Monday Post

Two more days until magic time!


What about all that solar and wind power?

A nasty ice storm that left hundreds of thousands without power in Ontario and Quebec tracked through the Maritimes on Monday as authorities worked frantically to clear tree-strewn roadways, restore downed hydro lines and get stranded travellers to their destinations.

Hydro companies in the Greater Toronto Area — which appeared to be the hardest hit by the weather system — warned some residents to brace for the possibility of being without power until Boxing Day or later.

Related: can it, paid American activists:

Dear America:

Please stop sending us your environmental rent-a-mobs, funded by wealthy American foundations backed by American billionaires, to protest against our oilsands and oil pipelines.

We’re tired of your self-righteousness, your hypocrisy and your ignorance.

The oilsands are an insignificant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, especially compared to America’s massive use of coal to generate electricity, which we don’t do in Canada.

If you want to protest against a national leader who, by your standards, is indifferent to climate change, stop whining about our prime minister, Stephen Harper, and go home.

Protest against your own president, Barack Obama.If you don’t know why, by your lights, you should be doing that, chew on this:

“By the time Obama leaves office, the U.S. will pass Saudi Arabia as the planet’s biggest oil producer and Russia as the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas combined. In the same years, even as we’ve begun to burn less coal at home, our coal exports have climbed to record highs. We are, despite slight declines in our domestic emissions, a global-warming machine.” Your president knows this. He has described the U.S, accurately, as “the Saudi Arabia of coal.” You want to fight a national leader who, by your lights, is recklessly exploiting fossil fuels and endangering the planet?

Fine. Stop carping about Harper.

Cue fire-bombs:

Bishara Shlayan, a Christian Arab from Nazareth, is hoping to build a huge statue of Jesus on Mount Precipice, near his home city.

Shlayan told The Jerusalem Post in an interview that he has already begun fund-raising for the project and that he is getting positive feedback from the Israeli Arab Christian community as well as some Jews.

Whatever will Hamas say?


Related:

Earlier this month, the Islamist-led opposition in Syria broadcast a video clip of a militant threatening the nation’s Christian minority, with a focus on the Cherubim monastery and the large Jesus statue recently erected in the region of Saidnaya in Damascus.

In the video, images of militants firing rockets at the ancient monastery and setting the building on fire appear (confirmed elsewhere). The Christ statue also appears being targeted, though it is unclear if it was damaged.

The 128-foot tall bronze Christ statue, christened “I have come to save the world,” was recently erected in war-torn Syria, with support from the Russian Orthodox Church.

Patronising gesture or well-rehearsed attempt at dragging one to a re-education camp?

Having leaned on A&E to suspend their biggest star, GLAAD has now moved on to Stage Two:

“We believe the next step is to use this as an opportunity for Phil to sit down with gay families in Louisiana and learn about their lives and the values they share,” the spokesman said.

Actually, “the next step” is for you thugs to push off and stop targeting, threatening and making demands of those who happen to disagree with you. Personally, I think this would be a wonderful opportunity for the GLAAD executive board to sit down with half-a-dozen firebreathing imams and learn about their values, but, unlike the Commissars of the Bureau of Conformity Enforcement, I accord even condescending little ticks like the one above the freedom to arrange his own social calendar.

Any well-organised and well-funded special-interest group that can even entertain this sort of mind-bending bullying should be treated like patient zero in a zombie apocalypse. This sort of action isn't even insulting anymore; it's threatening.


Does anyone think this broad looks like a clown?

"Our fate should not be decided by the church. We are a secular nation," said former prostitute Valerie Scott of Toronto, one of three principals in the case, along with retired dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford and Vancouver sex worker Amy Lebovitch.

What a ridiculous woman!

What isn't ridiculous is the harm legalising prostitution does:

Countries where prostitution is legal experience larger reported inflows of human trafficking, according to new research that investigates the impact of legalised prostitution on what is thought to be one of the fastest growing criminal industries in the world....

The researchers used a global sample of 116 countries. They found that countries where prostitution is legal tend to experience a higher reported inflow of human trafficking than countries in which prostitution is prohibited.

The article’s authors also looked in more detail at Sweden, Germany and Denmark, which changed their prostitution laws during the past 13 years. Sweden prohibited it in 1999, while Germany further legalised it by allowing third-party involvement in 2002. Denmark decriminalised it in 1999 so that self-employed prostitution is legal, but brothel operation is still forbidden.

Germany showed a sharp increase in reports of human trafficking upon fully legalising prostitution in 2002. The number of human trafficking victims in 2004 in Denmark, where it is decriminalised, was more than four times that of Sweden, where it is illegal, although the population size of Sweden is about 40 per cent larger.

And now, finish your Christmas baking with these.