A solution to global warming – pollute more!

Research presented at a major European science meeting adds to other evidence that cleaner air is letting more solar energy through to the Earth’s surface.
Other studies show that increased water vapour in the atmosphere is reinforcing the impact of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
[…]
Between the 1950s and 1980s, the amount of solar energy penetrating through the atmosphere to the Earth’s surface appeared to be declining, by about 2% per decade.
This trend received some publicity under the term “global dimming”.
Rising Sun (BBC)
Clean air makes bright skies
But in the 1980s, it appears to have reversed, according to two papers published last year in the journal Science.
[,,,]
The reversal of “global dimming” has been proposed in some circles as an alternative explanation for climatic change, removing the need to invoke human emissions of greenhouse gases.
Dr Wild dismissed this picture. His analysis suggests that “global dimming” and the man-made greenhouse effect may have cancelled each other out until the early 1980s, but now “global brightening” is adding to the impact of human greenhouse emissions.
“There is always this argument that maybe the whole temperature rise wasn’t due to greenhouse warming but due to solar variations,” he told the BBC News website.
“During the solar dimming we had really no temperature rise. And only when the solar dimming disappeared could we really see what is going on in terms of the greenhouse effect, and that is only starting in the 1980s.”

Just in case you thought you were alone in your confusion.

American journalist Jill Caroll has been released by her Iraqi captors.
As always, the Jawa Report is the place to go for details on stories of this type.
Speculation watching at The Corner;

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is the instinct in the New York Times newsroom and all over the MSM. But I have an itch that suggests not.
I may have misheard–was doing other things at the time, but as I turned on FNC a few minutes ago, Bret Baier, Pentagon correspondent at Fox, seemed to immediately assume in his rapid-response commentary on Fox and Friends that the rescue of the Christian peace activists last week might have played a role in Carroll’s release.

Financial Times;

The US administration banned its officials on Wednesday night from meeting the Islamist group Hamas, as the new Palestinian government was sworn in and while Israel�s centrist Kadima party opened talks to form a coalition after winning the largest number of seats in Knesset elections.
US officials in the region were instructed by e-mail on Wednesday to have no contacts with Palestinian ministries from 6pm last night.

And at about the same time;

�The stated platform of this government has not addressed the concerns raised by Canada and others concerning non-violence, the recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Roadmap for Peace,� MacKay said in a statement.
�As a result, Canada will have no contact with the members of the Hamas cabinet and is suspending assistance to the Palestinian Authority.�
MacKay added that the new government must make a �clear commitment� to peace before Canada will resume assistance.

He may be gone from the halls of parliament, but the Svend Robinson Spirit of Moral Equivalency lives on;

The NDP supports a peaceful resolution to this conflict that has cost too many innocent lives on both sides of the border. The NDP believes that we must continue to condemn all acts of terror against innocent people, be they Israeli or Palestinian, and that Canada has a moral responsibility to play a meaningful role in advancing peace, through diplomatic and financial means.

Advancing peace hrough “financial means”? What does that mean, exactly?
The NDP “calls on the federal government to ensure that all direct assistance funding these important programs that are now suspended, be redirected to organizations directly involved in delivery of humanitarian aid and democracy building in the Palestinian Authority.”,
Forgetting, apparently, that these same innocent Palestinian people have freely voted in a government dedicated to the destruction of Israel. One wonders if the NDP would be equally magnaminous towards the election of a hard-line Israeli government bent on ensuring, once and for all, that they never get the chance.
Well, actually, one doesn’t.

The surviving Christian Peacemaker hostages have been freed;

Two Canadian hostages held in Iraq for nearly four months have been freed in a carefully planned military operation involving Canadian, British, American and Iraqi forces.
Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, were freed along with Briton Norman Kember, 74. All three were members of the Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), an international peace activist group.

When the four members of CPT were first abducted, I recall a Canadian spokesperson from the group declaring (on behalf of the CPT and the hostages) that the use of military force to secure their release was unacceptable.

Members of Canada’s top secret commando unit, Joint Task Force 2, had been in Iraq working in tandem with British troops, said officials. It’s not clear how many were in Iraq, but they have been in the country for some time.

One presumes CPT will be issuing a press release any moment demanding they be “put back where they were found” – right after the news conference by NDP leader Jack Layton denouncing the involvement of Canadian troops in the rescue.
update – The CPT news release doesn’t quite call for that, but it does take time out to blame the rescuers (in so many words) for the abduction. For all of the lip-service paid to the phrase “love our enemies”, one might have thought there would be a little of that Christian generosity extended to the “occupiers” who put their asses on the line to free them.
More – Kathy Shaidle has this find;

“In reaction Kember’s friend, Bruce Kent (…) said the miltants holding the hostages ‘must have been people of great faith.'”
Not the rescuers, mind — the kidnappers! You can’t make this crap up! This is yer morally unmoored “progressive” Christianity, folks.

Update – the original quote has been changed, and the Shaidle post updated to reflect that it now “says the kidnappers must have realized that their hostages were people of great faith. Which makes infinitely more sense, naive or not”
Michelle Malkin has more.

The body of Tom Fox was found in Baghdad today. There is no mention of time of death, but perhaps we now know why he was missing from the video. Forensics will be done in the US as to time & cause of death.
I certainly admire him for having the courage to stand up for his convictions, and extend my condolences to his family & friends.
And here’s hoping that the remaining hostages will be found alive soon.
crossposted at Waking Up On Planet X
UPDATE: As a guest blogger but frequent commenter, I admit to questioning the wisdom of posting this on SDA. If people are going to go on the attack on a post intended to bring to light the distressing news of a dead hostage, and what that may or may not mean for the fate of other hostages, and without regard to just WHO might google & find this site (like family) that would be hurt beyond belief by said attacks, I will either turn the comments off for this post so that the information is available, or delete it.
Conservative bloggers like to believe that they would never stoop to the levels that can be seen on progressive-blogs-that-shall-not-be-named. Here is an opportunity to prove it.

“I was ten years old. But they changed my age to 18 for execution.�;

Catch up on what the fashion conscious martyr is wearing this year;

The interwoven syntax/cotton satin weave revolutionized the world of detonating fashion, allowing would be jihadi�s to pass through even the most dedicated checkpoints, and look fabulous doing it.

Publius Pundit

Strange, however, is the connection between the bombing the of al-Askariya shrine in Samarra and who benefited the most from it. Al-Sadr, that�s who. It should not be a surprise that one of the many theories surrounding the attack is that it was staged by Iranian agents, loyal to a fundamentalist regime whose religion is pure power. And whose intention is to ignite sectarian strife in neighboring Iraq.
We know right off the bat, as I already explained, that there is no chance in hell that it was the Sunnis. Ironically, though the Sunnis have been the ones throughout the entire affair to denounce the attacks, it was al-Sadr who organized the mass extra-judicial killings of hundreds of Sunnis afterwards. It was his Medhi Army militia, along with men infiltrated into the Interior Ministry through the UIA, who ran people off the streets in fear to their homes, and attacked dozens of Sunni mosques. He was the first to call for revenge, yet he was the one praised for brokering compromise between the Shias and Sunnis afterward. Throwing dry leaves on the sectarian fires, just like the bombing in Samarra, has only helped al-Sadr. The Shias have taken advantage of it in order to stress the importance of a government with them in charge and the importance of having their own federal region, things they may have had to compromise on otherwise.

Via Instapundit, where there’s more.

Arabian Dissent is watching the situation in Iraq and finds signs that a major meltdown over the attack on the Golden Mosque may be avoided. Let’s hope.
Keep your eye on the Iraqi bloggers on the sidebar, too. They’re invariably more accurate in their analysis than the mainstream media.

Retaliation has begun for the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Iraq, a Shia Muslim shrine. Jack’s Newswatch is all over the developing story, so I’ll just send you there.

Via Kevin Sinclair

Weekly Standard;

WALL STREET JOURNAL reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped when he went looking for the leader of a group called Jamaat al-Fuqra in the terrorist bazaar of Pakistan. At the time he disappeared, Pearl was tracking reports that Fuqra had hosted would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid at its walled compound in Lahore. In the end, it was agents of another group that spirited Pearl off to his death, but Fuqra remains a subject of interest, and not only because of its activities in Pakistan. For Fuqra has had a disturbing U.S. presence for more than 20 years. Today, half a dozen Fuqra residential compounds in rural hamlets across the country shelter hundreds of members, some of whom, according to intelligence sources, have been trained in the use of weapons and explosives in Pakistan.
[…]
Gilani launched his U.S. operations in 1980. Within ten years, Fuqra’s communes were billing themselves as havens where Muslim converts–many of them inner-city blacks, sometimes recruited in prison–could build new lives. At least seven such communities are active today, in Hancock, N.Y.; Red House, Va.; Tulare County, Calif.; Commerce, Ga.; York, S.C.; Dover, Tenn.; and Combermere, Canada. While some of these enclaves contain only rudimentary buildings and trailers, the California compound has 300 residents on a 440-acre spread, according to a recent report by a local ABC station. Residents deny any involvement with terror, but Fuqra has a history of getting into trouble with the law.
Over the years, at least a dozen Fuqra members have been convicted of crimes including conspiracy to commit murder, firebombing, gun smuggling, and workers’ compensation fraud in the United States or Canada. And Fuqra members are suspects in at least 10 unsolved assassinations and 17 firebombings between 1979 and 1990. Nor is Fuqra’s criminal activity all in the past. In the last year alone, a resident of the California compound was charged with first degree murder in the shooting of a sheriff’s deputy; another was charged with gun smuggling; the state of California launched an investigation into the fate of more than a million dollars in public funds given to a charter school run by Fuqra leaders; and two residents of the Red House community were convicted of firearms violations, while a third awaits trial.

(Emphasis mine.)
Via Canadian Sentinel, where there’s more.

The motorcades screech to a halt, lights flashing; burly bodyguards jump out and usher their charges into the conference hall. They have been summoned here from their palaces, their holiday villas, awakened from their beds, rushed here in their private jets. This is THE big meeting of the OIC, the Organization of the Islamic Conference. So are they finally going to resolve the Darfur conflict, the Brown-Muslim-on-Black-Muslim genocide that has already claimed an estimated 300,000 lives?

Not exactly.

And the benefits are only so-so…

C- If the vacation exceeds what is allowed, then, the relative salary will be withheld (prorated) except if those in responsible positions (in order of hierarchy) approve a holiday extension.

Other clauses cover salary, medical coverage,torture.
This sounds like a job for secret agent Buzz Hargrove! Unionization has brought down bigger outfits than this, I tell ya!

The cover-up continues…

These images are quite damning. They clearly show that prisoners in Iraq continue to be abused. More than abused, these images show prisoners in Iraq being murdered by the troops involved. Yet, nothing from the mainstream media.

The images are graphic.

(In the comments, Walter P. argues the caption should read “Meet the new editor, same as the old editor.”)

So far no photos of one stuck to the wet chest of a busty blonde. (Give that a day, I’d say.)

The staff of an alternative weekly have walked out over their publisher’s refusal to reprint the cartoons. The Editor-In Chief;

New York Press, like so many other publications, has suborned its own professed principles. For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons that have been used as a pretext for great and greatly menacing violence directed against journalists, cartoonists, humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and others who represent the basic values and obligations of Western civilization.

Daniel Pipes distills the issue down to it’s core question;

Will Westerners accede to a double standard by which Muslims are free to insult Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, while Muhammad, Islam, and Muslims enjoy immunity from insults? Muslims routinely publish cartoons far more offensive than the Danish ones. Are they entitled to dish it out while being insulated from similar indignities?

The answer is far from clear at the moment.
Powerline has a big roundup on the orchestration of the protests. The campaign is being funded by a number of M.E. governments, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that some of it is designed to water down attention on Iran’s nuclear crisis with the UN. Quoting Fred Siegel;

The Arab world understands Europe�s weaknesses far better than the other way around. Criticism of Islamism is usually described by Muslim spokesmen as “racist” as if religious ideology was a biological given. Even more important, they have learned how to game Western liberalism. When Muslim spokesmen deny the Holocaust, they defend themselves on the grounds that they are only exercising their free speech rights. When they insist that images offensive to Muslims should be barred, they drop the free speech bit and argue on the grounds of multi-cultural sensitivity. The latter argument received strong backing from most of the European left which, looking upon Muslims as the new proletariat, insists that Islamophobia, not Islamofascism, is the great issue of the day.

Lots of that here, too.
In the meantime, Iran is hosting Holocaust cartoon contest and the Jewish street explodes.

Graphic courtesy Dissident Frogman. There are several to choose from, if you’re so inclined.
A few readers have asked me to set up a post directing others as to how they can help offset the boycott of Danish goods. This list was posted in the comments – feel free to add your own.

If you would like to send a note of support to the Danish Embassy , their contact email address is ottamb@um.dk. For the Danish Embassy in the US: wasamb@um.dk.
And for our faux liberal friends on the left, who stubbornly refuse to “get it”, Muslim dissident Ibn Warraq warns;

A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.
Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.

(moved back to top with updates)
Jeff Goldstein;

[S]uddenly, free speech is not a universal right worthy of the crafting of puppet heads and the defacing of Starbucks� windows, but instead is a culture-specific gift that needs to be filtered through the religious precepts of the culture of the Other. Unless, of course, that �Other� happens to be, say, Evangelical Christians. In which case, such extremists MUST BE SHOUTED DOWN with free speech.
Pretzel logic, clearly�and the dilemma that is at the root of an incoherent philosophical system that favors the sociology of group identity over the universality of individual rights. Ironically, George Bush, each time he argues that freedom is universal, is acting in a manner far more progressive than self-styled progressive activists.
Again: note the crux of the debate, as framed by the voices for Muslim protest, and take care to listen for the broad-stroked rhetoric�usually more carefully crafted by those who have perfected its vocabulary, cadence, emotional appeals, and key words�of the �tolerance� movement, the justificating force that cynically underpins all identity politics:

“The 12 cartoons … have caused an uproar in the Muslim world and drawn a new cultural battle over freedom of speech and respect of religions.”

Translation: �Free speech is good so long as it tolerates our right, as an identity group, to dictate which free speech is authentic and allowable. Otherwise, y�know, we get to torch shit.�

You’ll see some (though not all are guilty) of that pretzel logic on display here, including an admonishment to those republishing cartoons that we are “not being helpful”. One suspects that, if sent back in time some 60ish years, such people would have been completely at home in “occupied” France.
Damian Penny has more on these voices of surrender. (At this rate, how long will it be before we begin to hear calls demanding Salman Rushdie apologize to his offended Islamist “critics” ?)
Sunday Morning Update
Another day, another embassy torched. “It was not immediate clear if the building was empty”.
MIchelle has a lot of new links, including this one to Steyn;

One day, years from now, as archaeologists sift through the ruins of an ancient civilization for clues to its downfall, they’ll marvel at how easy it all was. You don’t need to fly jets into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. As a matter of fact, that’s a bad strategy, because even the wimpiest state will feel obliged to respond. But if you frame the issue in terms of multicultural “sensitivity,” the wimp state will bend over backward to give you everything you want — including, eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers.

Read this Opinion Journal piece, as well.

Jyllands-Posten decided to publish the cartoons after complaints from an author that he could not find an illustrator who dared to draw images of Muhammad for his book. It was this atmosphere of fear and intimidation that the newspaper wanted to highlight.

In the meanwhile, we line the streets to bear witness as tens of thousands of “moderate Muslims” begin counter-protests around the globe in support of cultural diversity and religious tolerance.
Oh? Was that a pin dropping?
Also – the so-called prohibition against depicting Mohammed – is a little consistency from our “Muslim brothers and sisters” too much to ask?