While the current geopolitical events are focusing our attention on the previous clashes between Islamic cultures and ‘the West’, it may be of interest to take a look at some of the factors which contributed to the decline of the Ottoman empire.
This following video, while acknowledging the external pressures, highlights some internal developments which affected the decline of the Ottoman empire – developments which we ought not dismiss out of hand:
Last Saturday, there was a ‘multi-faith’ protest against the blasphemous movie, ‘Innocence of the Muslims’.
In so many parts of the worlds, these protests have been extremely violent and, well, deadly. And not just from the primary rioting: in many places of the world, Muslims who were not deemed to be sufficiently ardent in protesting have faced violence. In one famous example, a man who declined to close his shop in order to join the riots in Pakistan has been charged with ‘blasphemy’ and is facing life in jail or a death sentence. In another example, journalists whom the rioters suspected of not giving their riots sufficient coverage (or casting them in positive enough light – depending on which sources you read) were violently attacked and barely escaped with their lives.
So, I am very happy to report that the Toronto protests were all peaceful.
Well, peaceful in the sense that the people protesting did not riot – and that is a good thing. That some of the protesters called for violence – and even the death of the moviemakers – that is less good.
Here are some videos of both the protest and the coverage thereof by Sun Media:
Ezra Levant with Raheel Raza:
If you’d like to check it out – Muslims Facing Tomorrow website is here.
Michael Coren’s (who made it to the protest personally) coverage is here:
BTW – I oppose the laws that forbid the denial of the holocaust. Not because I don’t thing it happened – my mother, as a small child, guided by her mother – actually sneaked food to Jewish concentration camp inmates when they were on a work detail in her neighbourhood. My grandmother saw, with her own eyes, a prisoner, dive onto a compost heap to eat some potato peels – and how, for this, he was beaten to death by his guard…using a beam with a nail in it… Yes, I know it happened and I have heard 1st person testimony of just how nightmarish it was. That, of course, is not the point: even if they are vicious lies, people must be free to say them, and say them publicly. To me, freedom of speech is absolute.
BlazingaCatFur – who was also there – asks some very basic questions:
SDAMatt2a, who also attended the event in order to report on it, captured the protester’s assertion that ‘Islam condones racism’. In case you think this is a linguistic error, please, do consider that the Koran itself considers the supremacy of Arabs over other races (and the Qureshi tribe is given supremacy over other Arabs) and that under Sharia – even today, it is not just illegal for any non-Muslim men to marry a Muslim woman, it is also illegal for non-white Muslim men to marry white Muslim women, it is illegal for non-Arab Muslim men to marry Arab Muslim women and it is illegal for non-Qureshi Muslim men to marry Qureshi Muslim women. That is recognized by ALL the ‘schools’ of Sharia and women whose wali (legal guardian) who agrees on their behalf to a marriage contract (as women cannot agree on their own – that power is reserved for their guardian alone) to a man in contradiction of this race-based rule have the right to sue for divorce on the grounds of having been married ‘below their racial status’. All schools of Islamic jurisprudence recognize this and side with the race-based ‘status’. I personally think this is wrong – but I do not have any influence over Sharia…
Sad.
So sad…
And, in the meanwhile in Europe:
As if the misogyny and sexism which permeates the Olympics were not enough…
(Where are the men’s synchronized swimmers? Where were the women ski jumpers? Why are women not permitted to compete as equals, but are relegated to second-class competitions? Gender apartheid is wrong and immoral – always and everywhere, including in athletics!)
As if the excusing of animal cruelty in order to cater to delusional beliefs were not enough…
(The Femen have it right: the next Olympic sports likely to be introduced are stoning and speed raping!)
As if the clear corruption of the IOC were not so blatant (and thus did not render all ‘judged’ sports meaningless)…
And, yes – a government or, as is the case with IOC, a government-empowered organ – selling commercial monopoly rights to the highest bidder and then rigorously enforcing them is the very definition of fascism…
Why are we still tolerating this?
Why are we normalizing this form of corporate thuggery? Why is this unholy alliance of international racketeering with corporate entities given government protection?
Shame on us all!
Once upon a time, RIM, the maker of Blackberry, was known for excellent security in communications.
So much so that unscrupulous governments sought to ban it – lest they not be able to spy on their citizens.
Now, RIM seems to have rolled over and decided to let governments trample over its users’ civil liberties:
‘RIM recently demonstrated a solution developed by a firm called Verint that can intercept messages and emails exchanged between BlackBerry handsets, and make these encrypted communications available in a readable format to Indian security agencies, according to an exchange of communications between the Canadian company and the Indian government.’
RIM had originally built its reputation – and marketshare – based on the security the encryption it put all messages through provided. Its encryption was so secure, governments that would like to monitor their citizens’ communication threatened to shut them out of their marketplace.
Hence the flop.
Without this enhanced security, however, there is little to elevate their product over cheaper or ‘sexier’ smart phones.
This, therefore, is a serious gamble on the part of RIM: will access to the Indian market permit them to grow, or will this latest corruption of the security of its communications be the last nail in their coffin?
Since Dr. Mann’s new hobby of suing people has brought up the subject of the ‘hockey-stick graph’ – specifically, whether its creation was honest incompetence or straightforward fraud valid ‘climate science’, I wend digging through the interwebitudes for some more background material.
Note: Dr. Mann is not suing National Review and Mark Steyn for comparing Penn State’s whitewashing of both the pedophile and himself. Not at all. He is suing them for having called him a fraud. And the reason he is suing Dr. Ball is because he said that Michael Mann belongs in State Penn, not Penn State… Therefore, I am not suggesting either of these things, in any way, shape or form.
There is so much material out there, it is difficult to pick the best few – the ones that best document the events. However, here are a few front runners:
This post opens with:
‘There wasn’t any hockey stick prior to the year 2000.
The 1990 IPCC report showed that temperatures were much cooler than 800 years ago.’
It then supplies graphs – of what was the historical record prior to 2000, and how that all changed as the ‘hockey-stick graph’ took shape.
It even points out which bits were done by Phil Jones’s team, which by Michael Mann’s team.
Chock full of graphs, showing the ‘before’ and ‘after’ figures.
So, how did this become ‘accepted science’? What ‘studies’ confirmed it? How did it make it into the IPCC reports?
That is an interesting story in its own right – and has been meticulously pieced together in this post:
From the intro:
‘The story is a remarkable indictment of the corruption and cyncism that is rife among climate scientists, and I’m going to try to tell it in layman’s language so that the average blog reader can understand it. As far as I know it’s the first time the whole story has been set out in a single posting. It’s a long tale – and the longest posting I think I’ve ever written and piecing it together from the individual CA postings has been a long, hard but fascinating struggle. You may want to get a long drink before starting, and those who suffer from heart disorders may wish to take their beta blockers first.’
Here, meticulously documented, is the story of how the ‘hockey-stick graph’ went from being just one paper, submitted by one scientist, to ‘scientific consensus’ and unquestionable holy writ.
It documents questionable behaviour by the scientists involved, the editors of the journals and the IPCC folks, none of whom appear to be following their own guidelines of professional conduct.
While we are on the topic of IPCC itself, it is important to note that while they loudly touted the unfortunate hockey-stick graph for quite some time – before quietly removing it without an explanation – it is important to understand that this is not a body of leading scientists: it is primarily a political body, formed by a political organization, through a politically correct process, to promote its own political agenda – with a few scientists tossed in for window dressing.
One person who has documented IPCC’s sloppiness (if not downright corruption) and lack of adherence to its own rules is the Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise. Here she is, from a tour in Australia:
Much of the IPCC process was dominated by ‘climate modelling’ – computer programs that try to predict what will happen based on what has happened. On the surface of it, this seems valid: the problem is in how these models were constructed. It seems they are, to put it mildly, highly flawed.
Another fundamental problem for the IPCC reviewers was that they were only permitted to comment on the studies which were pre-selected and presented to them for comment. This selection process was highly sensitive – but handled by the behind-the-scenes bureaucrats. There were many instances where scientists spoke up, saying the material they were presented with was not representative of the current work in the field and asked to be permitted to include a broader spectrum of studies. These requests were summarily dismissed by the apartchicks running the show.
But even as hamstrung as they were, when scientists actually commented on errors/omissions/inaccuracies in the drafts of the reports, their comments were dismissed, the drafts were not corrected and the objectionable conclusions or downright errors made it into the final reports. Cough, Himalayan glacier, cough…
That is not a sound scientific process….
While I was scouring the interwebitudes looking for supporting links, I came across an interesting site:
Bookmark this site – it catalogues peer-reviewed, scientific papers (by category) which refute the warm-mongering narrative. Over a thousand of them.
It would b easy to just sit here are read them all – but then, this post would never get fin…
Do you remember Dr. Michael Mann?
He is a singularly interesting figure in the world of Anthropogenic Climate Change hypothesis. (In this comment thread on Bishop Hill blog, the field is referred to as ‘Mann-made Global Warming – lol.)
He was one of the central figures in the leaked CRU emails – and of the ‘hide the decline’ fame. (Here is the song..)
Dr. Mann is also the author of the thoroughly debunked ‘hockey stick’ graph – as demonstrated by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. Dr. Mann has said some very ‘not nice’ things about this statistician and economist…
Two Canadians.
Canucks!
And, he is in the process of suing Dr. Tim Ball – another Canadian!
Aside – this lawsuit is not going well for Dr. Mann: as part of the discovery process, he has to hand over for courtroom scrutiny the very data he has spent a decade hiding, or face contempt of court charges and a ruling in Dr. Ball’s favour. Somebody did not think his tactics through…
But, that is not all!
Now, Dr. Mann has decided to sue National Review for the words Mark Steyn wrote there…
ANOTHER CANADIAN!!!
With all the critics of Dr. Mann ‘out there’ – why is he picking on the Canadians?
Could it be – CANUCKOPHOBIA?
I don’t know – perhaps we should have someone in the sensitivity training field pay Dr. Mann a little visit, just to be on the safe side…
What about those who think everyone is unfairly picking on poor Dr. Mann?
If you don’t think the vast bulk of the criticism heaped upon him is undeserved, please, consider the following: his Penn State course information contains the following: (H/T betapug)
GAIA – THE EARTH SYSTEM (EARTH 002, Section 2; 3 credits) with the course schedule for days 37 & 38 is : MOVIE: An Inconvenient Truth (Part 1 and Part 2)
Yes – according to this ‘scientist’, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ is Universtiy-level science material! LOL!!! When, years ago, I showed it to my kids, my young son actually thought that this movie was made with intentional errors in the science so as to train kids how to spot bad science…and greatly relished pointing the mistakes out!
Come on!
If you want to be taken seriously as a scientist, you really ought to know better than to use such seriously flawed material as a teaching tool…
In other words, perhaps more than any other scientist of our era, Dr. Mann is rather to be ridiculed…perhaps his compulsion for making himself the laughing stock of the scientific community is rooted in the same pathology from which his (potential) Canuckophobia stems.
H/T: BCF, Bishop Hill, Watts Up With That, Steyn, and many more…
P.S. It looks like Dr. Mann’s legal fund is backed by George Soros, via Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and GAP’s Environmental program…this could add a whole new dimension to the conflict.
And, here is the Bukhovsky warning referred to in the interview:
So, what is the capital of Israel?
According to the UK‘s Guardian, it is Tel Aviv.
According to the BBC, while East Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine, Israel does not have a capital at all! (H/T: BCF)
And the US State Department sort of splits the difference between the two:
So, exactly when did Jerusalem stop being Israel’s capital? (Or, at least, West Jerusalem – if you want to avoid internal inconsistency within the BBC narrative…)
UPDATE: this video seems like it ought to be part of this post:
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 