Saturday, June 30, 2007

I Agree with Al Gore. What!!

Another Bad News Day for Greenies

(and Al Gore, the Greeniest Greeny of them all)

Chicago Sun-Times article

Been gone up north picking up the oldest boy from ROTC camp. Lots of news about global terror and the like, which is the most important news of course. But I have been confronting some Green-Peacers as of late and wish the few readers of my blog to have all the ammo they need to counter the lies that these political-cult members use.

Enjoy.

In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore pleads, "We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth." Gore repeatedly asks that science and reason displace cynical political posturing as the central focus of public discourse.


If Gore really means what he writes, he has an opportunity to make a difference by leading by example on the issue of global warming.


A cooperative and productive discussion of global warming must be open and honest regarding the science. Global warming threats ought to be studied and mitigated, and they should not be deliberately exaggerated as a means of building support for a desired political position.


Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.


For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."


Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."


Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes.


Gore claims global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes. However, hurricane expert Chris Landsea published a study on May 1 documenting that hurricane activity is no higher now than in decades past. Hurricane expert William Gray reported just a few days earlier, on April 27, that the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined in the past 40 years. Hurricane scientists reported in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters that global warming enhances wind shear, which will prevent a significant increase in future hurricane activity.


Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, "Africa's deserts are in 'spectacular' retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa."


Gore argues Greenland is in rapid meltdown, and that this threatens to raise sea levels by 20 feet. But according to a 2005 study in the Journal of Glaciology, "the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain." In late 2006, researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute reported that the past two decades were the coldest for Greenland since the 1910s.


Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.


Each of these cases provides an opportunity for Gore to lead by example in his call for an end to the distortion of science. Will he rise to the occasion? Only time will tell.


James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

An Old Video That Still Describes Current Democrats

Crazy Democrats/Liberals

This is pretty much a third of the Democratic Party. Yes, a poll asked a portion of easch party if Bush had knowledge of the attack before they happened, and about a third said yes (from the Democratic side).

Newscaster Rips Up Paris Story! RIGHT ON!!

More Newscasters Need To Do This!!



Designed or Evolved

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Hugu Chavez for Life

Pres for Life

(Drudge Report – props)

Washington Post - Article

Venezuela's Chavez seen wanting office "for life"

By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent

June 26, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Insecurity, "malignant narcissism" and the need for adulation are driving Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's confrontation with the United States, according to a new psychological profile.

Eventually, these personality traits are likely to compel Chavez to declare himself Venezuela's president for life, said Dr. Jerrold Post, who has just completed the profile for the U.S. Air Force.

Chavez won elections for a third term last December. Since then he has stepped up his anti-American rhetoric, vowed to accelerate a march towards "21st Century socialism" and suggested that he intends to stay in power until 2021 -- a decade beyond his present term.

But Post -- who profiled foreign leaders in a 21-year career at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and now is the director of the Political Psychology Program at George Washington University -- doubts that Chavez plans to step down even then. "He views himself as a savior, as the very embodiment of Venezuela," Post said in an interview.

"He has been acting increasingly messianic and so he is likely to either get the constitution rewritten to allow for additional terms or eventually declare himself president-for-life."

…..

Monday, June 25, 2007

Pro-Lifers, Pastors, and Intelligent Design & Creationists Jailed

The below is an article that is a must read. I have posted the entire article and one should – if you have the time – read the entire thing. Enjoy while contemplating

Published on The Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com)

Secularist Europe Silences Pro-Lifers and Creationists

By Paul Belien

[posted] 2007-06-23

Article Link

Last week, a German court sentenced a 55-year old Lutheran pastor to one year in jail for “Volksverhetzung” (incitement of the people) because he compared the killing of the unborn in contemporary Germany to the holocaust. Next week, the Council of Europe is going to vote on a resolution imposing Darwinism as Europe’s official ideology. The European governments are asked to fight the expression of creationist opinions, such as young earth and intelligent design theories. According to the Council of Europe these theories are “undemocratic” and “a threat to human rights.”

Without legalized abortion the number of German children would increase annually by at least 150,000 – which is the number of legal abortions in birth dearth Germany. Pastor Johannes Lerle compared the killing of the unborn to the killing of the Jews in Auschwitz during the Second World War. On 14 June, a court in Erlangen ruled that, in doing so, the pastor had “incited the people” because his statement was a denial of the holocaust of the Jews in Nazi-Germany. Hence, Herr Lerle was sentenced to one year in jail. Earlier, he had already spent eight months in jail for calling abortionists “professional killers” – an allegation which the court ruled to be slanderous because, according to the court, the unborn are not humans.

Other German courts convicted pro-lifers for saying that “in abortion clinics, life unworthy of living is being killed,” because this terminology evoked Hitler’s euthanasia program, which used the same language. In 2005, a German pro-lifer, Günter Annen, was sentenced to 50 days in jail for saying “Stop unjust [rechtswidrige] abortions in [medical] practice,” because, according to the court, the expression “unjust” is understood by laymen as meaning illegal, which abortions are not.

Volksverhetzung is a crime which the Nazis often invoked against their enemies and which contemporary Germany also uses to intimidate homeschoolers. Soon, the German authorities will be able to use the same charge against people who question Darwin’s evolution theory.

Indeed, next Tuesday, the Council of Europe (CoE), Europe’s main human-rights body, will vote on a proposal which advocates the fight against creationism, “young earth” and “intelligent design” in its 47 member states.

According to a report of the CoE’s Parliamentary Assembly, creationists are dangerous “religious fundamentalists” who propagate “forms of religious extremism” and “could become a threat to human rights.” The report adds that the acceptance of the science of evolutionism “is crucial to the future of our societies and our democracies.”

“Creationism, born of the denial of the evolution of species through natural selection, was for a long time an almost exclusively American phenomenon,” the report says.

“Today creationist theories are tending to find their way into Europe and their spread is affecting quite a few Council of Europe member states. […] [T]his is liable to encourage the development of all manner of fundamentalism and extremism, synonymous with attacks of utmost virulence on human rights. The total rejection of science is definitely one of the most serious threats to human rights and civic rights. […] The war on the theory of evolution and on its proponents most often originates in forms of religious extremism which are closely allied to extreme right-wing political movements. The creationist movements possess real political power. The fact of the matter, and this has been exposed on several occasions, is that the advocates of strict creationism are out to replace democracy by theocracy. [...] If we are not careful, the values that are the very essence of the Council of Europe will be under direct threat from creationist fundamentalists.”

According to the CoE report, America and Australia are already on their way towards becoming such undemocratic theocracies where human and civic rights are endangered. Creationism is “well-developed in the English-speaking countries, especially the United States and Australia,” the report states.

“While most curricula in Europe today unashamedly teach evolution as a recognised scientific theory, the same does not apply to the United States. In July 2005, the Pew Research Center conducted a poll that showed that 64% of Americans favoured the teaching of intelligent design alongside the theory of evolution and that 38% would support the total abandonment of the teaching of evolution in publicly owned schools. The American President George W. Bush supports the principle of teaching both intelligent design and the theory of evolution. At the moment, 20 of the 50 American states are facing potential adjustments of their school curricula in favour of intelligent design. Many people think that this phenomenon only affects the United States and that, even if it is not possible to be indifferent to what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic, it is not the Council of Europe’s role to deal with this issue. That, however, is not the case. On the contrary, it would seem crucial for us to take the appropriate precautions in our 47 member states.”

Though one may disagree with people who take the Book of Genesis literally (believing that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh), surely secularist political organizations telling people what they may or may not believe, constitute a far greater threat to human rights than religious institutions telling their faithful how to vote. In the voting booth people are free to do what they like, whilst in contemporary Europe people are no longer free to publicly voice their own, deeply felt opinions in public.

In Germany, believing abortion to be as murderous as the holocaust is a crime, and educating your own children is a crime too. In France, saying that “homosexual behaviour endangers the survival of humanity” is a crime, and so is the distribution of pork soup to the poor. In Belgium, speaking out against immigration is a crime.

In the latest issue of the Dutch conservative magazine Bitter Lemon the Dutch author Erik van Goor writes that European courts are silencing conservative and orthodox citizens. Freedom of speech no longer exist, says van Goor.

“While many in the West still idolize the second-hand fighters for free speech, such as [Ayaan] Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh, the true victims of curtailment are deliberately kept under wraps. Hirsi Ali, [Pim] Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh were not curtailed by the state or by court, Johannes Lerle is. The former voiced mere opinions – expressions of a public opinion which one may or may not value or believe. The latter – Dr Lerle – shows that what is at stake is not merely opinions, but a moral order which is being questioned; a reality of life and death which is at risk.”

Hirsi Ali, Fortuyn and van Gogh did not defend Europe’s traditional Christian moral order. People such as Johannes Lerle and Christian Vanneste, the French parliamentarian who was convicted for “homophobia,” do. The latter are being persecuted by Western Europe’s political regimes – a phenomenon which is ignored completely by the Western mainstream media, who participate in the persecution.


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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

UPDATE

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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Thanks for the heads up. I appreciate it. I merely took this article – as noted – from another site. I do not have time to check each story individually in a single article. I will post the link to the retracted section for people to see, I will also post it below:

Lifesite Article - retracted

Please note that recently received information confirms portions of this report in error. While Pastor Lerle was previously convicted and jailed for anti-abortion activities his current imprisonment stems only from charges related to holocaust denial.

It seems people are getting the two stories mixed up. If the pastor truly denies the holocaust, then I would question his sanity and maybe look into whether he is a neo-Nazi, Muslim, or John Bircher. Maybe he will put in a vote for Ron Paul.

The Left and Health

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Veganism Kills

(maybe not cows... but infants)


There is a lot of B.S. out in the world, both from left and right. I have yet though, to see the amount of life threatening views from the right of American culture as I do from the left of American culture. Environmentalism and the crazy theories (anthropogenic global warming for instance) and diets (veganism) that follow it are one example of the death that follows lefty thinking. I say lefty because most often the conservative and religious-conservatives in our nation tend towards a diet that includes meat. Usually vegans tend to be religious adherents to the New Age, or have some Eastern Philosophy running through them.

Then there are the Peter Singers of the world, who are primarily atheist and put humans and chickens in the same volitional category. This is why he advocates allowing babies to be euthanized up to 30-days outside the womb just in case they have some problem that would require the parents to decide to not want their child. (But even Peter Singer advises against a Vegan diet, but would advocate a vegetarian diet as the healthy choice.)

A book that puts the debate between vegetarians and meat eaters into perspective is a book entitled Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat, which has people from both sides of this debate dialogue about the ethical and dietary reasons behind the two choices. The book does speak to the dangers of a vegan diet though. Which is a good thing.

So, what about it? What are some of the downsides to veganism? Is the diet really healthy?

I want to start this convo by quoting a guy who has had many discussions with vegans over the years, he says that usually the “healthy” vegans are the ones who periodically “fall off the wagon:”

Let me say before we jump into the heart of this matter that I believe most people who claim to do well long-term on vegan diets do so because they don't follow their diets strictly. I believe most of those who claim to thrive long-term on vegan diets occasionally consume animal foods containing essential nutritive factors. I have come to this conclusion based on almost ten years of extensive postal and e-mail correspondence sent to me by individuals who have tried to live on various vegan programs, everything from 100% raw food to fruitarianism to Natural Hygiene to the Hallelujah Diet preached by George Malkmus to Arnold Ehret's Mucusless Diet.


Nina Planck, and ex-vegan and author of the wonderful book, Real Food: What to Eat and Why, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times shortly after an infant died due to the parents misunderstanding about nutrition. She writes:

WHEN Crown Shakur died of starvation, he was 6 weeks old and weighed 3.5 pounds. His vegan parents, who fed him mainly soy milk and apple juice, were convicted in Atlanta recently of murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty.

This particular calamity — at least the third such conviction of vegan parents in four years — may be largely due to ignorance. But it should prompt frank discussion about nutrition.

I was once a vegan. But well before I became pregnant, I concluded that a vegan pregnancy was irresponsible. You cannot create and nourish a robust baby merely on foods from plants.

Indigenous cuisines offer clues about what humans, naturally omnivorous, need to survive, reproduce and grow: traditional vegetarian diets, as in India, invariably include dairy … for complete protein, essential fats and vitamins [these diets tend to be “lacto-vegetarian,” dairy is included but not eggs]. There are no vegan societies for a simple reason: a vegan diet is not adequate in the long run.

Protein deficiency is one danger of a vegan diet for babies. Nutritionists used to speak of proteins as “first class” (from meat, fish, eggs and milk) and “second class” (from plants), but today this is considered denigrating to vegetarians.

The fact remains, though, that humans prefer animal proteins and fats to cereals and tubers, because they contain all the essential amino acids needed for life in the right ratio. This is not true of plant proteins, which are inferior in quantity and quality — even soy.

A vegan diet may lack vitamin B12, found only in animal foods; usable vitamins A and D, found in meat, fish, eggs and butter; and necessary minerals like calcium and zinc. When babies are deprived of all these nutrients, they will suffer from retarded growth, rickets and nerve damage.

Responsible vegan parents know that breast milk is ideal. It contains many necessary components, including cholesterol (which babies use to make nerve cells) and countless immune and growth factors. When breastfeeding isn’t possible, soy milk and fruit juice, even in seemingly sufficient quantities, are not safe substitutes for a quality infant formula.

Yet even a breast-fed baby is at risk. Studies show that vegan breast milk lacks enough docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, the omega-3 fat found in fatty fish. It is difficult to overstate the importance of DHA, vital as it is for eye and brain development.

A vegan diet is equally dangerous for weaned babies and toddlers, who need plenty of protein and calcium. Too often, vegans turn to soy, which actually inhibits growth and reduces absorption of protein and minerals. That’s why health officials in Britain, Canada and other countries express caution about soy for babies. (Not here, though — perhaps because our farm policy is so soy-friendly.)

Historically, diet honored tradition: we ate the foods that our mothers, and their mothers, ate. Now, your neighbor or sibling may be a meat-eater or vegetarian, may ferment his foods or eat them raw. This fragmentation of the American menu reflects admirable diversity and tolerance, but food is more important than fashion. Though it’s not politically correct to say so, all diets are not created equal.

An adult who was well-nourished in utero and in infancy may choose to get by on a vegan diet, but babies are built from protein, calcium, cholesterol and fish oil. Children fed only plants will not get the precious things they need to live and grow.

Nina Planck’s Article

Of course, as one would expect, she got lots of mail from vegans because of her article, so she responds to them at this link.

Most people do not just happen upon these diets; usually there is some influence in their lives, a co-worker, a friend, an acquaintance. And often times these people are involved with or support P.E.T.A., People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I have to say that if there ever was an organization that was taken over by the extremists in our country, this is one of them. I want to quote Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Green Peace, to glean from his insight what drives not only his old-organization, but others as well:

“I now find that many environmental groups have drifted into self-serving cliques with narrow vision and rigid ideology…. many environmentalists are showing signs of elitism, left-wingism, and downright eco-fascism. The once politically centrist, science-based vision of environmentalism has been largely replaced with extremist rhetoric. Science and logic have been abandoned and the movement is often used to promote other causes such as class struggle and anti-corporatism. The public is left trying to figure out what is reasonable and what is not.”

Which is why I want to post this article from the web-site, PETA Kills Animals, and I want the reader to see where most of the organizations money goes, it isn’t to providing a home for the animals they rescue!

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Year

Received

Adopted

Killed

Transferred

% Killed

% Adopted

2005

2,145

146

1,946

69

90.7

6.8

2004

2,640

361

2,278

1

86.3

13.7

2003

2,224

312

1,911

1

85.9

14.0

2002

2,680

382

2,298

2

85.7

14.3

2001

2,685

703

1,944

14

72.4

26.2

2000

2,684

624

2,029

28

75.6

23.2

1999

1,805

386

1,328

91

73.6

21.4

* 1998

943

133

685

125

72.6

14.1

Total

17,806

3,047

14,419

331

80.1

17.1


* figures represent the second half of 1998 only
† other than spay/neuter animals
» skeptical? click here to see the proof

PETA's Dirty Secret

Hypocrisy is the mother of all credibility problems, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has it in spades. While loudly complaining about the "unethical" treatment of animals by restaurant owners, grocers, farmers, scientists, anglers, and countless other Americans, the group has its own dirty little secret.

PETA kills animals. By the thousands.

From July 1998 through the end of 2005, PETA killed over 14,400 dogs, cats, and other "companion animals" -- at its Norfolk, Virginia headquarters. That's more than five defenseless animals every day. Not counting the dogs and cats PETA spayed and neutered, the group put to death over 90 percent of the animals it took in during 2005 alone. And its angel-of-death pattern shows no sign of changing.


On its 2002 federal income-tax return, PETA claimed a $9,370 write-off for a giant walk-in freezer, the kind most people use as a meat locker or for ice-cream storage. But animal-rights activists don't eat meat or dairy foods. So far, the group hasn't confirmed the obvious -- that it's using the appliance to store the bodies of its victims.

In 2000, when the Associated Press first noted PETA's Kervorkian-esque tendencies, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk complained that actually taking care of animals costs more than killing them. "We could become a no-kill shelter immediately," she admitted.

PETA kills animals. Because it has other financial priorities.

PETA raked in nearly $29 million last year in income, much of it raised from pet owners who think their donations actually help animals. Instead, the group spends huge sums on programs equating people who eat chicken with Nazis, scaring young children away from drinking milk, recruiting children into the radical animal-rights lifestyle, and intimidating businessmen and their families in their own neighborhoods. PETA has also spent tens of thousands of dollars defending arsonists and other violent extremists.

PETA claims it engages in outrageous media-seeking stunts "for the animals." But which animals? Carping about the value of future two-piece dinners while administering lethal injections to puppies and kittens isn't ethical. It's hypocritical -- with a death toll that PETA would protest if it weren't their own doing.

PETA kills animals. And its leaders dare lecture the rest of us.

Link to Article

In reality, they are pushing politics over compassion. But I would even state that their passions/compassion are ill-placed. Ill-placed unto death.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Left versus Right

Here is a quick comparison of the two sides that tells you something about the rational, none emoting side verses the feelings based led political debate coming from the other side… which, makes my blogs so easy.

Claremont Institute

What the Left Will Believe

William Rusher Wonders

William Rusher suggests that resentment at Republican successes, narrow partisanship, personal animosity toward Bush and fear of being deceived all play their part in this startling finding that "Bush knew." But it still makes one wonder. Although deep suspicion is no political party's monopoly, I offer a couple of examples from talk radio last week which may shed light on how opinion leaders deal with wacky theories.

The first example comes from Air America, on which a caller opined that, based on Bush's performance at the recent Group of Eight meeting, he must be drunk or on medication. The host did nothing to deny it, but only encouraged this unhinged comment. For several minutes they revelled in their "knowledge" that Bush was lacking in self control, as though he had not gone through, by his own admission, a religious conversion and a commitment to stay dry.

In the second example, a caller to the Rush Limbaugh program expressed the opinion that Hillary Clinton seeks to be President so that her husband, Bill, can regain power. Limbaugh asked for evidence, and receiving none, expressed the more sane view that Hillary, like all other aspirants (perhaps more than others) looks forward to wielding presidential power alone, and has already said that she wants Bill to be a roving (eye?) ambassador. In other words, Rush reasonably speculated, Hillary wants to keep her husband out of the country so she can actually be President (not to mention, reduce the likelihood of "bimbo eruptions").

In short, while Air America encourages paranoia, Rush Limbaugh educates.

The Left Loves Terrorists (But Dislike Christians)

The Left Legitimizing Terror and Terrorists

The Left Continues to Court the radical regimes and thinking. I have noted in brief that many Democrats visited and even quoted terror state officials and met with them even at the urging of the country’s urging them not to – Egypt. Here again, a predominately left leaning paper, the New York Times, and the often time left leaning (although the Post can be quite reasonable at times in its coverage) Washington Post have let terrorists write op-eds. I have mentioned this already, I linked to Little Green Footballs, which is still worth a read if you haven’t read their blog. I just find it amazing, for instance, that the Left supports people who would kill them first.

Lebannon Daily Star Editorial About Pelosi

Pelosi’s Middle-East Visit

In London and San Francisco for instance, there are groups called:

  • University of London Gay Lesbian and Transexuals for Palestine!
  • And, Feminists and Transvestites Unite Against Patriarchy and Oppression! Solidarity With Islam! Free Palestine!

Dhimmi Watch posted an article that makes the above seem, well, insane!

2005 Dhimmi Watch Article

Syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock compares the rights of homosexuals in the West and in the Islamic world.

This weekend’s Gay Pride festivities in New York City climaxed with Sunday’s 36th annual parade down Fifth Avenue. As usual, the raucous affair thrilled some and rattled others, but everyone walked away intact.

One would have to fantasize about such an occasion, however, in most Muslim nations where homosexuality remains as concealed as a bride beneath a burqa. When it peeks through, it isn’t pretty. While many liberals (and President G.W. Bush) call Islam a religion of peace, "celebrating diversity" is hardly on its agenda. Consider these recent examples of the Islamic world's institutional homophobia:

In Saudi Arabia, 105 men were sentenced in April for acts of "deviant sexual behavior" following their March arrests. Al-Wifaq, a government-affiliated newspaper, claimed they illegally danced together and were "behaving like women" at a gay wedding.

"Calling the event a 'gay wedding' has become a lightning rod to justify discrimination against gay people," Widney Brown of Human Rights Watch told Patrick Letellier of gay.com.

Seventy men received one-year prison sentences while 31 got six months to one year, plus 200 lashes each. Four others face two years behind bars plus 2,000 lashes. If these four receive their lashes at once, Brown fears their wounds will prove fatal.

"Anyone caught committing sodomy -- kill both the sodomizer and the sodomized," Islamic cleric Tareq Sweidan demanded on Qatar TV last April 22. As the Middle East Media Research Institute (memri.org) reports, Sweidan continued: "The clerics determined how the homosexual should be killed. They said he should be stoned to death. Some clerics said he should be thrown off a mountain."

Ogudu Emmanuel and Odjegba Tevin admitted that they were male lovers after their neighbors reported them to Nigerian cops. They were arrested January 15 and charged with "crimes against nature." The pair apparently escaped from jail while awaiting trial and potential 14-year prison sentences. Gay rights activists worried that cops or other inmates may have killed them in custody.

Last November, an Islamic court in Keffi, issued an arrest warrant for Michael Ifediora Nwokoma after neighbors accused him of having sex with a man named Mallam Abdullahi Ibrahim. Nwokoma quickly fled. Ibrahim was charged with the "unholy" act of "homosexualism." The court postponed Ibrahim's trial indefinitely and incarcerated him until Nwokoma surfaces.

In northern Nigeria, where Sharia law governs 12 Muslim states, homosexuality requires capital punishment by stoning.

Iraq's terrorist Ansar al-Sunnah Army, the Islamic Army in Iraq, and the Mujahedeen Army issued a statement last December 30 urging Iraqis not to vote in last January's elections, lest democracy spawn un-Islamic laws such as "homosexual marriage," in their words. To be sure, many Americans also oppose gay marriage, but they at least have the good manners not to detonate advocates of same-sex unions. Ansar-al-Sunnah is incapable of such restraint. It scored major headlines when it claimed responsibility for a December 21 bombing at a U.S. military mess tent at a base in Mosul. It killed 22 people, 18 U.S. GIs among them.

Egyptian cops have met gay men online and through personal ads, then arrested them, according to a March 1, 2004 Human Rights Watch report. Since 2001, HRW says at least 179 men have been charged with "debauchery," prompting five-year prison sentences for at least 23. As the Associated Press' Nadia Abou El-Magd wrote, HRW "interviewed 63 men who had been arrested for homosexual conduct. It said they spoke of being whipped, bound and suspended in painful positions, splashed with cold water, burned with cigarettes, shocked with electricity to the limbs, genital or tongue. They also said guards encouraged other prisoners to rape them" -- thus using coercive gay sex to penalize consensual gay sex.

While he notes that secular nations such as Jordan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Syria are more relaxed about homosexuality, Robert Spencer, director of JihadWatch.org and editor of The Myth of Islamic Tolerance, warns against equating the homophobia of strict Muslim states with, say, American social conservatives' opposition to gay-rights laws.

"Jerry Falwell and others like him do not call for the deaths of homosexuals, while these people do," Spencer tells me. "This demonstrates the bankruptcy and, ultimately, the danger of such moral equivalence arguments, which are nonetheless ubiquitous today in discussions of Islamic terrorism."

Unlike Sunday's marchers, many in the Muslim world literally risk their lives and limbs by merely peering out of the Islamic closet.

Posted by Robert at June 28, 2005 6:46 AM

Here is the article about the New York Times and the Washington Post by the Jerusalem Post.

'Times' slammed over op-eds by Hamas official

JERUSALEM POST

By Nathaniel Rosen, Washington Correspondent

Jun. 23, 2007

Jerusalem Post Article

Several Jewish organizations expressed outrage following the publication of opinion pieces authored by a Hamas figure in two of the US's most prestigious newspapers on Wednesday.

Both The New York Times and The Washington Post ran op ed pieces by Ahmed Yousef, a senior political adviser to Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, one of two competing Palestinian Authority prime ministers.

The columns, which didn't note that Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States, sparked anger from many groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, which wrote to the Times the following day.

"Ahmed Yousef's preposterous picture of Hamas as a moderate, peace loving organization committed to a cease-fire with Israel has no basis in reality," wrote Glen S. Lewy, ADL national chairman.

"The chaos, violence and destruction in Gaza and the looting and dismantling of the security infrastructure and border control facilities that followed shows the real face of Hamas," he wrote.

Morton A. Klein, the Zionist Organization of America's national president, called the newspapers' decision to publish the pieces "appalling," adding that it was akin to printing an article by Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann in 1942…..

Yousef's articles were "gross misrepresentations" of the truth, according to Dr. Alex Safian, associate director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). For example, Safian said that although Yousef claimed in his Times editorial that Hamas adhered to an 18-month cease fire, Hamas, as the governing body of the PA, did nothing to stymie the rocket attacks that were being launched from Hamas-controlled territory.

"The newspapers are allowing the terrorist groups to lie about their positions, and that is simply unacceptable," said Safian. "It's nonsensical for the Washington Post and the New York Times to open up their pages to what is just pure propaganda." …..

Dr. Marvin Kalb, a media expert at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, said Wednesday's editorials were unusual in that both essentially said the same thing and appeared on the same day in two different newspapers.