatory. ... The respondent must offer an explanation which is credible on all the evidence.”

Community policing is a big deal in Toronto these days. Its essence is getting to know the people in the neighbourhood. Mr. Phipps was a stranger there. But the adjudicator didn't buy Constable Shaw's rationale. A white cop had stopped an African-Canadian in an affluent neighbourhood, and “on a balance of probabilities,” that made the cop guilty of discrimination.

No one can deny that black men continue to be unfairly singled out because of skin colour. According to one survey, two-thirds of African-American men say they've experienced racial profiling at some time. The only surprise is that the figure isn't higher.

But condemning a police officer as a racist for exercising judgment on the job is not how to improve race relations. As Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair has pointed out, the tribunal has set a standard nobody, however fair-minded, can meet. “You can have the best of intentions and be totally without bias, but none of that matters if someone wants to believe you are biased.”

By his own account, Mr. Phipps has suffered grievously since the incident in 2005. He told the Toronto Star he has trouble sleeping, has lost weight and is “teased mercilessly” by co-workers. He wants financial compensation (unspecified) for his pain and suffering, and, for good measure, has also brought a discrimination claim over the same incident against the police chief and the entire force. (It will be heard in September.)

According to human-rights commissioner Barbara Hall, the case sends a message that “systemic discrimination ... requires hard work to get rid of.” But it sends another message: The tribunal is an easy mark.

Blinders...

At least 82 gay men murdered in Iraq.....

Gee, couldn't Obama say something?

The young man turns to the camera and pleads with his tormentors.

"I'm not a terrorist," he tells the Iraqi police who surround him. "I want you to know I am different. But I am not a terrorist."

To some fundamentalist Iraqi Muslims, Ahmed Sadoun Saleh was worse than a terrorist.

He was gay. He wore his hair long and took female hormones to grow breasts. Amused by his appearance, Iraqi police officers stopped him in December at a checkpoint in a southern Baghdad neighborhood dominated by radical Shiite militias. They groped Saleh and ridiculed him.

The assault was captured on video and circulated on cellphones throughout Baghdad, says Ali Hili, founder of London-based Iraqi LGBT, a group dedicated to protecting Iraq's gays and lesbians. Shortly after the video was made public, Hili says Saleh contacted him, fearing for his life, and asked for his help to flee Iraq.

"Unfortunately, it was too late," Hili says. Saleh turned up dead two months later, he says.

At least 82 gay men have been killed in Iraq since December, according to Iraqi LGBT. The violence has raised questions about the Iraqi government's ability to protect a diverse range of vulnerable minority groups that also includes Christians and Kurds, especially following the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities last month.

And, to be fair, Bush never said a word either...

What's it like being a gay muslim????

The Guardian in the UK speaks to 4 gay muslims...and some truth does emerge...

I think things are getting worse for gay Muslims because of the more extreme interpretations of Islam around today. The Muslim community is more homophobic – at least towards those who are out and comfortable. People have become brainwashed and no longer want to think about the true meaning of Islam.

I've seen Muslim men sent to the US for electric shock treatment to "cure" them of their homosexuality; I know of gay men who have been murdered in "honour killings" – in fact, the police often contact our sexual health organisation if there is an unexplained death of a young Muslim man to check if he is on our database. I have even heard parents tell their children they would rather they were suicide bombers than gay.

Another gay muslim actually believes he can find religious acceptance...

Eventually I saw a meeting advertised in the Pink Paper looking for gay Muslims for a support group. Through Imaan, I listened to scholars and open-minded imams, and discovered that, like many things in the Qu'ran, there can be different interpretations about homosexuality.

When an Arabic paper picked up the story of our first conference, an extremist group issued a fatwa against us. The police sent 40 riot officers to protect us. After 9/11, we experienced Islamophobia including from within the gay community – at Gay Pride, some of the crowd heckled us, and even a Pride steward referred to us as terrorists. True, most of the threats we had at Imaan came from Muslims, but they were also more generally from men.

Yes, try out those different interpretations in Saudi Arabia or Iran.

And, yet another one says he has found a tolerant imam...

Many Muslims think gay culture is about promiscuous sex, drugs and drinking. But being a gay Muslim can mean committing to one relationship. If gay Muslims marry each other, it would discourage double lives and promiscuity. The imams I have said this to agree with me, but say they can't say that in public.

Hmmmm, I find it hard to believe that there are many imams who support same-sex marriage.

Israel was right in Gaza...

Israel proved that fighting back ends the rocket attacks...

In early 2006, shortly before the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War, an Israeli intelligence officer predicted the future. “Missile war will replace terrorist war,” he told me when I spoke with him at the Ministry of Defense.

He was right. Just a few months later, Hezbollah launched thousands of Katyusha rockets into Northern Israel and forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee south toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. South Lebanon was punished much more thoroughly than Northern Israel, but the Palestinians in Gaza nevertheless took Hezbollah’s Baghdad Bob–style boasts of “divine victory” seriously. Hamas ramped up its own rocket war until fed-up Israelis gave Gaza the South Lebanon treatment this past December and January.

Hamas is a bit slower to learn than was Hezbollah, but seven long months after the conclusion of Operation Cast Lead, the rockets out of Gaza have finally stopped. Israelis will no longer put up with indiscriminate attacks on their houses and schools. Many Palestinians in Gaza have likewise had their fill of Hamas’s self-destructive campaign of “resistance.”

The New York Times reports that Hamas has decided to wage a “culture war” instead of a rocket war because, as one leader put it, “the fighters needed a break and the people needed a break.”

Movies, plays, art exhibitions, and poems are Hamas’s new weapons. Hamas supporters, though, aren’t the only Palestinians in Gaza using art as a weapon. Said al-Bettar skewers Hamas every night at Gaza City’s Shawa cultural center in his popular play The Women of Gaza and the Patience of Job. “We were the victims of a big lie,” he says about the doctrine of armed “resistance.”

The Israeli intelligence official I spoke to deserves some credit for predicting the replacement of terrorist war with missile war. Hamas and Islamic Jihad had already fired rockets at Israel, but they hadn’t fired many, and neither the recent Gaza war nor the Second Lebanon War had yet started.

Since then a pattern has emerged that should be obvious to anybody with eyes to see, whether they’re an intelligence official or not. After Israeli soldiers withdraw from occupied territory, Israeli civilians are shot at with rockets from inside that territory. Another pattern has just been made clear. After Israelis shoot back, the rockets stop flying.

It has been years since Hezbollah has dared to fire rockets at Israel or start anything else on the border. Hamas no longer dares to fire rockets at Israel either.

Green layoffs....

Welcome to the Green economy....

Around 25 workers have been staging a sit-in at the Vestas Wind Systems plant on the Isle of Wight as part of a campaign to prevent the plant closing on Friday with the loss of hundreds of jobs.

However, letters were delivered to the workers on Tuesday night telling them they were being dismissed with immediate effect and that they were not entitled to any compensation because of their action.

The letters were delivered along with food but the workers said it will not affect their campaign.

The Danish company which owns the factory is due to take legal action at a county court on the island on Wednesday as part of moves to repossess its factory.

Are Christians going to riot????

If it had been a koran, we'd be preparing for riots...

Christians voiced anger and dismay Tuesday after a Bible, which was part of an exhibition inviting viewers to add their reflections, was defaced with offensive and foul-mouthed scrawl.

Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art has decided to put the Bible in a glass case after the exhibit, called Untitled 2009 and part of a show entitled Made In God's Image, was vandalised.

Artist Jane Clarke, a minister at the Metropolitan Community Church, asked visitors to annotate the Bible with stories and reflections, as a way of making it more inclusive.

But visitors to the gallery took the invitation a bit further than she had anticipated.

"This is all sexist pish, so disregard it all," wrote one person, while another described the Bible as "the biggest lie in human history" and a third wrote: "Mick Jagger and David Bowie belong in here."

On the first page of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, someone had written: "I am Bi, Female and Proud. I want no god who is disappointed in this."

Clarke said: "I had hoped that people would show respect for the Bible, for Christianity and indeed for the Gallery of Modern Art. I am saddened that some people have chosen to write offensive messages.

Cambridge Cops on the record...

Jew hatred at UC Irvine...

I'm so happy I am not a student these days...

To see a firsthand example of Islamic fundamentalist anti-Semitism, you need look no further than the University of California, Irvine.

The campus’ Muslim Student Union is nationally infamous for their annual anti-Israel week (which they unsuccessfully christen “Palestine Awareness” week) and for the vitriolic anti-Semitic language of some of their speakers. The MSU is the type of organization proud to invite the soft-core porn-drawing, scholar-wannabe Norman Finkelstein, which it did in 2008.

This past May, the MSU’s anti-Israel week was perhaps more gorged with controversy than ever before. A number of campus groups organized in order to petition the co-sponsors of the week-long carnival of misinformation of the nature of the event they had agreed to co-sponsor. As it turned out, many of these campus groups were unaware of the controversial nature of anti-Israel week, as the MSU delegates who pitched it to them failed to objectively and accurately describe it. As a result of the petition, five co-sponsors reneged their participation. In addition, one of the MSU’s scheduled speakers — Gideon Levy, a Jerusalem Post journalist — also canceled his attendance.

The anti-Israel event this year was dispersed over three weeks rather than one, with the second week serving as the main course. The wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing cast of speakers the MSU invited this year featured Reem Salahi, a National Lawyers Guild delegate; Anna Baltzer , a so-called “renowned” humanitarian voice on the Israeli-Arab conflict who has colored Zionism as a “racist movement”; Cynthia McKinney, a Green Party candidate and former member of Congress who was nearly arrested in 2006 for punching an officer at Capitol Hill; and the coup de grace of every anti-Israel week across the Western U.S., Amir Abdel Malik Ali — an Oakland imam who has repeatedly accused Jews of controlling U.S. media, the economy, and perpetrating 9/11.

Reem Salahi hosted an event during the first week exploring Israeli “war crimes” during the Gaza offensive in the beginning of the year, broken down into six sections designed to systematically refute pro-Israel claims (Israel does not target civilians, Israel alerted Palestinian civilians before airstrikes). Salahi force-fed the audience a warped, hobbled logic to reject these claims (civilians died in Gaza as a result of collateral damage, so Israel is targeting them. Salahi only saw one flyer during her trip to Gaza, so Israel didn’t warn civilians about airstrikes).

Anna Baltzer and Cynthia McKinney gave speeches of no notable interest during the second week, aside from the usual “Israel is a criminal state” and “Israel is unjustly perpetuating a holocaust.” McKinney did recount her experience of attempting to sail to Gaza during Operation Cast Lead and expressed outrage as she said her boat was “rammed” by an Israeli warship — an action she for some reason did not predict before she tried to illegally cross a military naval blockade meant to block weapons smuggling.

Carleton hires an alleged terrorist to teach sociology....

Could they not find anybody else in the city of Ottawa???

An Ottawa university professor charged in the deadly terrorist bombing of a French synagogue nearly 30 years ago is expected to resume teaching this week.

Hassan Diab, who is charged with murdering four people in the 1980 bombing, will begin teaching a part-time introductory sociology course at Carleton University two days a week until the middle of August.

Diab, whose strict bail conditions prevent him from leaving the house alone, will be required to travel to and from the university with his common-law spouse Rania Tfaily, an Ottawa court heard Monday.

But once at the university, Diab will no longer need an escort.

Diab's lawyer, Rod Sellar, told an Ottawa court Monday Diab will be at Carleton teaching and meeting with students between 1:30 and 5:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but the course may require him to go to the university almost daily.

Lin Moody, a spokeswoman for Carleton University, confirmed Monday that the school has hired Diab to teach for few weeks this summer. He was given a contract, she said, because of "an unforeseen leave" taken by the instructor who had originally been hired to teach the introductory sociology course.

Muslim wins damages in Sweden....

Her government employer did not want her to wear a head scarf.....

She was forced from work because of wearing a headscarf, now a Muslim woman has won 5,400 US dollars in damages from her former employer - the local authority. The Equality Ombudsman (diskrimineringsombudsmannen) decided on Monday that these damages were suitable to compensate the woman for the insult and injury that the local authority had caused her.

It started in 2007, when the woman was told that she must stop working at a café in Skövde, in south central Sweden, unless she stopped wearing her head scarf. Magnus Jacobson of the Equality Ombudsman says that it is specially important that local government employers do not discriminate against workers on ground of their religion.

Official headscares for female police officers....

Soon, you'll have stores to sell the entire line of halal clothing....

Female police officers are being issued with head scarves to wear when they visit a mosque.

Officers are expected to place the coverings over their heads shortly before they enter the mosque, in keeping with Islamic custom.

There are two versions of the head covering - to match the black of a police officer's uniform and the blue of the Police Community Support Officer uniforms.

The head scarves have been issued force-wide by Avon and Somerset police - and even have the force's emblem sewn on.

They have already been given to seven police officers and eight police community support officers, including Assistant Chief Constable Jackie Roberts.

Mrs Roberts said: 'Producing head coverings for our officers and staff to wear in places of worship is part of our commitment to engage with all our communities.

How about if they just wear leather when engaging with the gay community???

The surest way to increase the number of migrants...

This seems ridiculous...

The "Global Calais Scheme" is to be partly paid for by British taxpayers and will be offered to those sleeping rough around the French port as they try to board ferries and trains bound for England.

Under the scheme, migrants will be offered a plane ride home as well as resettlement assistance and retraining when they get there. The French government is also offering 2,000 euros (£1,724) in cash.

The plan was outlined on Monday by Pierre de Bousquet, who as state Prefect for the Pas-de-Calais, is the most powerful politician in the region.

He said the cash "will smooth their passage in their home country and enable each and every one of them to realise their ambitions. Organisations are present in their country of origin who will assure they're looked after.

"We're trying to open their eyes to the illusion of their wish to go to Great Britain. The United Kingdom is not the Eldorado they believe it to be.

"The solution that we advocate is voluntary repatriation. These people are deluded by the people smugglers whose have an interest in maintaining their illusions. The procedure of voluntary repatriation is not simply to buy an airline ticket for each person."

All genuine asylum cases would continue to be considered, Mr De Bousquet added.

The plans were attacked by the Conservatives. Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: "Why on earth will offering people money just when they turn up in Calais stop more and more turning up?

"It will make the trafficking of people even more lucrative, and will simply be exploited by criminals.

The real racist....

Some truth in the Gates affair...

Lost in the outcry over Gates’s arrest is a critical detail. When Sgt. Crowley asked Gates if he wanted another officer to take his house key and to secure the front door, Gates told him the door was defective due to damage it had sustained in a previous break-in attempt by a would-be burglar. As Gates himself had good reason to suspect, the police had arrived to stop a possible crime in progress.

Those who insist on taking Gates’s allegations of police racism at face value—from President Obama to Al Sharpton, who called the incident “the highest example of racial profiling I have seen”—should also consider that the professor has long been something of a provocateur on racial issues. He has claimed that he “sees” racism everywhere, and laments that “because of white racism,” he must continually endure the indignity of knowing that “[w]hen I walk into a room, people still see my blackness more than my Gates-ness or my literary-ness.”

Central to that “Gates-ness” is the professor’s belief that racism is omnipresent in American society. He insists that “racism has become fashionable” in contemporary America, and sees evidence of it in everything from the criminal justice system to television programs and college curricula, which include a canon of Western literature that “represents the return of an order in which my people were subjugated, the voiceless, the invisible, the unrepresented.” According to Gates, moreover, white people erect innumerable barriers that virtually guarantee black failure.

Gates has long tried to popularize his views about white racism at Harvard. After joining the Harvard faculty in 1991, for example, one of Gates’ first acts was to hire filmmaker Spike Lee as a guest lecturer at the university. Lee has claimed that white “racism is woven into the very fabric of America,” and by his own admission is “convinced [that] AIDS is a government-engineered disease, and that blacks are incapable of being racists because they lack social, political, and economic power.”

In 1993 Gates lured Professor Cornel West away from Princeton University, to join him on the Harvard faculty. A Marxist who has branded the U.S. a “racist patriarchal” nation where “white supremacy” continues to define everyday life, West contends that “a profound hatred of African people … sits at the center of American civilization.”

The most egregious instance of Gates’s racial agenda is his attempt to slander a white police officer doing his job simply for the color of his skin. Thus, the most cogent summary of “Gatesgate” comes from Dennis O'Connor, president of the Cambridge Police Superior Officers Association. Reflecting on President Obama’s attempt to link Gates’s arrest to the history of racism, O’Connor suggested that the president had it backward: “The facts of the case suggested that the president used the right adjective but directed it to the wrong party.”

Hamas now uses the UN as a shield....

Children are not enough, it now has to use the UN...

Hamas is digging tunnels next to United Nations facilities under the assumption that the IDF will not target them during a future conflict, defense officials warned on Sunday.

The officials said a tunnel Hamas had been digging adjacent to a UN school in Beit Hanun had collapsed earlier this month. According to some reports obtained by Israel, the collapse of the tunnel caused damage inside the school.

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness denied claims that a tunnel was being dug under a UN school, and said, regarding claims tunnels were being dug adjacent to UN schools: "It is not within the UN mandate to police what is happening under the streets of Gaza."

According to one official, the tunnel was being dug directly next to the school and likely underneath it as well.

The IDF's concern, a defense official said, was that Hamas was digging tunnels adjacent to UN and other international facilities because the terror group knew that the IDF would think twice before bombing them.

The official said it was certain that the digging was being done without the UN's knowledge.

The idea of tunneling near the UN school, the official said, was a lesson Hamas had learned from Operation Cast Lead earlier this year, during which the IDF did its utmost to avoid targeting UN facilities.

"Hamas uses civilian infrastructure to hide behind," explained the official. "This is another example of Hamas's cynical use of a school."

More child abuse in Gaza....

Children in Hamas summer camps re-enact the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit...

Children in Hamas summer camps reenacted the abduction of IDF soldier Gilad Schalit in the presence of top Hamas officials, according to pictures obtained by The Jerusalem Post.

According to Israeli defense officials, more than 120,000 Palestinian children are spending the summer in Hamas-run camps. In addition to religious studies, the children undergo semi-military training with toy guns.

At a recent summer camp graduation ceremony, the children put on a show reenacting the June 2006 abduction of Schalit. Present was Osama Mazini, a senior Hamas political leader, who is in charge of the Schalit negotiations with Israel on behalf of the terrorist group.

In one picture, obtained by the Post, Mazini is seen standing next to Ahmad Bahar, the acting speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, distributing Korans to camp counselors.

"This sends a message," one Israeli defense official said, regarding Mazini's participation at the ceremony. "This is Hamas's way of showing Palestinian children that kidnapping soldiers is the correct way of life."

Lebanon blames Israel for Hezbollah blast....

Right, of course, who else but Israel could be responsible....

The Lebanese Foreign Ministry has sent a letter to the United Nations accusing Israel for the explosion in a weapons cache in a southern Lebanon village earlier this month, a Lebanese newspaper reported on Monday.

The London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat also said that contrary to previous reports, the blast apparently claimed the lives of several people and injured several others.

Lebanon now claims that the explosion took place at an uncompleted structure in the village that stored "arms left behind by the Israelis" during the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006.

The United Nations, which has peacekeepers based in the south, said there were signs the stockpile belonged to Hezbollah, and added that the presence of these arms was a violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701 which ended the war.

Muslims expand attacks in Nigeria....

They are now targeting two new states....

Muslim rebels attacked Nigerian police stations in two northeastern states overnight, killing at least one fireman, a day after more than 50 people died in clashes in Bauchi state, sources said on Monday.

The leader of the small Islamic group Boko Haram, which opposes Western education and demands the adoption of sharia law in all of Nigeria, threatened further attacks against security forces.

"Democracy and the current system of education must be changed otherwise this war that is yet to start would continue for long," Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf was quoted as saying in an interview with Nigeria's Daily Trust.

"We don't have a quarrel with the public, only the authorities."

Resisting climate hysteria....

Richard Lindzen is one of my favorite climatologists....

Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) strongly implies that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, the basis for alarm due to such warming is similarly diminished. However, a really important point is that the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc. etc. all depend not on some global average of surface temperature anomaly, but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind. The state of the ocean is also often crucial. Our ability to forecast any of these over periods beyond a few days is minimal (a leading modeler refers to it as essentially guesswork). Yet, each catastrophic forecast depends on each of these being in a specific range. The odds of any specific catastrophe actually occurring are almost zero. This was equally true for earlier forecasts of famine for the 1980's, global cooling in the 1970's, Y2K and many others. Regionally, year to year fluctuations in temperature are over four times larger than fluctuations in the global mean. Much of this variation has to be independent of the global mean; otherwise the global mean would vary much more. This is simply to note that factors other than global warming are more important to any specific situation. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred and this will not change in the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.

In view of the above, one may reasonably ask why there is the current alarm, and, in particular, why the astounding upsurge in alarmism of the past 4 years. When an issue like global warming is around for over twenty years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence, and donations are reasonably clear. So too are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of CO2 is a dream-come-true. After all, CO2 is a product of breathing itself. Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted because it is necessary for ‘saving’ the earth. Nations have seen how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. But, by now, things have gone much further. The case of ENRON (a now bankrupt Texas energy firm) is illustrative in this respect. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, ENRON had been one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon emission rights. This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to over a trillion dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions. Hedge funds are actively examining the possibilities; so was the late Lehman Brothers. Goldman Sachs has lobbied extensively for the ‘cap and trade’ bill, and is well positioned to make billions. It is probably no accident that Gore, himself, is associated with such activities. The sale of indulgences is already in full swing with organizations selling offsets to one’s carbon footprint while sometimes acknowledging that the offsets are irrelevant. The possibilities for corruption are immense. Archer Daniels Midland (America’s largest agribusiness) has successfully lobbied for ethanol requirements for gasoline, and the resulting demand for ethanol may already be contributing to large increases in corn prices and associated hardship in the developing world (not to mention poorer car performance). And finally, there are the numerous well meaning individuals who have allowed propagandists to convince them that in accepting the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue For them, their psychic welfare is at stake.

The targeting of Michael Savage....

Newly-released documents indicate he was barred from the UK just for 'balance'...

Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has suffered a major setback in her legal battle with American 'shock jock' Michael Savage after her officials were accused of banning him from the country on racial grounds.

Emails written by Home Office officials privately acknowledged the ban on Mr Savage would provide 'balance' to a list dominated by Muslims - and linked the decision to Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

The officials admitted their action could look 'duplicitous' and cited his 'homophobia' as a reason the move would receive public support.

The Right-wing radio presenter, whose hardline views on Islam, rape and autism have caused outrage in the US but whose show, The Savage Nation, has eight million listeners, was identified in May by Ms Smith as one of 16 people barred due to their political views.

Mr Savage, who had not even applied for entry to Britain, claimed his name had been 'plucked out of a hat' because he was 'controversial and white'. He has since served a £100,000 libel writ on Ms Smith, who announced his ban on television.

Now, correspondence released under Freedom of Information legislation suggests the banning of Mr Savage, whose real name is Michael Weiner, was based on a party political calculation made at the highest level of Government.

One message, sent by an unidentified Home Office official on November 27 last year, said that 'with Weiner, I can understand that disclosure of the decision would help provide a balance of types of exclusion cases'.

The documents include a draft recommendation, marked 'Restricted', saying: 'We will want to ensure that the names disclosed reflect the broad range of cases and are not all Islamic extremists.'

Does this officer really need sensitivity training???

Well, this time they call it management advice....

He may also face legal action from serial offender Glen Francis whose complaint was upheld by a disciplinary hearing.

Francis, 35, flew into a rage when officers called to arrest his girlfriend at his home, hurling a bowl of pasta at a policewoman guarding the hallway.

It was claimed to have held her captive and threatened to shoot her before she escaped from the house in North Shields, Tyne and Wear.

When police back-up arrived, he was said to have lunged at them with a six inch knife before he was shot twice with a Taser gun.

Even then he pulled metal barbs from his skin before barricading himself inside the kitchen where he smashed the walls with a hammer and shouted: "The first copper in here is getting f****** killed, come on, I only want one of you."

Trained negotiators were called in and he was eventually taken into custody after officers stormed the room and Tasered him a further three times.

He complained that after he had been stripped searched, the sergeant referred to him as a c***.

An investigation by Northumbria Police Professional Standards Department (PSD) found the sergeant guilty of misconduct for using the swear word.

A PSD report states that the sergeant was pushed into making an "inappropriate comment" following a tirade of abuse from Francis.

It said: "The police officer openly admits he made the inappropriate comment about Mr Francis after the strip search had been conducted.

"He admits this was unprofessional, although it was never his intention for Mr Francis to hear this comment. He stipulates this comment was a result of the violence and abuse from Mr Francis."

The sergeant, who has not been named has been ordered to undergo to attend a "management advice course".

Hamas starts to implement a dress code....

Of course, designed for women...

Senior Hamas officials had claimed, in the wake of Hamas' June 2007 Gaza takeover, that the organization did not have any intention to turn the Sharia, Islamic religious law into official state regulations. Two years later, however, it seems that the Hamas government is slowly introducing more and more regulations in the spirit of the Islamic decrees.

The London-based newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi reported that the organization's Gaza government had recently approved a series of laws, a Muslim code of conduct of sorts, meant to guard Muslim religion and morals. These guidelines join an increasing amount of reports from Gaza residents saying that modesty patrols were forcing women to wear head coverings, especially at Gaza's beaches, and that they were inspecting isolated cars in order to prevent unmarried couples being alone together.

Gaza's judicial authority, which runs the strip's courts on behalf of Hamas, had even recently ruled that all female attorneys must wear the traditional Muslim head covering, the hijab, and wear dresses during court appearances. The ruling was condemned by the independent lawyers association.

Supreme Court chief justice Abdul-Raouf Halabi said Sunday that female lawyers will be required to wear a headscarf and a long, dark colored cloak under their billowing black robes when the court returns from its summer recess in September.

Halabi said his order was designed to ensure that women dress in accordance with Islamic law, which requires women to cover up in public, wearing loose garments and only showing their hands and faces.

Some interesting weather maps...

Check out some of the other weather maps at this site...

3,000 low temperature records were set in July in the US....

Palestinians only want struggle...not peace...

Another assault on gay people in Amsterdam...

The report just mentions 'youths'...but wanna bet which religious group they come from???

One of the organisers of Amsterdam's Gay Pride, Hugo Braakhuis, and a friend were assaulted in the capital on Wednesday night.

De Telegraaf newspaper says the two men were kissing goodnight outside a bar when a group of youths started shouting abuse at them.

Braakhuis' friend spoke to them about their behaviour and one of the youths hit him.

When he fell to the ground, others in the group started kicking him.

Braakhuis was also beaten.

The police arrived quickly and arrested four of the youths.

I was able to find this on the web

The perpetrators were Moroccan-looking guys, but I also saw a blonde boy with."

Are the British about to appease Hamas....

Once again, they get it all wrong...there are no moderate elements of Hamas....

The UK government has come under rising pressure from MPs to start making contact with Palestinian group Hamas.

A Foreign Affairs Committee report also said it was "regrettable" UK-supplied military items were "almost certainly" used by Israel in the Gaza conflict.

The cross-party group, which monitors foreign policy, called on the EU to make relations with Israel conditional on its peace-making efforts.

Hamas was also criticised for its use of rockets on Israeli civilian targets.

But committee chairman Michael Gapes said the committee saw "few signs that the current policy of non-engagement with Hamas" was effective.

He added that the government "should urgently consider engaging with moderate elements within Hamas" as it had with the political wing of Hezbollah in Lebanon earlier this year.

Was Jesus a Muslim???

Gee, I thought he was Jewish!

RELIGIOUS tensions were raised in the centre of Wood Green at the weekend as Islamic activists set about trying to convince shoppers that "Jesus was a Muslim".

Police stepped in to calm the situation as bystanders were confronted with up to 70 activists aiming to give them a taste of a Britain under Shari'ah Islamic law.

The activists, who have held similar "roadshows" in south, east and west London, set up outside fashion chain H&M in Wood Green High Road on Saturday afternoon, but tensions were soon strained.

One onlooker said: "They unfurled this huge banner proclaiming that Jesus was a Muslim, which understandably raised some people's heckles.

"These people were slagging off Britain and trying to convert people to Islam. They were quite confrontational.

"The police moved in twice while I was there. They didn't take people away but they stepped in to calm them down."

A website publicising the roadshow, originally scheduled for July 4, said Wood Green had been chosen because of the "perpetual malaise" the community suffered - crime, fuel poverty and a high rate of mental health problems.

The activists intended to show how Shari'ah law would combat "gang crime, poverty and promiscuity" in the borough.

Taliban goes after journalists....

And, how many journalists now just play it safe???

The militants wore masks, carried weapons and came by the dozens. Still, they exhibited a strange sense of courtesy: They let the reporter's relatives leave the house before they bombed it.

Rehman Buneri, who works for Khyber TV in Karachi and contributes to Voice of America's Deewa Radio, was not home when the 50 or so gunmen showed up. Buneri told The Associated Press the gunmen said they'd been instructed by a "high command" to destroy the house because he had spoken negatively of the Taliban in a radio report.

As Pakistan tries to stave off a Taliban insurgency, journalists have been threatened, attacked and killed, and even their relatives have faced harm. The pressure hobbles a media that has flourished over the past decade and given Pakistanis a greater window into their often-inept government at a time when the world is watching.

Journalists say the culprits are both militants and government operatives, and that they appear determined to influence coverage. The picture is alarming enough that Pakistan is rivaling Iraq, Somalia and other conflict zones when it comes to danger to media, watchdog groups say.

Buneri, the journalist whose house was blown up, has since received threats telling him to keep quiet, "or otherwise they will silence me," he said. He has brought his relatives from Buner district to Karachi.

Another big demonstration in Tehran....

Nice to see the demonstrations continue...

Iranian police and pro-government militia attacked and scattered hundreds of protesters in a demonstration in Iran's capital Saturday, witnesses said.

The protests were in response to the demonstrations being held around the world calling for the Iranian government to release opposition activists, one of the witnesses told The Associated Press.

Protesters in Vanak and Mirdamad districts chanted "death to the dictator" and "we want our vote back" before they were attacked and beaten by police.

A good overview of global warming.....

Another story about Honour....

These people can teach us something about honour, no?

The family of an eight-year-old girl who was allegedly gang-sexually assaulted will not take her back into their home, declaring that the girl has dishonoured them.

Charges have been filed against four boys, ages nine to 14, suspected of sexually assaulting the girl in Phoenix, Arizona, last week, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office announced Thursday.

County attorney Andrew Thomas has requested the oldest boy be tried as an adult.

The boys are accused of luring the girl with chewing gum to a shed by a vacant apartment unit, then restraining her and taking turns sexually assaulting her, according to Phoenix police.

The boys and the victim were resettled Liberian refugees.

The girl was turned over to state Child Protective Services after her family disowned her, Phoenix Police spokesman Sgt. Andy Hill said Wednesday. The girl’s parents blamed her for being victimized and bringing shame to the family, he said.

Hat tip: Vlad Tepes Blog...

Where are all the feminists???

Eery silence when it comes to honour killings...

Feminist journalists like to speculate about the future of activism among women today, but you can leaf through a fat sheaf of their articles without encountering a mention of Muslim women. Feminist professors, for their part, show even less interest. Trolling through the 40-page program of the European Conference on Politics and Gender, held in Belfast last winter, I found feminist scholars (from Europe, the United States and Canada) dealing with women’s political opportunities, the implications for women of new medical technology, the politics of fashion and even women’s response to climate change. What I couldn’t find was even one lecture or discussion devoted to so-called “honour killing.” Nor was there any mention of the thousands upon thousands of women routinely flogged, raped, imprisoned or stoned to death, often with the tacit or explicit agreement of Islamic governments.

The recent Kingston murders — in which a Quebec couple stand accused of killing their three daughters (and the man’s first wife) because, according to one relative, the daughters had adopted disgracefully Western habits — apparently demonstrate that the oppression of women can be imported into countries where it has no support in law. Honour killing, far from being an isolated remnant of a primitive past, seems to be increasingly widespread.

Ayse Onal, a leading Turkish journalist, says in her book, Honour Killing: Stories of Men Who Killed, that in Turkey alone honour killings average about one a day — 1,806 were reported in the period between 2000 and 2005, a number I found astonishing.

The justifications for this crime, passed by word of mouth, apparently encourage young men and boys to consider it appropriate punishment for even trivial offences of females. Onal quotes a 14-year-old boy who slit his 16-year-old sister’s throat in the public market of the town of Urfa. Asked if he was remorseful, he explained that she had been “going about in cafés” and he had cleansed his dignity by killing her. Sentenced to 10 years, he served 34 months. (The use of brothers to commit the vile deed is a particularly horrible aspect of honour killings. In the Kingston murders, it is worth noting, one of those arrested was the alleged killers’ 18-year-old son.)

Once in a while, a few women in the West notice. On Monday, Pamela Geller, a conservative blogger in the United States, suggested that women everywhere should stand up for al-Hussein. She called the silence of women’s movements “scandalous, shameful, complicit in the horrible suppression of women in Islam.” But more typical is the feminist blog of Deborah Kate, who acknowledges that feminists have been accused of ignoring Muslim women. Kate comes out against stoning, enforced marriage, female circumcision, etc., and wonders idly whether countries guilty of crimes against women deserve sanctions like those levelled at South Africa in its apartheid days. No, she decides, exhibiting the fondness for fashionable moral relativism that is now epidemic in feminist circles, “I realize I cannot force my version of feminism upon non-Western women.”

Rex Murphy recommends Ian Plimer's book...

Plimer's book, Heaven and Earth, is the best book on global warming...

I find it curious, though, that the city is so ambivalent in its response to this cooler-than-normal summer. Curious because it's very obvious that, if the weather were hotter, what now “stinks” would be rancid, what is barely tolerable would be utterly unendurable. Yet, night after night on most of the city's TV news shows, you hear in the faux hearty chatter that is now obligatory in the weather segment great moaning and whining about “where has our summer gone?”

Personally, I don't know what it is they're yearning for. More days of blistering mid-30-degree saunas during a garbage strike? Surely not. But gurgle on they do, hoping or promising for hotter days yet to come.

What we do not hear from them, from any one of them, is the slightest indication of puzzlement over how or why so suddenly, in this age of the greatest emergency our planet has ever faced - global warming - things have gotten cool. Not a furrowed brow among the lot over the consideration that, contrary to the visions of Al Gore and David Suzuki or NASA's own anti-global warming Nostradamus, James Hansen, the great trend line of an ever-warming world is being contradicted nightly in their own forecasts.

I do recall, however, when, during the few periods Toronto was experiencing higher-than-normal temperatures - there was that period, remember, almost coincident with Stéphane Dion's election as federal Liberal leader, when Ontario warmed up more than usual - no weathercast was complete without some reference to global warming. That the then current conditions were “proof” or “another sign” or an “indication” that global warming was upon us. When every weathercast was incomplete without some pointed reference to how “unusual” such weather was.

I bring this up merely to make a single point. Not that these studio meteorologists were making the elementary mistake of confounding weather with climate, for this is a distinction familiar now even to kindergartners. Rather, to point out how “accepted” the vague, soft, but relentlessly propagandized theory of global warming has become. That being on the “right” side of the global warming argument is so very much the politically correct place to be. It's the “virtuous” side to be on, so naturally our supper-hour meteorologists, even if unconsciously, were eager to encourage virtue.

Now, however, Toronto in July is cool and I am waiting in vain for the lips of just one forecaster to ask how can this be. Waiting just once to hear the familiar phrase “global warming” in a sentence that even hints that the theory behind it is so much more tentative than we have been urged with such fervour to believe.

And while I'm waiting, perhaps I could recommend to people who study or report on the weather a wonderfully comprehensive and fearless book on the subject by Australian geologist Ian Plimer called Heaven and Earth: Global Warming - The Missing Science. If there are any willing to hear some truly inconvenient truths on the stampeding advocacy of global warming, Mr. Plimer's book is a collection of some of the sternest.

Will Muslims get their own Police in the UK???

It would be a huge mistake...

MUSLIM crime victims could gain the right to have their cases overseen by police from their own religion, it emerged last night.

Police in London already give victims the right to ask for a Sikh officer to be involved in an investigation but the scheme could be introduced for other religions elsewhere.

Chief Supt Joanna Young, from the Met’s Criminal Justice Policy Unit, said: “If it’s a success, I would encourage the other (police) associations to do likewise.”

The project is intended to help investigate “honour” killings and forced marriages but Metropolitan Police Federation chairman Peter Smyth said: “We’re stretched thin enough already. Are Sikh officers going to have their rotas changed so there’s always one on duty?

“It’s political correctness gone mad. We talking about the creation of a separate force within a force.”

But Palbinder Singh, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Sikh Association, said: “I don’t believe a white officer is ever going to be fully conversant with a Sikh.”

Another attack on Christians in Gaza.....

Part of the continuing war against Christians...

Constantine Dabbagh, Executive Secretary of the Near East Council of Churches, complained on Wednesday that three masked men who broke into his house beat him and his wife before stealing money and jewelry.

The Hamas government said it had launched an investigation into the incident, which took place on Tuesday night in the western suburbs of Gaza City.

The assault on Dabbagh and his wife is the latest in a series of attacks on members of the tiny Christian community in the Gaza Strip.

Dabbagh said that the masked men first bound his and his wife's hands behind their backs before covering their heads and faces with cloth and beating them.

He added that the assailants told him that they came to search the house for wireless devices of communications. He said that the masked men spent nearly one hour inside the house, during which time they stole money and jewelry.

The assailants also stole the Christian couple's car.

Wanted: Mullah Krekar...

Link:

Thanks to Vlad Tepes blog for posting this...

A German Spy Report on Iran....

Confirms they are working on a nuclear bomb...

President Obama has committed to trying diplomacy to stop the Iranian bomb. Time, though, is on the mullahs' side, not least because so much of it was wasted after the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate made the improbable case that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. This assessment not only contradicted previous U.S. intelligence consensus but -- as recent court documents show -- also the conclusions of a key U.S. ally with excellent sources in Iran -- Germany.

The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency, has amassed evidence of a sophisticated Iranian nuclear weapons program that continued beyond 2003. This usually classified information comes courtesy of Germany's highest state-security court. In a 30-page legal opinion on March 26 and a May 27 press release in a case about possible illegal trading with Iran, a special national security panel of the Federal Supreme Court in Karlsruhe cites from a May 2008 BND report, saying the agency "showed comprehensively" that "development work on nuclear weapons can be observed in Iran even after 2003."

According to the judges, the BND supplemented its findings on August 28, 2008, showing "the development of a new missile launcher and the similarities between Iran's acquisition efforts and those of countries with already known nuclear weapons programs, such as Pakistan and North Korea."

It's important to point out that this was no ordinary agency report, the kind that often consists just of open source material, hearsay and speculation. Rather, the BND submitted an "office testimony," which consists of factual statements about the Iranian program that can be proved in a court of law. This is why, in their March 26 opinion, the judges wrote that "a preliminary assessment of the available evidence suggests that at the time of the crime [April to November 2007] nuclear weapons were being developed in Iran." In their May press release, the judges come out even more clear, stating unequivocally that "Iran in 2007 worked on the development of nuclear weapons."

The judges had been asked to consider an appeal in the case of a German-Iranian businessman accused of brokering supplies for Iran's nuclear weapons program. The Federal Prosecutor had charged the defendant, identified by the authorities only as "Mohsen V.," with violating Germany's War Weapons Control Law and the Foreign Trade Act. A lower court in Frankfurt refused to try the case on the grounds that it was unlikely that Iran had a nuclear program at the time of the defendant's activities in 2007, citing the NIE report as evidence.

That's why the Supreme Court judges had to rule first on the question of whether that program exists at all. Having answered that question in the affirmative, the court had to rule next on the likelihood of the defendant to be found guilty in a trial. The supreme court's conclusions are unusually strong.

"The results of the investigation do in fact provide sufficient indications that the accused aided the development of nuclear weapons in Iran through business dealings."

The supreme court thus annulled the lower court's decision to throw out the case, demanding that the Frankfurt-based judges try the defendant on the original charges.

The case itself sheds light on how these networks function. According to the supreme court judges, the businessman has brokered "industrial machines, equipment and raw materials primarily to Iranian customers," for Iran's nuclear weapons program.

According to the same decision, the defendant's business partners in Tehran "dealt with acquiring military and nuclear-related goods for Iran and used various front companies, headquartered for example in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, to circumvent existing trade restrictions." According to the judges, Mohsen V. also tried to supply to Tehran via front companies in Dubai "Geiger counters for radiation-resistant detectors constructed especially for protection against the effects of nuclear detonations."

Defendant Mohsen V.'s various business contacts in Iran, Russia, Germany, and the Near and Middle East are listed in the prosecutor's files and in the judges' decision. So is information related to the secret supply of "two high-speed cameras needed to develop nuclear warheads. The delivery of the cameras to the final customers in Iran occurred on November 1, 2007 at the latest." The Karlsruhe judges wrote that, by his own admission, Mohsen V. was "aware of the cameras' possible use in the military arena."

The court's decision and the BND's reports raise the question of how, or why, U.S. intelligence officials could have come to the conclusion that Iran suspended its program in 2003. German intelligence officials wonder themselves. BND sources have told me that they have shared their findings and documentation with their U.S. colleagues ahead of the 2007 NIE report -- as is customary between these two allies. It appears the Americans have simply ignored this evidence despite repeated warnings from the BND. This suggests not so much a failure of U.S. intelligence but its sabotage.

The politicized 2007 NIE report undermined the Bush Administration's efforts to rally international support for tough action against Iran. The world's best hope is that the Obama Administration is not being fed the same false sense of security.

New paper claims little of current warming is due to humans....

Yet more evidence that global warming isn't what most think it is...

Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.

The research, by Chris de Freitas, a climate scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, John McLean (Melbourne) and Bob Carter (James Cook University), finds that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later. As an additional influence, intermittent volcanic activity injects cooling aerosols into the atmosphere and produces significant cooling.

"The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely" says corresponding author de Freitas.

"We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.”

Gaza Aid will get to Hamas....

Hamas is going to steal millions of dollars...and no one will stop them...

Increasingly concerned that Hamas will steal money donated for Gaza's rehabilitation, the Defense Ministry distributed a document this week revealing that unions affiliated with the terrorist group have set up joint committees with UN agencies that dispense humanitarian aid.

The document was distributed to the Foreign Ministry, Finance Ministry and the Israeli intelligence community, and was also sent to the United States to warn it that the $900 million it has pledged to help rebuild the Gaza Strip could fall into Hamas hands.

"All humanitarian aid sent into the Gaza Strip today needs to receive Hamas clearance," a senior defense official told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. "Hamas uses violence against international organizations, including UNRWA, if they do not cooperate."

Hamas recently published an ad in a Palestinian newspaper warning that "whoever does not follow its orders will be forced to leave Gaza."

Could you imagine if Bush said this....

Gee, just how often does he pray???

President Barack Obama says he's gone from praying nightly before going to bed to praying all the time because he has a "lot of stuff" on his plate and needs "guidance all the time."

Sounds like an honour killing to me....

What else could this be???

Police in Kingston, Ont., are expected to release more information today on the mysterious deaths of four Montreal women found in a car submerged in the Rideau Canal.

Sources tell CTV News that Kingston police made three arrests Wednesday morning, though Kingston police would not acknowledge nor deny the arrests.

Reports say two men and a woman were taken into custody on their way to Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport. Police would not confirm reports that the three suspects are Shafi family members.

Investigators would also say they will update the public with "a change in the status" in the case at a news conference Thursday afternoon.

Zainab Shafi, 19, and her two sisters, 17-year-old Sahar and 13-year-old Geeti, were found inside a black Nissan Sentra submerged in water, near a Rideau Canal lock northeast of Kingston. Another 50-year-old family member, Rona Amir Mohammed, was also found lifeless inside the car.

Acid Attack

Thanks to Vlad Tepes for posting this on YouTube...

Isn't this treason????

This guy should get the death penalty, no?

A U.S. citizen pleaded guilty earlier this year to attempting to kill American soldiers overseas and providing material support to al Qaeda, including information about the New York transit system, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday in Brooklyn federal court.

Bryant Neal Vinas, 26 years old, born in the New York borough of Queens, became an al Qaeda militant after receiving training from the terrorist organization outside the U.S., according to criminal charges brought by Benton J. Campbell, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn.

Mr. Vinas is cooperating with authorities and provided them with information about possible terror plots on rail targets in New York, according to a person familiar with the matter. Also, an affidavit Mr. Vinas has provided is expected to be entered in court in Belgium as part of a different terrorism case.

In another indication of cooperation, Mr. Vinas waived his right to an indictment by a grand jury and pleaded guilty in January to charges brought directly by the government. A sentencing date hasn't been set, typically a sign prosecutors want to wait until criminal cases against others are completed so a defendant can receive credit for cooperation.

Mr. Vinas admitted he attempted to fire rockets at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan last September, according to the documents. He was apprehended in Pakistan in November and currently is in custody in New York, said people familiar with the matter.

Fatah doesn't recognize Israel...

Yet another senior Fatah official says the group doesn't really recognize Israel...

As the Fatah movement prepares for its upcoming leadership convention, a senior group member says the event will be used to display Fatah's commitment to the armed struggle against Israel.

Preparations for the convention, scheduled for August 4, are in full force at this time. During a series of preliminary meetings ahead of the event, senior Fatah official Rafik al-Natsheh said that the group will not be recognizing Israel.

'We will maintain the resistance option in all its forms and we will not recognize Israel," he said. "Not only don't we demand that anyone recognize Israel; we don't recognize Israel ourselves. However, the Palestinian Authority government is required to do it, or else it will not be able to serve the Palestinian people."

"I am certain that we will hinder all the traitors who wish to remove the resistance option from the movement's charter," Natsheh added.

A map of the caliphate???

Hizb ut-Tahrir holds a rally in Gaza...here's their map!

Hat tip: Elder of Ziyon

Honour attack in the UK....

Another horrible attack...

A young Muslim woman has been warned by police that her life is in danger after a male friend lost his tongue in an alleged assault using acid in an apparent “honour attack”.

The Danish Asian man is in a serious but stable condition in hospital after an incident in Leytonstone, East London, three weeks ago. Sulphuric acid is said to have been thrown in his face and he was stabbed twice in the back.

The 24-year-old, being treated in a specialist unit in Essex, is now blind, his tongue has been destroyed and he suffered 90 per cent burns.

The woman, who claims the relationship is an innocent friendship, and the man live in the Asian community of East London, where their relationship is said to have upset her family for bringing dishonour on them.

Scotland Yard have issued what is known as an “Osman warning” — telling the woman that there is a threat to her life.

A police source told The Times that she had not been moved into a safe house but police were in daily contact with her.

Detectives believe that the man and woman were not in a sexual relationship but were just friends.

Two men, aged 19 and 25, are due to appear before Waltham Forest Magistrates today, charged with the attempted murder of the 24-year-old man on July 2, 2009. Both men are said to be related to the woman, one is understood to be her brother.

Five men have been arrested and bailed “pending further inquiries” by police.

At the time of the attack a police source said: “It looks like this gang set out to deliberately target this man. They were dressed in masks and gloves so none of the acid would get on them.”

The Philippines are making a mistake....

Their so-called 'peace talks' with the terrorists will only lead to more misery...

The Philippine government ordered its military Thursday to stop offensives against Muslim separatist rebels in a bid to restart peace talks, a move welcomed by the guerrillas.

Negotiations with the 11,000-member Moro Islamic Liberation Front broke down last year, when the government accused the rebels of launching attacks on Christian villages after the Supreme Court threw out a preliminary Muslim autonomy deal.

Chief government negotiator Rafael Seguis said President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's order is aimed at providing a conducive atmosphere for the resumption of talks.

He said it would also allow some 300,000 displaced villagers to return to their homes and farms in the southern Philippines, where minority Muslims have been fighting for self-rule in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation for decades.

Sporadic clashes have been focused in the marshy heartland of the south, particularly Maguindanao province, about 560 miles (900 kilometers) south of Manila, and outlying provinces.

Government troops "shall suspend all offensive operations in the conflict-affected areas ... and revert to active defense mode," said Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, the most senior Cabinet member.

Islamic terrorists target Bruno....

Aren't there worst comedians for them to go after???

The 37-year-old comedian has been forced to take serious security measures to protect himself and his family from a revenge attack after calling Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden a "dirty wizard or a homeless Father Christmas" in his recent fim.

Baron Cohen's lawyers yesterday told the Daily Star he had been targeted by a group "that has claimed responsibility for recent terrorist attacks."

The faction has not been named, but is thought likely to be the armed Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade by whom Baron Cohen tries to get kidnapped while masquerading as Bruno in the film.

The flamboyant fashion reporter tells the group's supposed leader, Ayman Abu Aita: "I want to be famous, and I want the best guys in the business to kidnap me".

Abu Aita, who is seen angrily ordering "Bruno" to leave after he insults Bin Laden, said he was interviewed under false pretences and has claimed he is no longer part of the militant group.

The Martyrs' Brigade said in a statement: "This was a dirty use of our brother Ayman and we don't accept that the name of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade is part of the movie.

"We reserve the right to respond in a way we find suitable."

Baron Cohen also mocked the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the film, mistaking them for the chickpea paste hummus in a staged debate.

The Best Kept Secret....

Israel is thriving....

But these stories miss the bigger point: Israel today has become a vibrant, functioning jewel of a nation tucked into the eastern flank of the Mediterranean. Tel Aviv looks more like San Diego or Barcelona than Baghdad or Kabul. On a recent five-mile run along Tel Aviv's Gordon Beach, I saw Israeli yuppies cycling the boardwalk on $1,500 Italian mountain bikes, teenagers in full-body wetsuits surfing the breakers, a deep-cleavaged Russian model (nobody seemed to know her name) doing a photo shoot in a skimpy bikini whilst middle-aged Israeli men with potbellies and hairy chests shamelessly gawked, rows of high-priced yachts docked at the Tel Aviv marina, an endless stream of private planes on final approach to small Sde Dov Airport, and two Israeli soldiers in drab green uniforms making out in the sand and drinking Heineken. A nation at war? It seemed more like high season at Coney Island.

"Some first-time visitors are certainly surprised when they don't find tanks and camels in the streets," reports Hanna Munitz, general director of the Israeli Opera. Israel has a world class cultural scene. Want to see Franco Zeffirelli and Daniel Barenboim? No problem. The Alvin Ailey Dance Company visits. The opera plays to audiences at 97 percent capacity. "Just once, another opera manager told me she wouldn't bring her company to Israel because we were 'babykillers' or some nonsense," says Munitz, "but, even at lower pay, we attract the best talents from around the globe. They love coming here!"

It's not only culture. Israel enjoys top universities, upscale restaurants, million-dollar homes, hoity-toity architecture, and the like. Take the economy. In the fourth quarter last year, when the global economy went all to hell, Israel's annual, quarter-over-quarter rate of GDP was only off 0.5 percent, the best figure in the industrialized world. (The United States was off 6.3 percent and Japan 12.1 percent.) "Think about the resistance of our economy in recent times," suggests Zvi Eckstein, deputy governor of the Bank of Israel. "Our prime minister [has a stroke]. The war in Gaza. The war in Lebanon. The government gets replaced. But we've maintained a stable macroeconomic structure and a strong high-tech sector."