Moving on from the discussion HERE:

keep reading …
An Interview to Think By:

So, let me get this straight; if I make the argument that a religion or creed is fundamentally flawed … I’m a bigot … right? Painting one particular group with the same brush, tends to make it so.
I suppose that in it’s purest form, any blanket rejection of any religion, culture, or creed may make me a bigot … unless I’m a “progressive” of course, in which case the rules don’t apply.
In this context, I give you a lengthy and well thought-out two part essay on Islam. The picture it paints ain’t pretty: Part One Part Two

The theological iron curtain is draped over every country with a majority Muslim population. Wherever the Muslim faith predominates, political repression and despotism are the rule. Afghanistan and Iraq are no exception: any pluralism which is now tolerated in these two countries would recede quickly if the encouraging presence of the United States military were withdrawn.
Turkey is often cited as an exception — the exception — to Islamic despotism. But secularism in Turkey is enforced from the top down. It has shallow roots, and requires repeated interventions by the military in order to survive. Indonesia and Malaysia also used to be relatively tolerant places, but as European colonialism recedes further into history, these countries have become more and more Islamized and repressive.

Speaking of bigotry: CLICK

The whole phenomenon has become so convoluted, that despite the fact that one group, fundamentalist Muslims, openly and articulately express their hate of our institutions, democracy, religions, and liberty, we continue to invite them to come and live among us. We continue to talk in abstract terms about a “War on Terror”, when it is in fact a “War on Us” being carried out by Muslims.
We have been taught to suppress that wee small voice inside, that diminutive primitive germ of an instinct that is trying to scream aloud and warn us that mortal danger is just over the next hill.
In an age long ago, they would’ve simply called it “common sense”.

UPDATE …

If your goal is to win the unchurched to Christ (rather than just displaying your smug self-righteousness for all the world to see) PLEASE do not name your website inquisition.ca
Congratulations: you have just doomed countless souls with your Pharasiacal pomposity. I can hear the unmistakable sound of hardening hearts all the way from Quebec:

Democracy in Action Calendar
Counter-demonstration : pro-choice
“Next Sunday, some reactionaries will be demonstrating in from of CHUQ in Ste.-Foy, to be in opposition to abortion and, most of all, to the right of women to make free choices. Conscious of the danger that this anti-feminist movement constitutes in the present context, we call for a massive demonstration of our opposition to this retrograde discourse by means of a pro-choice counter-demonstration.
“The reactionary demonstration on Sunday is organized by a small committee composed of Christian integrists [???] based in the west of the capital and supported by an anti-choice lobby (www.rvme.org). Presided over by Bernard Westerveld, pastor of the Reformed Church in Ste.-Foy, the main worker on the committee is Stefan Jetchick, one of the principal animators in Québec of the Christian Heritage Party and of the website www.inquisition.ca (yes! yes!) These people are dangerous. We refuse their religious delirium!”

Etc. etc.
You’re not supposed to make it harder for people to be good. Thanks for nothing, guys.

I wonder if the “models” accounted for dirt … likely not, as gool’ol dirt just ain’t as sexy as C02 or Ozone. Cleaning up ordinary pollution; something I can get behind:

The global warming debate has until now focused almost entirely on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, but scientists at the University of California – Irvine, suggest that a lesser-known problem – dirty snow – could explain the Arctic warming attributed to greenhouse gases.
Dirty snow is created when particulate matter from exhausts, smoke stacks, land use and forest-fires enters the atmosphere and infuses snow. Because dirty snow is darker than natural snow, it absorbs more sunlight and heat.

… Keep Reading
crossposted @ Celestial Junk

It seems that some of the political and bureaucratic gremlins that infest Ottawa have been whispering in Bob Fife’s ear: Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier has become too powerful, and must be put out to pasture. As expected, the government is denying the rumours – which they’d do no matter whether the story was accurate or not.
I know it’s like asking a tiger not to be striped, or a Liberal not to have his hand elbow deep in the public coffers, but I wish our political class could stop being political for a moment and look at what’s in the country’s best interests instead of looking after their own little pissing patch.
Because what they’d see is an officer that the soldiers love, a man who could say “Follow me!” as he kicked down the gates of Hell, and have every man and woman in the CF at his back. They’d see a leader, a rare and once endangered species at National Defence Headquarters.
If the politicians and the parasites who live off of them in Ottawa are indeed intent on tearing this man down, it’s because they’ve decided it’s in their own personal interests to do so, because by any objective measure, Rick Hillier has been the best CDS this country has had in my lifetime. Pushing him out might help them, but it certainly wouldn’t help the country.
If you’d like to help remind them of that, and of where their duty lies in this matter, feel free to participate in a little poll we have going over at The Torch. I’ll be sure to forward the results to the appropriate in-boxes in Ottawa.

Or: Is Avi Lewis too dumb to really be Jewish?

“Whether you’re on TV or debating some turtle-necked Harper’s type at a dinner party [or scrolling past the trolls in the SDA combox: ed.] , the phony rhetorical tit-for-tat is predictable. It doesn’t matter what Islamist barbarism is up for discussion, there is always someone willing to offer up some offsetting American sin — Hurricane Katrina, racism, fast-food culture, etc. — as proof that the United States is just as bad, or worse. (…)
“It’s not quite clear what Salutin means by ‘Western hypocrisy regarding gays’ given that in Iran, as in many Muslim countries, gays get whipped, stoned or executed; while in the West, they hop on floats and get feted in big urban parades. Nor have I any idea what he means about women. Or science.
“But that’s not the point is it? When you’re playing the equivalence game, you just spit the topics out and your target audience connects the dots based on some half-remembered Clinton-era factoid about abortion doctors…”

Aw, let’s not be too hard on aging hipster/mal vivant Rick Salutin. That line of bs was the only thing getting the boy well and truly laid for forty years now. It’s amazing what left wing women will sleep with, no?
Anyway, if America really was the ultra-violent nation that Michael Moore and his Euro-trash fanboys claim it is, O.J. Simpson would have been sniped in the skull on the courthouse steps.

Former gang member turned Marine and recipient of the Navy Cross expresses his thoughts after after returning from Iraq:

Liberals often like to say that “violence is senseless.”
That’s wrong.
Violence isn’t senseless. Senseless violence is senseless. And I should know. Before being awarded the Navy Cross and having the privilege of becoming a Marine, I was a gang member. Sometimes it takes having used violence for both evil as well as good to know that there’s a profound moral difference between the two.

Read the whole thing, but especially note this:

But if there was one lesson I learned from my past it is that there is a profound moral difference between using violence to destroy lives and using violence to save lives. Terrorists do the former; soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines do the latter.

Indeed they do. At least those on our side do.

These concerts are really effective, huh?

“So far, the concerts have raised about $3 million to benefit AIDS awareness.
“An estimated 5.4 million South Africans are infected with the AIDS virus, more than any other country in the world. About 900 people die of the disease each day.”

So: was South Africa a safer, healthier nation under apartheid?
Discuss.