Mid-Week Post

Two US senators ignore the rock and a hard place and urge the Obama administration to punish China for investing in Iran:

Two senior senators are urging the Obama administration to punish the Chinese National Petroleum Co. for investing in Iran.


In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Republican Sen. Jon Kyl and Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer say the Chinese company has violated a new U.S. law aimed at discouraging foreign investment in Iran.


A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said China strongly opposes sanctions against Iran's nuclear activities beyond those imposed by the United Nations, which he said should be followed by all members.

The letter is aimed at prodding the administration to enforce the U.S. law generally. It singles out the Chinese company specifically, however, for its agreement last year to invest in Iran's South Azadegan oil field.

"The administration should penalize CNPC, and other Chinese entities, for helping Iran evade international pressure and undermine the co-operation we've obtained from allies like Japan and South Korea," the letter says.

The lawmakers also cite two other Chinese companies, Sinopec and Zhuhai Zhenrong, and the Turkish energy company Turpas.

Wang Baodong, the Chinese Embassy spokesman, told The Associated Press that China is "strongly opposed to unilateral sanctions beyond the relevant U.N. resolutions on Iranian nuclear issues, which are the guidelines that all U.N. members should strictly follow."

He said China does not want the United States to allow "damaging developments" that would "harm China-U.S. relations and bilateral economic and trade co-operation."

Obama signed the Iran Sanctions Act into law in July. It focuses on Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard and the country's imports of gasoline and other refined energy products. Among other aims, it seeks to penalize foreign companies that help Iran's energy sector.

This is yet another reason why we should not invest in or trade with in China, and apply punitive measures to companies that exploit slave labour. Resource-hungry China might not care about Iran's ambitions (or might care about them a great deal- discuss) but even Obama-run America must realise how precarious a Chinese-backed Iran is. Action against this human rights abuser might very well prevent an armed conflict further down the road. Chinese arms and Iranian oil. Two strong and unethical arms only spell trouble in key regions of the world. America doesn't want to thank Obama for destroying the economy. It won't  want to thank Obama for feeding two monsters.

A Good Samaritan gets beaten:

A veteran trucker who was badly beaten and left for dead by the side of the Yellowhead Highway says his hauling days are over. 

Alex Fraser underwent reconstructive surgery at Royal Inland Hospital Tuesday to repair a damaged eye socket and three broken bones in his cheek — injuries he received while being a Good Samaritan to a stranded vehicle's occupants. 

"I look like an ex-boxer," said Fraser from his hospital bed. 

 The 67-year-old was attacked late Friday just north of Blue River.


He was driving home to Vernon after delivering a load of flour in Edmonton when he noticed a car parked on the shoulder, its headlights facing him and its hood up. 

Fraser slowed his truck and saw at least two men near the stranded vehicle. 

"One fellow stood out from the lights and was waving his arms," recalled Fraser. "So I figured, 'OK, they've got problems; they need help.'" 

He walked to the front of his rig to offer his assistance and heard a man's voice shout, "You truckers are all alike!" 

Fraser was then hit on the back of the head and knocked out by what he believes was a third attacker who surprised him from behind. He doesn't remember what happened next, but someone beat him while he was unconscious. 

When he came to, the attackers were gone and he was covered in blood and too weak to stand.
Fraser crawled to the steps of his truck and fell unconscious again, waking just long enough to get into the sleeper compartment where he blacked out for a third time. 

He awoke near daybreak Saturday. 

"I didn't know where I was," he said. "The truck was still running. I figured, 'I can't stay here.' I couldn't see out of my right eye — could hardly see anything at all — but I managed to drive 34 kilometres into Blue River." 

The injured man pulled into the Husky station in Blue River, opened the door of his cab and fell to the ground. Those nearby rushed to his aid and called 911. 

Valemount RCMP are investigating the attack.

I hope they find those responsible and leave them on the side of the road during a blizzard.

Scientists find a planet similar to Earth (it's called Vulcan- joking...):

 Astronomers say they have for the first time spotted a planet beyond our own in what is sometimes called the Goldilocks zone for life: Not too hot, not too cold. Juuuust right.


Not too far from its star, not too close. So it could contain liquid water. The planet itself is neither too big nor too small for the proper surface, gravity and atmosphere.

It's just right. Just like Earth.

"This really is the first Goldilocks planet," said co-discoverer R. Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

The new planet sits smack in the middle of what astronomers refer to as the habitable zone, unlike any of the nearly 500 other planets astronomers have found outside our solar system. And it is in our galactic neighbourhood, suggesting that plenty of Earth-like planets circle other stars.

Finding a planet that could potentially support life is a major step toward answering the timeless question: Are we alone?

Scientists have jumped the gun before on proclaiming that planets outside our solar system were habitable only to have them turn out to be not quite so conducive to life. But this one is so clearly in the right zone that five outside astronomers told The Associated Press it seems to be the real thing.

"This is the first one I'm truly excited about," said Penn State University's Jim Kasting. He said this planet is a "pretty prime candidate" for harbouring life.

Life on other planets doesn't mean E.T. Even a simple single-cell bacteria or the equivalent of shower mould would shake perceptions about the uniqueness of life on Earth.

 But there are still many unanswered questions about this strange planet. It is about three times the mass of Earth, slightly larger in width and much closer to its star — 22.5 million kilometres away versus 150 million. It's so close to its version of the sun that it orbits every 37 days. And it doesn't rotate much, so one side is almost always bright, the other dark.

Temperatures can be as hot as 71 degrees Celsius or as frigid as 31 degrees below zero, but in between — in the land of constant sunrise — it would be "shirt-sleeve weather," said co-discoverer Steven Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

It's unknown whether water actually exists on the planet, and what kind of atmosphere it has. But because conditions are ideal for liquid water, and because there always seems to be life on Earth where there is water, Vogt believes "that chances for life on this planet are 100 per cent."

One day this could all be ours.

Someone clearly does not know with whom he is messing:

Sarah Palin has been granted a restraining order against a Pennsylvania man accused of stalking and threatening her.


Alaska Magistrate Judge Colleen Ray issued a 20-day protective order Monday against 18-year-old Shawn R. Christy, finding probable cause to believe he had stalked the former governor and vice-presidential candidate.

Palin and her attorney claimed Christy made implied threats through phone and written messages, allegedly telling Palin to watch her back and saying he was buying a one-way ticket to Alaska and sending a receipt for a gun purchase.

Christy was ordered to have no contact with Palin's family and to stay a mile away from her home.

Perhaps Christie should watch his back. Seriously. This guy must realise somewhere in his ovine mind that attempting to attack a woman who can take down a moose is a bad idea.

No surprise, really:

Two activists have exposed a disturbing phenomenon that they say is an open secret within the “peace camp”: female “peace” activists are routinely harassed and raped by the Arabs of Judea and Samaria with whom they have come to identify. They say the phenomenon has gotten worse lately and that many foreign women end up as wives of local Arabs against their will, but cannot escape their new homes.

Roni Aloni Sedovnik, a feminist activist, penned an article in News1 – an independent website run by respected investigative reporter Yoav Yitzchak – under the heading “The Left's Betrayal of Female Peace Activists Who were Sexually Assaulted.”...

 Aloni-Sedovnik cites two specific cases which she has knowledge of – one is a case of rape and another is “severe sexual harassment.” The attackers in both cases, she stresses, were familiar with the victims and knew that they were “peace activists.”


The rape occurred several months ago in the village of Umm Salmona, near Bethlehem. The victim, an American activist, wanted to press charges but leftist activists put pressure on her not to do so, so as not to damage the struggle against the 'occupation.'

The second case involved an Israeli activist who took part in the demonstrations at Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, where the High Court ruled that Jewish families may move into homes that they have owned for generations. This woman filed a complaint with the police but retracted it after “severe and unfair pressure” from the demonstrations' organizers, according to Aloni-Sedovnik. Furthermore, the organizers appealed to demonstrators to dress modestly when they come to the Arab neighborhoods and suggested that they wear head scarves.

Aloni-Sedovnik accuses the Israeli media of complicity in the cover-up.

“How is it that we do not hear the voice of the radical feminists who repeat, day and night, that occupation is occupation, and it does not matter if it is a nation that is doing the subjugation, or a man who is subjugating a woman?
"It appears that there is a gap between the radical-leftist feminist theory about the active resistance to the occupation of the Territories, and the stuttering self-annulment in the face of the violent conquest of women.”

The Umm Salmona case was reported in Haaretz as an attempted rape but does not seem to have made it beyond the blog pages...

Earlier this year, a blogger and literature buff named Yehudah Bello, who writes in various venues about history and the theory of evolution, wrote a blog post with the striking title: “The Female Leftist Activists are Raped Day after Day, Night after Night.” Bello is no ultra-nationalist, and he supports the creation of a PA state – a fact which makes his claims all the more believable.


Most female leftist European activists, writes Bello, are brainwashed in their youth into hating Israel, and then sent directly into Judea and Samaria, without spending a single night in Tel Aviv, lest they see civilian Israeli society for themselves and find that they like it. They are whisked off to Shechem, Jenin and other PA towns and housed in Arab educational or cultural facilities, or private homes. Local Arab girls are sent to befriend them and they have no choice but to trust them.

It is is easy, explains Bello, “to carry out a sexual crime against a foreign girl, in her first days away from her family, in a place where no police have ever visited. And this is what happens, and has happened.”

"I was told of such rape cases by women who are not Jewish: a female European leftist activist, a female Red Cross volunteer and a young Arab woman from Yafo,” he says. He says that he met these women when he carried out IDF reserve duty, and met them afterward as well. “They told me what goes on there, in the Palestinian villages, far from any prying eye.”

"These are not just cases of rape carried out to satisfy lust,” he writes. “Usually, they are carried out systematically in order to make the girl pregnant and then take her as a wife – after she converts to Islam, of course. We know about this system from the stories of women who underwent a similar process within Israel and escaped to Europe. But it is hard to escape from the Palestinian territories. Sometimes these women – some of whom are no longer young – are never allowed to leave their homes unaccompanied, in order to forestall their escape.”

I'm not going to ask the left where their outrage is nor am I going to ask what these fluffy-minded do-gooders were thinking. Rape is a disgusting crime. Any sane, rational, thinking, feeling person knows that. I'm simply not accusing the backward tribes of the Middle East of being rational, thinking or feeling. And nor should these "activists" now. Wearing hijabs and extolling the "virtues" of a cult where human life means nothing will never, ever endear one to this emotionally stunted tribe (why they thought that would work baffles me) nor will it create an environment of peace and understanding. There are men out there who think women are their maids and toys. These "liberated" women agreed to be these toys and maids "for the cause". Where has it gotten them? I hope these "activists" finally get it. I really do.