Global warming and politics

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While the truth of anthropogenic global warming obviously doesn’t rest on who believes or doesn’t believe in it, it is noteworthy that belief in global warming tends to align with political allegiance: Liberals are much more likely to be true believers than Conservatives. Even more significant is the fact that very few Liberal supporters have even read articles that question the accuracy of anthropogenic global warming theories.

All of which – regardless of whether the earth is warming or not – confirms that Liberals are…. gullible.

From here:

According to a draft report from the Brookings Institute that compares attitudes to global warming in the U.S. and Canada, an astounding 91% of Canadians who identify themselves as Liberals, and 90% who identify with the Bloc, answer “Yes” when asked: “From what you’ve read and heard, is there solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer over the past four decades.” Only 6% of Liberals and 9% of Bloc supporters have read and heard that the Earth has not been getting warmer, and just 3% and 1%, respectively, aren’t sure.

Canada’s Conservatives have been exposed to different views: 64% have heard that Earth has been getting warmer and 28% that Earth has not. 8% of Conservatives aren’t sure.

 

Anjem Choudary to speak at Hay-on-Wye festival

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From here:

Anjem Choudary – who praises Osama bin Laden and insists Islam will rule the world – has been invited to talk at a leading philosophy and music festival in Hay-on-Wye.

The former leader of the banned Islam4UK group is famous for planning to protest through the town of Wootton Bassett, where fallen British soldiers are honoured on their return from Afghanistan, and leading a prayer meeting to dead al-Qaeda leader bin Laden in London on Friday……

On its website, the festival says Choudary is “an outspoken advocate of Sharia law” and “a spokesperson for the group Islam4UK before it was banned by the Terrorism Act in 2010”.

Choudary advocates sharia law, a perniciously totalitarian mental and spiritual straightjacket that discourages listening to music and makes philosophy impossible because it disapproves of thinking. So it’s a bit odd that he has been invited to speak at a philosophy and music festival.

The Hay-on-Wye festival used to be a celebration of culture and civilisation: no more, it seems.

Many years ago, I lived in the Wye valley, a very pretty part of South Wales; at the time, the river was polluted with coal dust – a shame, but a more benign pollution than lunatic Islamists.

Killing bin Laden: there’s an app for that

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For those whose appetite for retribution was insufficiently satiated by the thought of someone else putting a hole in Osama’s head, Kuma Games has released a game that allows you to do it yourself.

I’m going to email it to Thomas Mulcair in the hope that it helps him come to grips with what happened: although there is always the worry that Mulcair’s tenuous grip on reality will confuse him to the point that he will start announcing that he was the one who killed bin Laden.

Rowan Williams, reportedly, is “very uncomfortable” with the game.

After months of surveillance and growing amounts of Intel, 79 Navy SEALs aboard two US Black Hawks and two more Chinooks cross into Pakistan under the cloak of darkness. The commandos quickly breech a secret compound, one designed for defense and manned by al Qaeda killers. In forty minutes and a rain of hot lead, a decades-long, worldwide manhunt for Osama Bin Laden will be ended… by you.

Click Here To Download Kuma War II

 

Onward Druid soldiers

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From here:

The face of the military is changing.

What used to be seen as a bastion for evangelical Christianity is now expanding its lists of faiths to include Wiccans and Druids.

At the Air Force Academy in Colorado, a prayer circle and veritable Stonehenge on the Rockies will now serve as a place of worship for the academy’s neo-Pagans.

The Colorado school has long faced criticism for only supporting evangelical Christianity.

Lt Gen Michael Gould, the academy’s superintendent, said before a ribbon cutting ceremony on the site on Tuesday: ‘This outdoor worship space is something we have created to help people of all religions.’

According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, the academy is home to about ten cadets who regularly attend ‘earth-centred’ worship groups which include New Age religion, paganism, Wicca, druids and ancient Norse beliefs……

The Rev David Oringdreff, who heads a Wiccan congregation in Texas, offered prayers at Tuesday’s ceremony and said: ‘Nowhere except for the United States of America would this be possible.’

Rowan Williams has expressed no discomfort whatsoever over this.

World to end on May 21st

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From here:

Michael Garcia is a believer.

He has put his faith out for the world to see, co-ordinating an advertising campaign proclaiming that the end of the world is coming on May 21.

His group, Family Radio, has billboards in 17 Canadian cities, he said, including Toronto, Calgary, Kingston, Windsor, Saskatoon, Ottawa, Quebec City and Montreal. They have thousands more across the United States and overseas in such countries as Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon, Mr. Garcia said.

A travelling caravan of believers is scheduled to be in Calgary and Vancouver next week, according to the group’s website.

“The doors to salvation are open. They are open today and they will be shut on May 21,” said Mr. Garcia, who lives in Oakland, Calif.

At a press conference, Rowan Williams said  that the impending end of the world left him with a “very uncomfortable feeling”. He also confided, “I don’t know the full details any more than anyone else” and wondered why he hadn’t been informed.

Tom Wright condemned the ending of the world since it “legitimises a form of vigilantism”, demanded that the UN be consulted before the summary extermination of 7 billion people and accused America of orchestrating the whole thing; then he started sucking his thumb.

 

The Anglican Church of Canada's continuing mission

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From here:

The building — formerly St. Matthew’s Anglican Church — is being moved to Avondale to become part of the new Avondale Sky Winery, owned by Stewart Creaser and his wife, Lorraine Vassalo.

“We needed a building to make our wine in and to sell our wine in. We’ve moved an old barn to our property to make the wine in and this building will be used to sell our wine,” Creaser told CBC News on Wednesday.

St. Matthew’s Anglican Church was built in 1844 and deconsecrated in 2008. Creaser and Vassalo bought the building for $1.67 — the same price the congregation paid for the church in 1844.

At least this latest outreach of the ACoC is something I can wholeheartedly endorse.

Tom Wright descends into moral fog

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From here:

Consider the following scenario. A group of Irish republican terrorists carries out a bombing raid in London. People are killed and wounded. The group escapes, first to Ireland, then to the US, where they disappear into the sympathetic hinterland of a country where IRA leaders have in the past been welcomed at the White House. Britain cannot extradite them, because of the gross imbalance of the relevant treaty. So far, this seems plausible enough.

But now imagine that the British government, seeing the murderers escape justice, sends an aircraft carrier (always supposing we’ve still got any) to the Nova Scotia coast. From there, unannounced, two helicopters fly in under the radar to the Boston suburb where the terrorists are holed up. They carry out a daring raid, killing the (unarmed) leaders and making their escape. Westminster celebrates; Washington is furious.

What’s the difference between this and the recent events in Pakistan? Answer: American exceptionalism. America is subject to different rules to the rest of the world. By what right? Who says?

Tom Wright seems more interested in the process that leads to justice than the act of justice itself – a bit like a Dilbert cartoon that I had pinned to my office wall for a number of years saying, “We take pride in our processes”. Presumably Wright would have been more content to have bin Laden tried by due process, found innocent and released than be the recipient of a summarily delivered hole in the head.

Judging by his selective quotation of Scripture and inane view that cultural and national values are morally equal, it’s hard to believe that Tom Wright hasn’t allowed anti-Americanism to cloud his judgement.

Temporal justice is never perfect: Tom Wright’s version of it amplifies its imperfections to the point of vacuity.

 

Rowan Williams uncomfortable with bin Laden killing

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Not as uncomfortable as bin Laden, though.

From here:

The archbishop of Canterbury has said the killing of Osama bin Laden left a “very uncomfortable feeling” because it appeared as if justice had not been done.

Bin Laden was shot dead in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on Sunday. It has since emerged that he was unarmed when US Navy Seals fired at him.

Lambeth Palace had previously refused to comment on the death of Bin Laden but, when asked at a press conference what he thought of the killing, Dr Rowan Williams replied: “I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling; it doesn’t look as if justice is seen to be done.

For future engagements, Navy SEAL 6 will take an embedded Rowan along for tactical advice on how they should behave to ensure his continuing comfort.

The Anglican Church of Canada mining justice

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Clerics from the Anglican Church of Canada met in Toronto and started digging for justice. I’m expecting to see giant drills and back-hoes roll past my door any minute.

From here:

As churches, we recognize our internal contradictions and complicity with respect to resource extraction, and the urgent need to practice responsible consumption and citizenship.  Therefore as people of faith who are members of local church congregations, we need to further develop our theological understandings of the issue, address our individual and collective lifestyles, develop an alternative economic model, and challenge the political and economic powers that drive the resource extraction industry. This conference may be a step toward a clear church expression of the need for change.

Oh, I get it, they are not excavating for justice at all: they just don’t like mining. Or consumption; or doing anything that violates the rights of the Earth; or capitalism.

I expect all the attendees, copies of Walden in hand, walked to the conference and shacked up in cardboard boxes under the Gardiner Expressway.

NDP deputy leader doubts bin Laden photos exist

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The NDP conspiracy theory loonies are not only out in force, but they seem to have floated to the top. Thomas Mulcair is in good company: at last an interesting Canadian political landscape. The bloc Add an Imagedecimated, the liberals humiliated and the official opposition led by buffoons.

 

From here:

The deputy leader of Canada’s new Official Opposition party says he doubts the U.S. has photos of Osama bin Laden’s dead body.

Thomas Mulcair, who stands in for NDP Leader Jack Layton in the House of Commons when he is away, told CBC’s Power & Politics that he doesn’t believe photos exist of bin Laden following his killing by U.S. forces on Sunday in Pakistan.

“I don’t think, from what I’ve heard, that those pictures exist and if they do I’ll leave that up to the American military,” he told host Evan Solomon.

“If they’ve got pictures of a cadaver then there’s probably more going on than we suspect in what happened there,” Mulcair said.

Mulcair also said the killing requires “a full analysis” on whether it was self-defence or a direct killing because “that has to do with American law and international law as well.”

“I think that if the Americans have taken pictures in that circumstance, it won’t be able to prove very much as to whether Mr. [bin Laden] was holding a weapon,” he said.

It seems that, Mulcair, rather than being an NDP aberration, is merely plodding the loon trail blazed by other members of his party:

In 2008, NDP MP Libby Davies stood up in Parliament and read out this petition, which had been signed by over 500 citizens:

Scientific and eyewitness evidence shows that the 9/11 Commission Report is a fraudulent document and that elements within the US government were complicit in the murder of thousands of people on 9/11/2001. This event, the petition points out, brought Canada into the so-called “War on Terror,” [and] it has changed our domestic and foreign policies for the worse.

In 2008, NDP MP Libby Davies stood up in Parliament and read out this petition, which had been signed by over 500 citizens:

Scientific and eyewitness evidence shows that the 9/11 Commission Report is a fraudulent document and that elements within the US government were complicit in the murder of thousands of people on 9/11/2001. This event, the petition points out, brought Canada into the so-called “War on Terror,” [and] it has changed our domestic and foreign policies for the worse.