THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Scientists Who Refuse To Toe The Line On Global Warming: Part II: In a typically bracing editorial, Investor’s Business Daily chronicles the efforts of Canadian scientists to better understand sunspot activity, believing that the sun is entering a prolonged period of “hibernation” known as a Maunder Minimum that could cause a period of global cooling that could last as long as 100 years.
† Carrying The Torch For The “Genocide Olympics”: The British Olympic Association (BOA) is forcing athletes to sign a 32-page contract that includes a clause forbidding them from commenting on or protesting China’s human rights abuses. For Brits old enough to remember the British soccer team give Adolph Hitler the Nazi salute at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, it’s déjà vu all over again. Athletes from the U.S., Australia and Finland, amongst others, are free to speak their minds. human rights campaigner Lord David Alton decried the gag as “a mockery” of freedom of speech. He tells the Daily Mail (London): “About the only justification for participating in the Beijing Games is that it offers an opportunity to encourage more awareness about human rights. Imposing compulsory vows of silence is an affront to our athletes, and in China it will be viewed as acquiescence. Each year 8,000 executions take place in China, political and religious opinion is repressed, journalists are jailed and the internet and overseas broadcasts are heavily censored.”
† What Freedom Of Speech Means To Muslims: A Hamas-dominated court has forbidden Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam from publishing and distributing copies in the Gaza Strip, over a cartoon published last November that ridiculed the Hamas-led Gaza government. The cartoon depicts the government head, Ismail Haniyeh, giving a speech to members of Parliament who all look like him and carry photos of him. The bottom right corner of the cartoon includes the words “the illegitimate,” a reference to the Hamas takeover of Gaza in June 2007. The Associated Press reports that a functionary in the Hamas-led Ministry of Information said the newspaper violated publishing laws by offending "the Palestinian legislature and its symbolism." The privately-owned newspaper, which is printed in the West Bank, supports the Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas, which governs the West Bank. Hamas policemen have also harassed al-Ayyam reporters in Gaza – but the Fatah government has also harassed reporters in the West Bank supporting Hamas.
† The Not-So Silent Scream: A couple of weeks back, The Stiletto noted that The Washington Times is getting a new executive editor, John Solomon, and wondered whether the Moonie-owned paper would stop presenting Turkish propaganda to its readers under the guise of “news” (last item, “The Other Shoe Drops”). Apparently not, judging by this column about Super Tuesday written by Turkish freelancer Tulin Daloglu in which she quotes from a recent article by Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute (a pro-Turkish think tank) about “Kurdish double dealing with Iran” without acknowledging Turkish double dealing, funneling insurgents into Iraq across the Turkish border with Iraq (second item). Insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers.
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