Utterly shocking (:

Developing countries were today shocked by new UN data showing that rich nations will be able to increase their carbon emissions by up to 8% if they take advantage of a series of major loopholes in their pledges.
Instead of reducing emissions by a minimum of 30-40% by 2020 and holding temperatures to a rise of 2C – as many campaigners hoped the Copenhagen climate summit in December would achieve – many rich countries would not need to make any domestic cuts to stay within the legal limits of a new global climate deal being negotiated at resumed UN talks in Bonn this week.
The figures, which are far higher than expected, could be achieved by a series of carbon accountancy tricks and devices including:

… keep reading.

In a surprising development, two senior Saudi clerics today said that Saudi Arabia’s women should give their breast milk to male colleagues and acquaintances in order to safeguard the Islamic law that forbids mixing between the sexes. The clerics, however, failed to reach an agreement among each other on how the milk should be conveyed.

… just wondering, how does this apply to 9 year old wives?
Update: Satire?
Supposedly not … Back Story

… has a little fun with aid:

More Latma.
Not so funny … an “aid shipment” intercepted last year … CLICK.
Charles from June 4:

But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel — a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.
[…]
Oh, but weren’t the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel’s offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza — as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.
Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel’s inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.
Israel has already twice intercepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?

That a Canadian soldier should die for the guano that passes for politics in Canada today makes me cringe. What kind of morally bankrupt country sends its men to die while at the same time telling the enemy the date they are quitting? Harper and the other party leaders make President Obama seem like Patton. Even most of Canada’s NATO allies, who have far less domestic support, are for now sticking it out.
When I said goodbye to my son last winter, I was potentially bidding him farewell forever … I was witnessing a willing young man entering a field of battle for his country, for Afghans, and for himself and his mates. I watched the weeping mothers and girl friends and children, clinging to their warriors for perhaps the last time, and I realized then how utterly undeserving the bickering hacks that abide in Ottawa are of those who do their bidding.
Imagine being the parent of a child fighting in a deadly conflict where your own government has already issued a best-before date.

… the rest @ Cjunk.

Long live the Queen!

Prince Charles yesterday urged the world to follow Islamic ‘spiritual principles’ in order to protect the environment.
In an hour-long speech, the heir to the throne argued that man’s destruction of the world was contrary to the scriptures of all religions – but particularly those of Islam.
He said the current ‘division’ between man and nature had been caused not just by industrialisation, but also by our attitude to the environment – which goes against the grain of ‘sacred traditions’.

Economics professor Daniel B. Klein and Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic recently surveyed nearly 5,000 people who variously self-identified as progressive/very liberal, liberal, moderate, conservative, very conservative, and libertarian. Respondents were asked to answer eight questions about basic economics. Responses were rated not on their adherence to any particular left/right ideological view, but in terms of their knowledge of basic, observable, real-world cause-and-effect. Rather than looking at correct responses, or at responses that could be seen as arguably correct, the researchers focused on the responses that were, as they put it, “flatly unenlightened“:

How did the six ideological groups do overall? Here they are, best to worst, with an average number of incorrect responses from 0 to 8: Very conservative, 1.30; Libertarian, 1.38; Conservative, 1.67; Moderate, 3.67; Liberal, 4.69; Progressive/very liberal, 5.26.

Americans in the first three categories do reasonably well. But the left has trouble squaring economic thinking with their political psychology, morals and aesthetics.

Yes, the same left who relentlessly campaign to establish an economic caliphate with them in charge.
This next finding goes a long way towards explaining the current state of affairs in the US:

The survey also asked about party affiliation. Those responding Democratic averaged 4.59 incorrect answers. Republicans averaged 1.61 incorrect, and Libertarians 1.26 incorrect.

(h/t ghostofaflea)

… can’t be a good thing when almost 80% of Ontario’s trade is with a country happily crushing itself in debt:

President Obama’s budget forecast reflects a cock-eyed optimism about our fiscal future, yet even it projects total U.S. debt will rise from 2009’s 53 percent of GDP to 90 percent by 2019. “Most economists,” Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) notes, “will tell you that an economy can handle between 30 and 40 percent debt as a percentage of GDP. But a nation’s economy starts to get into trouble when that ratio gets up around 60 percent of GDP. When it gets up to 80 percent of GDP, basically an economy can’t handle that for very long.”
The day of reckoning may already be here, according to a new study by the International Monetary Fund. It pegs our “general government gross debt” for 2010 at 92.6 percent of GDP. By 2014, the IMF estimates, government debt will pass the 100 percent–of–GDP tipping point (hitting 106.4 percent to be exact) and keep on going. To forestall a Greece-like fiscal catastrophe, the IMF says, lawmakers must act now to reduce government debt by more than $1.6 trillion. Instead, Congress is looking to pass an “extenders” bill that will run up hundreds of billions more in debt.

… the whole dangerous state of affairs is made all the more bizarre when one realizes that Ontario, among other provinces, is bound and determined to join its main trading partner in leaping off the debt cliff.