Britons urged to boycott Maldives over sexist laws - Asia - World - The Independent

'Britons urged to boycott Maldives over sexist laws
As 15-year-old rape victim faces 100 lashes, women's rights groups have urged David Cameron to intervene
...
The Maldivian government's own figures show that 90 per cent of people sentenced to flogging are female, while one in three women between the ages of 15 and 49 have suffered physical or sexual abuse over the past five years.'

More here http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/britons-urged-to-boycott-maldives-over-sexist-laws-8692603.html

Tuesday morning catch-up

Too many tabs open and not enough time to do them all justice so:

1)

'Britain’s public spending cuts are less severe than those in other European countries, an analysis has found.

As a percentage of national output, public spending in the UK will fall by less than the average for the 17 Eurozone countries.

The news that the cuts are less harsh than those our neighbours are experiencing has fuelled criticism of the BBC, which has often been accused of exaggerating the extent of the cuts without explaining why they are necessary.'

for more read this Mail article but don't bother waiting for the BBC to report it.


2) Sila explains why she had to pretend to be a Muslim, in Germany, but now has to show she's not because she posed nude for Playboy - Isn't multi-culturalism marvelous.


3)

'Refugees fleeing conflict in Libya are gathering in Calais in an attempt to enter Britain. '

That's the unsurprising news in The Telegraph. Now why would these people be so keen to come to the United Kingdom?

'“It is very difficult to get on the train, but I dream of England,” said Mohammed, who arrived in Calais on Tuesday after fleeing the war in Libya, where he was a migrant worker from Chad.

“Maybe I will hide, but I hope to find a way to get there somehow. England is a great country where I can have my human rights.”'

And, presumably, benefits.


4)

'A convicted terrorist banned from Britain for being a risk to national security has been stopped from being deported by the courts.'

Because a convicted terrorist's rights seem to trump those of innocent British people. The Telegraph has more, I doubt that the BBC has.


5) A cartoonist has discovered that lampooning George W. Bush was fine but lampooning Barack Obama is not so easy to sell:

'Ted Rall's cartoons and opinion pieces were all the rage when he was attacking George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and American soldiers.

But now that there's a man in the White House the press absolutely adore, the once syndicated polemicist claims he's having a hard time getting anyone to publish his work:

In the past, editorial rejections had numerous causes: low budgets, lack of space, an editor who simply preferred another creator's work over yours.

Now there' s a new cause for refusal: Too tough on the president.'

News Busters has the details.


6) It seems that college students might be getting brighter in the USA:

'A recent informal survey of 500 post-grads primarily between the ages of 22 and 28 — 83 percent of whom voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 — found just 27 percent of Obama’s previous youth supporters plan to vote for him again, The Daily Caller reports. That’s a drop of almost 60 points.

In contrast, of those who voted for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008, a vast majority — 80 percent — said they would vote GOP again. An 80 percent majority of those newly disillusioned by Obama said they would consider voting for a Republican in 2012, too.'

Hot Air has more details.


7) Before you visit the Maldives for your 'holiday in paradise' please read this:

'Keep in mind that the Maldives constitution does not permit citizenship to non-Muslims and a U.S.-based Muslim group gave Maldives FM the “Muslim Democrat of the Year” award in part for denying non-Muslims citizenship. Upon receiving the award, the FM stated:

I’m very happy to be named Muslim Democrat of the year.

For now I’m very happy to be in a 100 per cent Muslim country having achieved homegrown democracy.'

Creeping Sharia has more, I doubt that the BBC has.


8) Next Big Future reports that:

'Harold Vinegar, the former chief scientists of Royal Dutch Shell, has devised an ambitious plan that would, if successful, turn Israel into one of the world’s leading oil producers. Now chief scientist for Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI), Vinegar maintains that the 238 sq km Shefela Basin holds the world’s second largest shale deposits outside the United States, from which around 250 billion barrels of oil – about the same as Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves, could be extractable. IEI estimates the marginal cost of production at between US$35 and US$40 per barrel. That, says Vinegar, would be cheaper than the US$60 or so per barrel it would cost to extract crude oil in more hospitable locations such as the Arctic, and even favourably with the US$30-US$40 in Brazilian deepwater. '

It always seemed a bit unfair that Israel had hardly any oil reserves when its neighbours dis. Of course Israel did have oil reserves whilst it had the Sinai peninsular but gave that back to Egypt in return for peace. I wonder how long before Egypt, Lebanon and the Palestinians claim the gas/oil is theirs?


9) The Mail seem shocked that female teachers are human beings outside of the classroom.

'Disgrace of the six drinking, pole-dancing primary school teachers who published the pictures on Facebook'

Seems like a complete non-story to me as the teachers were not in school, in loco parentis at the time or in any way linkable with the school at the time the photos were taken.


10) if you watched Gordon Ramsey in Malaysia last night; yes she did say "clittoral plant" and yes they do exist. To save you looking one up on Google, where the plant is not the first image returned, here's a picture

Here's what Herb Exploration have to say about the plant:

'Butterfly pea (Clitoria ternatea, Fabaceae) has large, deeply blue flowers that are used to give a bluish hue to desserts in Thailand (anchan, anjan [อัญชัน]) and Malaysia (bunga telang). In our days, it is mostly substituted by synthetic food colourants. '

The Maldives are not sinking despite what the President of the Maldives is about to claim on 5Live - Sunday 05 December

I have emailed Kate Silverton show on 5Live this morning in advance of her interview with the President of The Maldives, somehow I don't think it will be used as the basis for a question...

'Please do not fall for this particular Man Made Climate Change myth. For some facts please take a read of http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/MornerInterview.pdf where Dr Nils Axel-Morner reports the facts on the ground:
'
'Then we went to the Maldives. I traced a drop in sea level in the 1970s, and the fishermen told me, “Yes, you are correct, because we remember”—things in their sailing routes have changed, things in their harbor have changed. I worked in the lagoon, I drilled in the sea, I drilled in lakes, I looked at the shore morphology—so many different environments. Always the same thing: In about 1970, the sea fell about 20 cm, for reasons involving probably evaporation or something. Not a change in volume or something like that—it was a rapid thing. The new level, which has been stable, has not changed in the last 35 years. You can trace it so very, very carefully. No rise at all is the answer there'

'Another famous place is the Tuvalu Islands, which are supposed to soon disappear because they’ve put out too much carbon dioxide. There we have a tide gauge record, a variograph record, from 1978, so it’s 30 years. And again, if you look there, absolutely no trend, no rise. So, from where do they get this rise in the Tuvalu Islands? We know in the Tuvalu Islands that there was a Japanese pineapple industry which extracted too much fresh water from the inland, and those islands have very little fresh water available from precipitation, rain. So, if you take out too much, you destroy the water magazine, and you bring seawater into
the magazine, which is not nice. So they took out too much freshwater and in came salt water. And of course the local people were upset. But then it was much easier to say, “No, no! It’s the global sea level rising! It has nothing to do with our extraction of freshwater.” So there you have it. This is a local industry which doesn’t pay.'

So why do the IPCC and others say that sea levels are rising? Dr Morner does not mince his words:

'where do they [the IPCC] get it from? They get it from their inspiration, their hopes, their computer models, but not from observation, which is terrible.
...

If you go around the globe, you find no rise anywhere. But they need the rise, because if there is no rise, there is no death threat. They say there is nothing good to come from a sea-level rise, only problems, coastal problems. If you have a temperature rise, if it’s a problem in one area, it’s beneficial in another area.
But sea level is the real “bad guy,” and therefore they have talked very much about it. But the real thing is, that it doesn’t exist in observational data, only in computer modelling....'

I have blogged about The Maldives 'sinking' before but here is a new claim from Dr Morner:

'When I came to the Maldives, to our enormous surprise, one morning we were on an island, and I said, “This is something strange, the storm level has gone down; it has not gone up, it has gone down.” And then I started to check the level all around, and I asked the others in the group, “Do you see anything here on the beach?” And after a while they found it too. And as we had investigated, and we were sure, I said we cannot leave the Maldives and go home and say the sea level is not rising, it’s not respectful to the people. I have to say it to
Maldive television.
So we made a very nice program for Maldive television, but it was forbidden by the government (!) because they thought that they would lose money. They accuse the West for putting out carbon dioxide, and therefore we have to pay for our damage and the flooding. So they wanted the flooding scenario to go on. This tree [see photo], which I showed in the documentary, is interesting. This is a prison island, and when people left the island, from the ‘50s, it was a marker for them, when they saw this tree alone out there, they said, “Ah, freedom!” ... I knew that this tree was in that terrible position already in the 1950s. So the slightest rise, and it would have been gone. I used it in my writings and for television. You know what happened? There came an Australian sealevel team, which was for the IPCC and against me. Then the students pulled down the tree by hand! They destroyed the evidence. What kind of people are those? And we came to launch this film “Doomsday Called Off,” right after that, and the tree was still green. And I heard from the locals that they
had seen the people who had pulled it down. So I put it up again, by hand, and made my TV program....'

Please do not allow your listeners to be misinformed, The Maldives are not sinking but they do want our money.'

Meanwhile the newspaper reviewer has picked for his non-FIFA stories, The Guardian and The Observer, just after some anti-Coalition texts were read out. Any criticisms of Labour or messages in supportof the Coalition.

William Hague swallowing it hook, line and sinker

William Hague Tweets "Just met Pres of Maldives to discuss climate change. Their very existence threatened by it. Cancun conference underway to seek global action"
I have replied "The Maldives are not sinking; please read the evidence don't just fall for the propaganda - http://goo.gl/eKM2t"

Please someone take William Hague aside and tell him to use his brain not fall for the environmentalist narrative; hook, line and sinker.

The Cancun shakedown has started

Today's Telegraph includes this from Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent. What struck me first was the way a 'study of climate change impacts in the Caribbean' which 'warned that sea levels could rise by up to 6.5ft (2m) by the end of the 21st Century if global warming continues.' is translated into the dire warning that '

According to...  Oxford University research this would mean that 260,000 people are displaced from the islands, one million would be at risk of flooding and billions of dollars would be lost every year from the tourism industry alone.'

The key words are 'could' and 'if'. Yes if A happens then B may result, but what are the odds that A will happen? What if instead of A equalling 6.5ft it equalled 3 foot or one foot or two inches?


So I read on and found the money-shot:

'As well as cuts in emissions to stop global warming, the small island states are calling for a ‘global insurance fund’ to be set up that would help vulnerable nations cope with the effects of climate change.
Poor nations at risk of sea level rise would pay an annual premium, but a large chunk of the money would come from climate change aid provided by rich nations. Like a normal insurance fund, the money would be invested privately so that there are hundreds of billions of pounds available in the event of a crisis.

 ...

Asad Rehman, Friends of the Earth’s International Climate Campaigner, said rich countries have a responsibility to protect the poor from the impacts of climate change.
“As they have done the most to cause climate change, rich countries, including the UK, must also provide more money for developing countries to adapt to the impacts – including sea-level rise – which will have a devastating impact on communities worldwide,” he said.

'

It's all about the money again. 

Of course the real problem here is that the assumptions are wrong; sea levels are not rising. You can read more in this interview with Dr. Nils-Axel Morner in which he points out that many examples, here are two:

'So there we are. Then we went to the Maldives. I traced a drop in sea level in the 1970s, and the fishermen told me, “Yes, you are correct, because we remember”—things in their sailing routes have changed, things in
their harbor have changed. I worked in the lagoon, I drilled in the sea, I drilled in lakes, I looked at the shore morphology—so many different environments. Always the same thing: In about 1970, the sea fell about 20 cm, for reasons involving probably evaporation or something. Not a change in volume or something like that—it was a rapid thing. The new level, which has been stable, has not changed in the last 35 years. You can trace it so very, very carefully. No rise at all is the answer there'

'Another famous place is the Tuvalu Islands, which are supposed to soon disappear because they’ve put out too much carbon dioxide. There we have a tide gauge record, a variograph record, from 1978, so it’s 30 years. And again, if you look there, absolutely no trend, no rise. So, from where do they get this rise in the Tuvalu Islands? We know in the Tuvalu Islands that there was a Japanese pineapple industry which extracted too much fresh water from the inland, and those islands have very little fresh water available from precipitation, rain. So, if you take out too much, you destroy the water magazine, and you bring seawater into
the magazine, which is not nice. So they took out too much freshwater and in came salt water. And of course the local people were upset. But then it was much easier to say, “No, no! It’s the global sea level rising! It has nothing to do with our extraction of freshwater.” So there you have it. This is a local industry which doesn’t pay.'

So why do the IPCC and others say that sea levels are rising? Dr Morner does not mince his words:

'where do they [the IPCC] get it from? They get it from their inspiration, their hopes, their computer models, but not from observation, which is terrible.
...

If you go around the globe, you find no rise anywhere. But they need the rise, because if there is no rise, there is no death threat. They say there is nothing good to come from a sea-level rise, only problems, coastal problems. If you have a temperature rise, if it’s a problem in one area, it’s beneficial in another area.
But sea level is the real “bad guy,” and therefore they have talked very much about it. But the real thing is, that it doesn’t exist in observational data, only in computer modelling....'

I have blogged about The Maldives 'sinking' before but here is a new claim from Dr Morner:

'When I came to the Maldives, to our enormous surprise, one morning we were on an island, and I said, “This is something strange, the storm level has gone down; it has not gone up, it has gone down.” And then I started to check the level all around, and I asked the others in the group, “Do you see anything here on the beach?” And after a while they found it too. And as we had investigated, and we were sure, I said we cannot leave the Maldives and go home and say the sea level is not rising, it’s not respectful to the people. I have to say it to
Maldive television.
So we made a very nice program for Maldive television, but it was forbidden by the government (!) because they thought that they would lose money. They accuse the West for putting out carbon dioxide, and therefore we have to pay for our damage and the flooding. So they wanted the flooding scenario to go on. This tree [see photo], which I showed in the documentary, is interesting. This is a prison island, and when people left the island, from the ‘50s, it was a marker for them, when they saw this tree alone out there, they said, “Ah, freedom!” ... I knew that this tree was in that terrible position already in the 1950s. So the slightest rise, and it would have been gone. I used it in my writings and for television. You know what happened? There came an Australian sealevel team, which was for the IPCC and against me. Then the students pulled down the tree by hand! They destroyed the evidence. What kind of people are those? And we came to launch this film “Doomsday Called Off,” right after that, and the tree was still green. And I heard from the locals that they
had seen the people who had pulled it down. So I put it up again, by hand, and made my TV program....'

But it's not just the Maldives and De Morner, here's a Spectator article that is of interest:

'The President of the Maldives can sell his snorkel: he’ll be waving not drowning. The New Scientist carries a fascinating article, examining the research of Paul Kench of the University of Auckland and Arthur Webb of the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission. Using aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite images, Kench and Webb have found that 23 out of 27 low-lying Pacific islands, deemed to be vulnerable to rising sea levels, have grown by up to 10 percent in 40 years. Local sea levels have risen by 120 millimetres over the period.'

However lets return to The Maldives, that island paradise that claims it is sinking  due to global warming. The Age reported in 2007 that:

'Maldives is seeking international investors to help build ten regional airports as part of a plan to develop nearly three dozen resort islands, a minister said on Wednesday.

"We plan to build 10 domestic airports packaged with tourist resorts, to make it economically feasible to investors. The tenders will go out later this year," said Maldivian tourism minister, Mahmood Shaugee.

The government plans to develop the 35 resort islands over the next two years. The exotic South Asian holiday location attracts over 600,000 visitors each year, mostly Europeans.'

The Maldives are sinking, or are they?

The BBC's Richard Black is at it again:

'President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom of the Maldives told me that he and the Alliance of Small Island States was exploring the possibility of suing high-emitting governments if and when their countries disappeared under the waves.'

Oh no the Maldives are sinking, it's all the fault of global warming and we are to blame...

The only slight problem is this, as I blogged last year:

'Nils-Axel Mörner is a former lead reviewer for the IPCC and was head of Geodynamics at Stockholm University until his retirement in 2005. Oddly he has written three times previously to the Maldives government and not received a reply hence this open letter. Here's a few extracts:

"The people of the Maldives had no problems surviving the 17th century, which was 50cm higher than now. Nor the last century, where it rose by 20cm. This bodes well for their prospects of surviving the next change.

...

Neither of those levels would pose any real problem — simply a return to the situation in the 17th and the 19th to early 20th centuries, respectively.

So why the scare-mongering? Could it be because there is money involved? If you inhabit a tiny island and can convince the world that its very existence is under threat because of the polluting policies of the West, the industrialised nations will certainly respond. The money is likely to flow in more quickly than the ocean will rise."'

I have posted a piece similar to this on Richard Black's blog, comment 180, let's see if it gets through moderation...

Happy holidays

To all you lovers thinking of wending your way to the Maldives later this year do note that around 180 men and women are awaiting flogging after being sentenced by informal Islamic sharia courts and criminal courts for having sexual intercourse outside marriage. And in case you think such sentences are not carried out then you should read this Amnesty International report.

"Amnesty International has received credible reports that an 18-year-old woman was flogged in public on 5 July this year. She received 100 lashes after being accused of having sex with two men outside of marriage. Local journalists reported the woman fainted after receiving the lashes and was taken to hospital to receive medical attention"

Paradise in the sun? Think again and take your holiday somewhere more enlightened; may I suggest the Caribbean - but not Cuba (politically anything but free) or Jamaica (somewhat homophobic).