GayandRight

Bootees for sniffer dogs????

2008-07-05T19:37:00.000-04:00

Yes, this is really happening...in the UK....

Police sniffer dogs will have to wear bootees when searching the homes of Muslims so as not to cause offence.

Guidelines being drawn up by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) urge awareness of religious sensitivities when using dogs to search for drugs and explosives. The guidelines, to be published this year, were designed to cover mosques but have been extended to include other buildings.

Where Muslims object, officers will be obliged to use sniffer dogs only in exceptional cases. Where dogs are used, they will have to wear bootees with rubber soles. “We are trying to ensure that police forces are aware of sensitivities that people can have with the dogs to make sure they are not going against any religious or cultural element within people’s homes. It is being addressed and forces are working towards doing it,” Acpo said.

Problems faced by the use of sniffer dogs were highlighted last week when Tayside police were forced to apologise for a crime prevention poster featuring a german shepherd puppy, in response to a complaint by a Muslim councillor.

Mongolian horseman abandon nomadic life because of harsh winters....

2008-07-05T13:19:00.001-04:00

Gee, don't they know the world is heating up???

The blockbuster movie, Mongol, depicts the skilled horsemen who helped their leader, Genghis Khan, build one of the greatest empires the world has seen.

But the lifestyle of today's Mongolian horseman - and other nomadic herdsmen - is under threat. A succession of climactic disasters in the last 10 years has forced 500,000 of them abandon a nomadic lifestyle that has remained almost unchanged for centuries and to look instead for a new life in the cities.

Mongolia is one of the toughest places on earth to live and can boast the coldest capital - Ulaanbaatar - on the planet. Temperatures drop to at least -30C in winter. The country is frozen from November to March.

But four climactic disasters, known as 'dzuds', since 1999 have made life almost impossible for even the toughest of Mongolia's nomadic people who roam over a country three times the size of France. Three particularly harsh winters since 2000 have killed a third of the nation's livestock.

In 2001, the temperature dropped to a record-breaking -57C. Some 15,000 herders lost all of their animals through starvation and cold, and with them, their money and food. More than a quarter of the 2.6m population has left the vast rural areas, where herdsmen have lived since before Ghengis Khan's empire was established in the 13th century, and have fled in desperation to the cities.

Biofuels responsible for rising food prices....

2008-07-05T12:34:00.002-04:00

Drought, economic growth aren't the reasons for rising food prices...

A secret World Bank report reveals what many analysts had already assumed -- that the increased use of biofuels has had a direct, powerful impact on the cost of living.

The internal report was obtained by the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper and the results were published on Friday.

The study -- the most detailed of its kind so far -- shows a much more dramatic rise in food prices than had been previously estimated. The report finds that food prices have risen 75 per cent, according to the paper.

The study is a direct contradiction to claims by the U.S. that biofuels -- those made from plant products -- have only caused prices to rise by three per cent or less.

With many Western nations turning to biofuels to reduce their dependence on petroleum products, as well as cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, the report will come as a stunning rebuke.

The report, written by respected World Bank economist Don Mitchell, has not been published.

It argues that the U.S. position that rising food prices stem from economic growth in countries like China and India, simply isn't true.

And successive droughts in Australia haven't had a major impact either.

Instead, the report finds that the U.S. and EU's demand for biofuels has taken a significant bite out if the food supply, causing prices to rise.

In the U.K. since April, all gasoline and diesel has had to have a 2.5 per cent biofuel content.

The EU is considering making that a 10 per cent requirement by 2020.

"Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," the report states.

Sharia law in the UK???

2008-07-05T12:29:00.000-04:00

And this is from the most senior judge in England!

The most senior judge in England yesterday gave his blessing to the use of sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said that Islamic legal principles could be employed to deal with family and marital arguments and to regulate finance.

He declared: 'Those entering into a contractual agreement can agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.'

In his speech at an East London mosque, Lord Phillips signalled approval of sharia principles as long as punishments - and divorce rulings - complied with the law of the land.

Even if global warming is real....

2008-07-04T23:54:00.001-04:00

Canada is in the best position in the world...

Canada is the best country to move to if you want to escape the dangers of climate change.

The Climate Change Risk Report examined how well equipped countries are to deal with the threats posed by global warming, from increased droughts to rising sea levels.

Developed nations scored best in the ranking with Canada top, followed by Ireland, Norway and Denmark. Britain came 12th, just behind the United States.

Dr Andy Thow, one of the authors of the study, said: "Canada is extremely well equipped to adapt to changes in climate.

"This is because of the low pressure on natural resources resulting from a low population density and large land area, combined with high agricultural capacity, a healthy economy, few development and health challenges and excellent public institutions."

Kneel or else....

2008-07-04T12:05:00.001-04:00

What are these teachers thinking???

Two schoolboys were given detention after refusing to kneel down and 'pray to Allah' during a religious education lesson.

Parents were outraged that the two boys from year seven (11 to 12-year-olds) were punished for not wanting to take part in the practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.

They said forcing their children to take part in the exercise at Alsager High School, near Stoke-on-Trent - which included wearing Muslim headgear - was a breach of their human rights.

ne parent, Sharon Luinen, said: "This isn't right, it's taking things too far.

"I understand that they have to learn about other religions. I can live with that but it is taking it a step too far to be punished because they wouldn't join in Muslim prayer.

"Making them pray to Allah, who isn't who they worship, is wrong and what got me is that they were told they were being disrespectful.

"I don't want this to look as if I have a problem with the school because I am generally very happy with it."

Another parent Karen Williams said: "I am absolutely furious my daughter was made to take part in it and I don't find it acceptable.

Greenland's Ice Sheets...

2008-07-04T11:12:00.001-04:00

They aren't in a hurry to slide into the ocean...

Much noise has been made about how water lubricates the base of Greenland's ice sheet, accelerating its slide into the oceans. In a rare "good news" announcement, climatologists now say the ice may not be in such a hurry to throw itself into the water after all. Mother Nature, it seems, has given it brakes.

Since 1991, the western edge of Greenland's ice sheet has actually slowed its ocean-bound progress by 10%, say the team, who have studied the longest available record of ice and water flow in the region.

Greenland's mighty ice sheet has enough water locked away to raise global sea level 6.5 metres were it to melt. Each summer, vast lakes of meltwater form on its surface. The water seeps through cracks in the kilometer-thick ice to bedrock, where it acts as a lubricant. The sheet can move up to twice as fast in the summer, when meltwater is flowing, as when it is not.

Many fear a positive feedback loop, whereby the accelerating flow will bring more ice down out of the mountains and toward warmer temperatures near sea level. Roderik Van De Waal and colleagues at Utrecht University in the Netherlands now say there is no evidence this will happen.

Dion's Premature Ejaculation...

2008-07-02T13:31:00.002-04:00

A good analysis of why Dion's Green Shift misses the mark...

Dr. Nordhaus takes global warming seriously, anticipating that it may well "cast a shadow over the globe for decades, perhaps centuries, to come." When he says centuries, he means centuries. In his highly sophisticated computer analysis of global warming strategies, he includes the option of doing nothing at all for 250 years - and found that it delivered the same result (measured in global emissions of carbon dioxide one century hence) as the Kyoto Protocol with or without the United States.

He includes, as well, a 50-year delay and got an intriguing assessment. Implement the right climate change strategy in 2055 and you still get - by 2105 - precisely the same reduction in CO{-2} that you get with the computer-designed "optimal strategy," a go-slow, go-frugal approach that begins modestly in the next decade and expands incrementally through the rest of the century.

In a brilliant analysis of carbon strategies - The Challenge of Global Warming: Economic Models and Environmental Policy, published last year - Dr. Nordhaus observes that the complexity of global warming rules out absolute certainty of any kind, whether academic or ideological. "Whatever goal we set will probably be incorrect." Given this caution, it is essential to adopt a strategy that can be quickly adapted to changing circumstances and changing technologies, he says.

Dr. Nordhaus notes that a single technological advance in 2050, or in 2100, could render redundant trillions of prematurely invested dollars. This is one of the reasons why the most aggressive climate change strategies - the celebrated Stern Review proposals, the controversial dictums espoused by Al Gore - badly flunk the Nordhaus computer analysis test.

When countries "front-load" investment in carbon reduction, Dr. Nordhaus says, they merely ensure that opportunity costs will rise to unacceptable levels. In his work, for example, British economist Nicholas Stern, for example, requires peak investment (with expenditures of 2.75 per cent of global GDP) by 2012. Mr. Gore requires less investment in the first 20 years, but both merge in 2035 (with expenditures equal to 2.5 per cent of global GDP). Dr. Nordhaus, in contrast, calls for much more gradual increases in expenditures, rising from 0.3 per cent of global GDP in 2010 to 0.5 per cent in 2015 to 0.6 per cent in 2020 and peaking at 0.9 per cent almost 50 years later in 2065.

The Stern-Gore strategies thus tilt decisively to early peak investment - and imply that they would deliver early carbon reductions. In fact, Dr. Nordhaus says, these strategies incur net costs (including opportunity costs) of as much as $22-trillion (U.S.) - significantly more than all the damage that scientists expect global warming will cause in the next 150 years. Stern-Gore, in other words, is worse than doing nothing at all.

Further, Dr. Nordhaus says, front-loaded strategies exempt some countries from participating in a strategy that must be global. Implement Stern or Gore with the participation of 50 per cent of world population, he says, and you incur an extra $2-trillion in economic losses; implement them with only 30 per cent of the world population and you incur an extra $3-trillion.

An optimal strategy, Dr. Nordhaus says, permits no free rides. As well, it answers three questions: How sharply should countries reduce CO{-2}? What should be the time profile of these reductions? How should reductions be distributed?

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion's Green Shift strategy fully answers none of these questions. It promises to reduce Canada's carbon-related emissions to a defined level (20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020). It does not hazard a guess at the relevance of this reduction in terms of atmospheric CO{-2}.

I just like this story...

2008-07-02T11:47:00.000-04:00

Jewish doctor saves Arab girl in Morocco...

Against the advice of the security guard, Israeli tour guide and United Hatzalah medic Rachamim Amos left the bus traveling through Morocco's Sahara Desert to aid a turban-wrapped figure who emerged from the desert begging in Arabic for help.

Amos, who was leading the tour last month and always takes his medic's kit with him, jumped off the bus. Fluent in Arabic, he understood someone had been hurt. Despite fear that he was about to meet robbers or even terrorists, he followed the man hundreds of meters into the desert.

He found a pair of jeeps, one upright and the second crumpled off the side of a nearly indiscernible path. Huddled in the minimal shade provided by the mangled jeep were three young children. One of the children's legs was at an awkward angle, and her clothing was soaked with blood.

The Israeli medic quickly diagnosed an open fracture at the femur complicated by a rupture of the femoral artery. He staunched the bleeding, stabilized the fracture and, with the young girl not yet out of danger, advised the frantic father on how to maintain pressure on the artery and avoid moving the leg for the four-hour ride to the nearest hospital.

The next day, Amos decided to check up on the young girl at the hospital and was greeted immediately by shouts: "Here is the Jewish doctor!" The tearful father hugged him and kissed him on both cheeks. The doctors confirmed that without his timely intervention, the girl would have certainly died.

The medic was given the title "The Jewish Dr. Angel from Israel" - even though he tried to explain he wasn't really a doctor.

Happy Canada Day!

2008-07-01T18:05:00.002-04:00

What a terrific day it is - in Ottawa - for Canada Day. I love this holiday. For once, everybody is wearing or waving a flag! I hope everybody today takes a few minutes to remember the brave men and women who are fighting for freedom in Afghanistan. I hope they give out thousands of Canadian flags all over Afghanistan.

The double Nakba

2008-07-01T13:23:00.002-04:00

A nice article by Irwin Cotler on the 800,000+ Jewish refugees from Arab countries..here's his nine point proposal to rectify the situation...

• First, it must be appreciated that while justice has long been delayed, it must no longer be denied. The time has come to rectify this historical injustice, and to restore the plight and truth of the "forgotten exodus" of Jews from Arab countries to the Middle East narrative from which they have been expunged and eclipsed these 60 years.

• Second, remedies for victim refugee groups - including rights of remembrance, truth, justice and redress, as mandated under human rights and humanitarian law - must now be invoked for Jews displaced from Arab countries.

• Third, in the manner of duties and responsibilities, each of the Arab countries - and the League of Arab States - must acknowledge their role and responsibility in their double aggression of launching an aggressive war against Israel and the perpetration of human rights violations against their respective Jewish nationals. The culture of impunity must end.

• Fourth, the Arab League Peace Plan of 2002 should incorporate the question of Jewish refugees from Arab countries as part of its narrative for an Israeli-Arab peace, just as the Israeli narrative now incorporates the issue of Palestinian refugees in its vision of an Israeli-Arab peace.

• Fifth, on the international level, the UN General Assembly - in the interests of justice and equity - should include reference to Jewish refugees as well as Palestinian refugees in its annual resolutions; the UN Human Rights Council should address, as it has yet to do, the issue of Jewish as well as Palestinian refugees; UN agencies dealing with compensatory efforts for Palestinian refugees should also address Jewish refugees form Arab countries.

• Sixth, the annual Nov. 29th commemoration by the United Nations of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People should be transformed into an International Day of Solidarity for a Two-State Solution - as the initial 1947 Partition Resolution intended - including solidarity with all refugees created by the Israeli-Arab conflict.

• Seventh, jurisdiction over Palestinian refugees should be transferred from UNWRA to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. There was no justification then - and still less today - for the establishment of a separate body to deal only with Palestinian refugees, particularly when that body is itself compromised by its incitement to hatred and violence, as well as its revisionist teaching of the Mideast peace and justice narrative.

• Eighth, any bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations - which one hopes will presage a just and lasting peace - should include Jewish refugees as well as Palestinian refugees in an inclusive joinder of discussion.

• Ninth, during any and all discussions on the Middle East by the Quartet and others, any explicit reference to Palestinian refugees should be paralleled by a reference to Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

Al-Qaeda's Plan B

2008-07-01T11:22:00.002-04:00

The latest plans from Al-Qaeda...

NO one should feel safe without submitting to Islam, and those who refuse to submit must pay a high price. The Islam ist movement must aim to turn the world into a series of "wildernesses" where only those under jihadi rule enjoy security.

These are some of the ideas developed by al Qaeda's chief theoretician, Sheik Abu-Bakar Naji, in his new book "Governance in the Wilderness" (Edarat al-Wahsh).

Middle East analysts think that the book may indicate a major change of strategy by the disparate groups that use al Qaeda as a brand name.

And, what does he envisage?

Islamists in the "wilderness" must create parallel societies alongside existing ones, Naji says - but not set up formal governments, which would be subject to economic pressure or military attack.

These parallel societies could resemble "liberated zones" set up by Marxist guerrillas in parts of Latin America in the last century. But they could also exist within cities, under the very noses of the authorities - operating as secret societies with their own rules, values and enforcement.

But they could also take shape in Western countries with large Muslim minorities: The jihadis are to begin by giving areas where Muslims live a distinctly Islamic appearance, by imposing special styles of dress for women and beards for men. Then they start imposing the shariah. In the final phase, they create a parallel system of taxation and law enforcement, effectively taking the areas out of government control.

The "wilderness" will provide the cover for bases for jihad operations. Jihad would be everywhere, rather than in just one or two countries that the "infidel" could hit with superior firepower.

IN a notable departure from past al Qaeda strategy, Naji recommends "countless small operations" that render daily life unbearable, rather than a few spectacular attacks such as 9/11: The "infidel," leaving his home every morning, should be unsure whether he'll return in the evening.

Naji recommends kidnappings, the holding of hostages, the use of women and children as human shields, exhibition killings to terrorize the enemy, suicide bombings and countless gestures that make normal life impossible for the "infidel" and Muslim collaborators.

Once parallel societies are established throughout the world, they would exert pressure on non-Muslims to submit. Naji believes that, subjected to constant intimidation and fear of death, most non-Muslims (especially in the West) would submit: "The West has no stomach for a long fight."

The only Western power still capable of resisting is the United States, he believes. But that, too, will change once President Bush is gone.

The neurosis of global warming...

2008-07-01T11:13:00.002-04:00

Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal looks at global warming as mass neurosis...

So let's stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole and temperature readings in the troposphere. The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.

The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification. One wonders what the left would make of a scientific "consensus" warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be averted if every college-educated woman bore six children: Thumbs to "patriarchal" science; curtains to the species.

A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their critique of the depredations of modern society: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." That's Genesis, but it sounds like Jim Hansen.

And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.

Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?

As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.

In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, "morbid-minded" religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.

"Fuck You" gets you marks in English class

2008-06-30T21:12:00.001-04:00

Yes, this is from the UK...wonder when we'll start giving out marks for obscenities...

Pupils are being rewarded for writing obscenities in their GCSE English examinations even when it has nothing to do with the question.

One pupil who wrote “f*** off” was given marks for accurate spelling and conveying a meaning successfully.

His paper was marked by Peter Buckroyd, a chief examiner who has instructed fellow examiners to mark in the same way. He told trainee examiners recently to adhere strictly to the mark scheme, to the extent that pupils who wrote only expletives on their papers should be awarded points.

Mr Buckroyd, chief examiner of English for the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA), an examination board, said that he had given the pupil two marks, out of a possible 27, for the expletive.

To gain minimum marks in English, students must demonstrate “some simple sequencing of ideas” and “some words in appropriate order”. The phrase had achieved this, according to Mr Buckroyd.

The chief examiner, who is responsible for standards in exams taken by 780,000 candidates and for training for 3,000 examiners, told The Times: “It would be wicked to give it zero, because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for – like conveying some meaning and some spelling.

A short video on global warming...

2008-06-29T18:09:00.002-04:00

Thanks to Lubos Motl for posting this on his blog...a very fine video.

Dutch firms cave in to Islamists...

2008-06-29T18:02:00.000-04:00

Gee...they give in so easily...

Dutch companies Friesland Foods (dairy produce) and Zwanenberg (sausages) have taken out adverts in the Jordanian press distancing themselves from Geert Wilder’s anti-Islam film Fitna, the Volkskrant reports on Monday.

The adverts follow calls by a group calling itself The Message of Allah Unites Us, for a boycott of KLM, Philips, Friso and Milupa (baby foods). Until now, the organisation had only urged a boycott of Danish products in connection with the publication of anti-Islamic cartoons.

The organisation has printed millions of copies of a new poster calling on Jordanians not to buy Dutch and Danish goods.

KLM and Philips are actively being boycotted, the Volkskrant says. Last week, all travel organisations in the country were asked to refrain from doing business with KLM, the committee’s chairman Zakaria Sheikh tells the paper.

The Zwanenberg Food Group says in its advert that it ‘rejects the opinions and statements’ made in Wilders’ film, in which he ‘likens Islam to violence’. ‘We strongly condemn these statements about Islam which we think have no other purpose other than to hurt [Muslims].’

Friesland Foods issued a similar statement, the papers say.

They even regulate birthday card distribution in Sweden...

2008-06-27T11:31:00.002-04:00

Geez, do schools really have to regulate birthday card distribution???

A second grader in Lund in southern Sweden was forced to take back his birthday party invitations because he hadn’t invited all the students in his class.

Two students were left off the invitation list, prompting the boy’s teacher to confiscate all the invitations, reports the Sydsvenskan newspaper.

The boy’s father has filed a complaint with Sweden’s Ombudsman of Justice (JO), which is now looking into the matter.

“We think it’s an interesting case,” said JO’s Carl-Gustaf Tyrblom to Sydsvenskan.

According to school rules, if a student plans to distribute invitations on school grounds, he or she must invite the entire class, or none at all.

Alternatively, invitations can be sent to all the boys, or all the girls, but simply leaving two students out is not acceptable.

Cap & Trade; carbon taxes just won't work...

2008-06-27T10:21:00.002-04:00

Bjorn Lomborg says we should just focus on the real problem - using R&D to come up with low-carbon energy...

Politicians favor the cap-and-trade system because it is an indirect tax that disguises the true costs of reducing carbon emissions. It also gives lawmakers an opportunity to control the number and distribution of emissions allowances, and the flow of billions of dollars of subsidies and sweeteners.

Many people believe that everyone has a moral obligation to ask how we can best combat climate change. Attempts to curb carbon emissions along the lines of the bill now pending are a poor answer compared with other options.

Consider that today, solar panels are one-tenth as efficient as the cheapest fossil fuels. Only the very wealthy can afford them. Many "green" approaches do little more than make rich people feel they are helping the planet. We can't avoid climate change by forcing a few more inefficient solar panels onto rooftops.

The answer is to dramatically increase research and development so that solar panels become cheaper than fossil fuels sooner rather than later. Imagine if solar panels became cheaper than fossil fuels by 2050: We would have solved the problem of global warming, because switching to the environmentally friendly option wouldn't be the preserve of rich Westerners.

This message was recently backed up by the findings of the Copenhagen Consensus project, which gathered eight of the world's top economists -- including five Nobel laureates -- to examine research on the best ways to tackle 10 global challenges: air pollution, conflict, disease, global warming, hunger and malnutrition, lack of education, gender inequity, lack of water and sanitation, terrorism, and trade barriers.

These experts looked at the costs and benefits of different responses to each challenge. Their goal was to create a prioritized list showing how money could best be spent combating these problems.

The panel concluded that the least effective use of resources in slowing global warming would come from simply cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

CO2 output to increase by 50%....

2008-06-27T10:17:00.002-04:00

All attempts to reduce CO2 output are doomed to failure...here's the bitter truth...

The world's emissions of the main planet-warming gas carbon dioxide will rise over 50 percent to more than 42 billion tonnes per year from 2005 to 2030 as China leads a rise in burning coal, the U.S. government forecast on Wednesday.

China's coal demand will rise 3.2 percent annually from 2005 to 2030, the Energy Information Administration said in its International Energy Outlook 2008.

U.S. coal use will rise 1.1 percent during the same period, the statistical arm of the Department of Energy projected.

EIA economist Nasir Khilji said China's coal demand will likely rise steeply because it is the cheapest fuel to feed its surging manufacturing industry and demand for electricity as much of the population moves to urban areas.

In the United States a move to more nuclear power should help slow emissions growth, he said.

Could you imagine if a man had done this???

2008-06-26T09:43:00.001-04:00

This is from the Toronto Star...

After Trish Ally booked the hotel suite and invited the guests, she wanted to order a cake for a friend who was going through a divorce.

"He turned out to be a big jerk," she told Toronto baker Karen Wielonda. "Do you have any ideas?"

That's when Wielonda, a specialist in off-the-wall shaped cakes, came up with the idea of a voodoo-doll confection, complete with marzipan pins and needles.

"I think I had tweezers, too," Wielonda says with a laugh.

Ally decided to throw the divorce party "as a new way to express being single." The cake was just "a cute idea, something different" to do.

"They didn't want to see his face, but they wanted to see this hideous gold grill he used to wear," the baker says of the former husband. Wielonda set to work, and the result was a two-dimensional cake in the shape of a man, with a paper bag covering his head save for a small cutout showing a gold tooth decoration. All around were the marzipan weapons.

Thanks to Jeremy for sending me this article.

Biofuels increase poverty...

2008-06-26T09:34:00.000-04:00

The rush to use biofuels was a huge mistake...

The replacement of traditional fuels with biofuels has dragged more than 30 million people worldwide into poverty, an aid agency report says.

Oxfam says so-called green policies in developed countries are contributing to the world's soaring food prices, which hit the poor hardest.

The group also says biofuels will do nothing to combat climate change.

Its report urges the EU to scrap a target of making 10% of all transport run on renewable resources by 2020.

Only Synagogue in Tajikistan razed....

2008-06-26T09:23:00.001-04:00

Gee, did they really have to tear down this building?

Tajikistan has knocked down its only synagogue to make way for a new presidential palace, casting the Jewish community into despair, community members said on Wednesday.

The 19th century building is due to be replaced by a park adjoining the new palace for President Imomali Rakhmon, who has ruled the impoverished, mainly Muslim nation since 1992.

Community leaders said the weekend demolition of their synagogue - a wooden, one-story house adorned with stars of David - put their 350-strong community under threat. "It's painful to lose something very dear, something that cannot be valued in money terms," Rabbi Mikhail Abdurakhmanov said after the building was bulldozed.

"At the moment the existence of Tajikistan's only Jewish community is under threat. It's also a threat to elderly people who came here for help," he told Reuters.

The Jewish community in Tajikistan - descendants of Persian-speaking Bukhara Jews who have lived in Central Asia for centuries - has dwindled since the country's independence from Soviet rule with many leaving for Israel.

Gay Pride Cancelled in Cuba....

2008-06-26T09:19:00.001-04:00

The first gay pride march for Cuba was cancelled - it was not sanctioned by Cuba's National Center for Sex Education.

What's wrong with the New York Times???

2008-06-25T10:27:00.002-04:00

A new Bruce Bawer article looks at how the New York Times is avoiding the threat of Islam...

Just imagine the world picture of somebody whose primary — or even (God forbid!) sole — source of news is the New York Times.

In particular, imagine that person’s image of Islam — and of the problems and issues surrounding the growing presence of Islam in the West today. At the Times — as at other important news organizations — the slant on Islam has been shaped almost exclusively by apologists like Karen Armstrong (author of Muhammed: A Prophet for Our Time) and John Esposito (director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University). In March, the New York Times Magazine published a long essay by another major apologist, Harvard law professor and Times Magazine contributing writer Noah Feldman, who took (shall we say) an exceedingly generous view of sharia law and its proponents. Last Sunday, the magazine ran a new piece by Feldman, arguing that Muslims are Europe’s “new pariahs” and that the only real problem related the rise of Islam in Europe today is — guess what? — European racism.

It’s a familiar claim, to put it mildly, and Feldman served up the usual rhetoric, conflating the nationalist bigots of Belgium’s Vlaams Belang party with people like the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, whose views on the Islamization of Europe are rooted in liberal values. Feldman dismissed as “prejudice” concern about first-cousin marriages among Muslims — never mind that almost all such marriages are forced, that the overwhelming majority involve rape and abuse, and that those who have campaigned hardest against them are not “racists” but women’s rights advocates. Feldman deep-sixed the catastrophic rise in rape, gay-bashing, and other crimes by young European Muslim males, the extensive abuse of European welfare systems that is helping to destroy them, and the broad-based cultural jihad which ultimately seeks nothing less than the replacement of democracy with sharia. Feldman insisted that “a hallmark of liberal, secular societies is supposed to be respect for different cultures, including traditional, religious cultures — even intolerant ones.” That’s easy to say about things happening on the other side of an ocean from your Ivy League office. I’d like to see Feldman tell this to gay people in Amsterdam, where ten years ago they felt safer than anyplace else on earth and where Muslim youths now beat them up in broad daylight in the middle of town. Or why doesn’t he try this line on Jewish children in France, who according to a French government report can no longer get an education in that country because of severe harassment (and worse) by Muslim classmates? Feldman further equated Islamic and Roman Catholic views of gays and women — as if the Church’s “rejection of homosexuality and women priests” could be compared to the execution of gays and the wholesale subordination of women to the will of men. Feldman scored Europeans for failing to treat immigrants “as full members of their society” — yet while such prejudice does indeed exist, somehow immigrants from places like Vietnam and Chile nonetheless persevere and thrive (in the U.K., Hindus are more economically successful than the average Brit), while Muslims don’t. The difference has to do not with European prejudice but with Islam.

Since 9/11, the kind of brazen sugarcoating of Islam that Feldman served up last Sunday has become a convention in the Times and other mainstream media. Routinely, news organizations suppress, downplay, or misrepresent developments that reflect badly on Islam; they go out of their way to find stories that reflect (or that can be spun in such a way as to reflect) positively on it; and they publish professors and intellectuals and “experts” like Feldman, who share the media’s determination to obscure the central role of jihadist ideology in the current clash between Islam and Western democracy and to point the finger instead (as Feldman does) at European racism.

A brutal gay-bashing in Oslo...

2008-06-23T17:34:00.002-04:00

Here's what Bruce Bawer had to say about it:

Last night saw yet another brutal gay-bashing in Oslo by "two people of foreign origin," which doesn't mean Swedes. Before the assault, the two victims - one of whom, Knut Øyvind Hagen, has participated three times, as singer and songwriter, in the Norwegian finals of the Eurovision Song Contest - met the "two people of foreign origin" in a kebab joint in the predominantly Muslim neighborhood of Grønland. The TPOFO represented themselves as being gay and asked Hagen and his friend about being gay. They had what Hagen describes as a "nice conversation." Then Hagen and his friend left. The TPOFO followed them out and beat the hell out of them. "There was blood everywhere," said Hagen, "and at first I thought my friend was dead."