From those wizened meteorologists at Reuters:

U.S. blacks face harsher climate change impact

Tue Jul 29, 2008

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – American blacks are likely to suffer disproportionately from climate change and they are willing to pay to combat it, a commission aimed at raising awareness about global warming said on Tuesday.

“There is a fierce urgency regarding climate change effects on the African-American community,” said Ralph Everett, the co-chair of the Commission to Engage African-Americans on Climate Change said. “People need to understand what is at stake — our very health and well-being.”

Blacks are more than twice as likely as whites to live in cities where the so-called heat island effect is expected to make temperature increases more severe, the newly formed group said at a briefing.

More blacks also will be “fuel poor” as energy demand rises due to higher air-conditioning loads, population growth and urbanization, commission said.

In a survey of 750 U.S. black adults released by the commission, 81 percent said the U.S. government should take strong action to deal with global warming, and seven in 10 said it was very important for the 2008 presidential candidates to do something about it.

A solid majority, 64 percent, of those surveyed by telephone between June 20 and July 3 said they would be willing to pay an additional $10 a month to fight global warming. Twenty-eight percent were willing to pay an added $25 a month and only 14 percent were willing to pay an extra $50.

As expected, poorer respondents were willing to pay less, said David Bositis, who supervised the survey for the non-profit Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which launched the commission’s effort.

When asked an open-ended question about what they considered to be the most important problem facing the United States, 5 percent of respondents answered global warming.

This has never been mentioned before as the top problem by any black respondents in surveys in 2000, 2004 and 2007. In this survey, 42 percent listed the economy as the most important problem, followed by 17 percent answering energy.

The 5 percent who considered global warming paramount compared with 8 percent who said the Iraq war and 3 percent who answered education. Bositis said most U.S. surveys and polls have such a small number of black participants that it is difficult to separate out black attitudes.

The commission aims to draw African-Americans into the climate change debate and to involve the black community in economic opportunities of the green economy.

Mind you, not just any blacks — but blacks living in the US.

From the DNC’s lickspittle minions at CNN:

AFL-CIO launches campaign to dispel Obama rumors

July 29, 2008

(CNN) — The nation’s largest labor conglomerate says it’s set to launch a major effort Tuesday to dispel ongoing rumors surrounding Barack Obama that continue to percolate more than 18 months after the Illinois senator launched his White House bid.

The organization is set to send out mailers to more than 600,000 union homes in crucial battleground states — including Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — that directly address the false rumors that he is not a Christian, refuses to wear a flag pin on his lapel, and was not sworn into the Senate on the Bible.

It also beats back claims the Democratic presidential candidate was not born in America and refuses to put his hand on his heart during the National Anthem…

And so the DNC’s army of union thugs swings into action.

Knocking down those straw men that no sane person ever took seriously.

Thank goodness for campaign finance reform, eh?

Those with strong constitutions can view this propaganda paid for by coerced union dues informative pamphlet (a pdf file) here.

From an approving Associated Press:

Los Angeles wants to take bite out of fast food

By CHRISTINA HOAG [sic], Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 29

LOS ANGELES – In the impoverished neighborhood of South Los Angeles, fast food is the easiest cuisine to find — and that’s a problem for elected officials who see it as an unhealthy source of calories and cholesterol.

The City Council was poised to vote Tuesday on a moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in a swath of the city where a proliferation of such eateries goes hand-in-hand with obesity.

“Our communities have an extreme shortage of quality foods,” City Councilman Bernard Parks said.

The aim of the yearlong moratorium, which was approved last week in committee, is to give the city time to try to attract restaurants that serve healthier food…

The proposed ban comes at a time when governments of all levels are increasingly viewing menus as a matter of public health. Last Friday, California became the first state in the nation to bar trans fats, which lowers levels of good cholesterol and increases bad cholesterol.

It also comes as the Los Angeles City Council tackles issues beyond safety, schools and streets. The council last week decided to outlaw plastic bags.

Fast-food restaurants have found themselves in the frying pan in a number of cities. Some places, including Carmel-by-the Sea and Calistoga, have barred “formula” restaurants altogether; others have placed a cap on them — Arcata allows a maximum of nine fast-food eateries; others have prohibited the restaurants in certain areas, such as Port Jefferson, N.Y., in its waterfront area…

According to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, 30 percent of adults in South Los Angeles area are obese, compared to 19.1 percent for the metropolitan area and 14.1 percent for the affluent westside. Minorities are particularly affected: 28.7 percent of Latinos and 27.7 percent of blacks are obese, compared to 16.6 percent of whites…

Rebeca Torres, a South Los Angeles mother of four, said she would welcome more dining choices, even if she had to pay a little more. “They should have better things for children,” she said. “This fast-food really fattens them up.”

First they came for the cheeseburgers, but because I didn’t eat cheeseburgers…

“They should have better things for children,” she said. “This fast-food really fattens them up.”

“They” meaning the government, of course.

Apparently, parents have no say whatsoever about what their kids eat.

From Borderlands E-Journal:

Ann Coulter and the Problem of Pluralism: From Values to Politics

Samuel A. Chambers & Alan Finlayson
Johns Hopkins University & Swansea University

This piece operates at two levels: it engages with the debate in political theory over pluralism, but it does so through an analysis of the phenomenon we call ‘Coulterism’. Briefly, we regard Ann Coulter as indicative of a more general trend in the political styles and activities that dominate contemporary US politics. Moreover, we also suggest that this trend tends to be too easily dismissed by liberals – liberals who, we suggest, tend to systematically misunderstand it. Furthermore, we contend, no doubt controversially, that Coulter and her ilk in fact succeed in a political critique of mainstream political liberalism in America and that the failure of liberalism to recognise this fact lies at the heart of many of its problems – be they conceptual, electoral, ideological or governmental. Precisely because it cannot comprehend what has been achieved by its opponents, liberalism is unable properly to respond to them. Thus, we undertake a critical consideration of the way in which contemporary liberal political theory regards values as the only meaningful level of pluralism, construes this putative fact as giving rise to a host of problems, and then, in response, imposes its presupposed solutions. In response, we call for a radical, multi-dimensional pluralism; we choose the pluralisation of democracy over the liberal project to protect democracy through normative principles. Such multidimensional pluralism requires that the political theorist act less as a city planner who makes rules and designs models, and more as an explorer who discovers new formations. Thus, we eschew a liberal response to ‘Coulterism’, suggesting that successful challenges to phenomena such as these can only emerge on the terrain of politics.

[O]ur future would be one of an ever deeper confrontation with pluralism and … political theory in such a world would produce paradoxes out of platitudes far more than the reverse (White 2002: 474).

Introduction

1. Contemporary liberal political theory has reached its own internal limit – and that limit is politics. When confronted by today’s proliferating political claims, the ‘normative’ approach of liberal political philosophy finds itself on the horns of a dilemma: either it stretches its universality in order to cover more cases, or it hardens its edges in an attempt to maintain critical purchase. But the former choice makes liberal theory so thin that it no longer clothes even the most modest of claims. And in taking the latter approach, liberal theory is forced to declare it ‘reasonable’ to place so-called indecent peoples beyond the purview of universal human rights. To maintain its commitment to universalism, liberalism must become meaningless; to remain meaningful, it must become illiberal. Divided within itself, the limits of liberalism belong entirely to it alone…

So now Ann Coulter is officially a political phenomenon.

Moreover, she is part of an “ilk.” Though we like to think of her as an ilk of one.

Some highlights:

Political Theory and the Ann Coulter Question

11. Ann Coulter is a living rebuke to almost all of contemporary liberal philosophy. One of the most successful of contemporary Conservative media polemicists, Coulter breaks every rule of ‘fair and balanced’ discourse that liberal political theory has sweated to justify and that Fox News openly mocks with its own tag line. Utilising the media outlets of a powerful private and international corporation to portray liberalism as an intolerant creed functioning only to enhance the self-interest of its believers, Coulter is proof that every principle of fairness and equality, for which liberalism has so laboured to dig secure foundations, is almost entirely irrelevant.

12. The Coulter style is instantly recognisable; her visual image and appearance are carefully crafted. She dresses and is photographed in ways that emphasise her big-eyed, blonde femininity, yet overlays this background with sometimes shocking invective and the manner of the school headmistress-cum-dominatrix. She signals sexuality but not availability; she dominates without threatening (at least not straight men). And this is much more than ‘mere’ image. Coulter’s political performances make heavy use of tropes of appropriate and inappropriate gender and sexuality. For example, in 2004 she described the Democratic National Convention as ‘the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston’ and the women attending as ‘corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons’ (Lacayo & Stein 2004)…

13. Coulter not only advocates ‘intelligent design’ (an outright rejection of the theory of evolution) but goes further to define Darwinism as liberalism’s ‘creation myth’. She consistently excoriates liberals as ‘treasonous’, describing them as people who constantly attack and undermine their own country. And, to the extent that Coulter is known internationally, it is for seeming to share Wahhabi lust for a global religious war. After 9/11 she wrote: ‘We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity’. This is not an isolated remark. Coulter continues to refer gleefully to Arabs as ‘ragheads’, ‘jihad-monkeys’, ‘tent-merchants’ and ‘camel jockeys’ (Coulter 2006b).

14. On the basis of these radical ramblings it is not only extremely easy but also terribly tempting to dismiss Coulter as a minor media-made irritant, a flaky extremist or just another pundit… But all five of her books, from her 1989 indictment of Bill Clinton through to Godless, have topped the New York Times’ best-seller list… It is a safe bet that Ann Coulter is much better known amongst Americans than John Rawls or Joshua Cohen will ever be. Furthermore, while Coulter may be on the edge of the American political spectrum this is simply indicative of how far the centre has been pulled to the right. And it has been pulled there by people such as Coulter, who herself must be understood as part of a much more general and highly successful political style that has achieved national prominence thanks to channels such as Fox News, talk radio and, latterly, internet conservative town-halls and blog fora.

15. Understood in this context, we would contend that ‘Coulterism’ is one of the most important political developments of our time. If political theorists were like theorists and historians of Art then we would certainly identify ‘Coulterism’ as a significant and powerful trend in the style and practice of political art: one which has reverberated throughout the entirety of its institutions and forced reactions and adaptations from almost all other artists. Unfortunately, at least from our perspective, political scholars are not like art historians and theorists. Very often we take our cue not from what is happening but instead beaver away at small and focused problems generated from within our own field of action. But phenomena such as Coulterism are central not marginal to politics…

And it goes on and on in similarly obtuse scholarly prose — all the way to belabored point 54.

Still, it is an (albeit unintentionally) hilarious read, if you’ve got some time to kill. 

Academia at its laughable best.

From the German tabloid, Der Spiegel:

Obama Felt ‘Hustled’ by German Journalist

By Marc Pitzke in New York

Barack Obama’s encounter with a German reporter while working out in a Berlin gym last week has become an issue in the US, where bloggers are calling the story embarrassing. Now Obama has given his version of events: “She hustled us.”

Barack Obama knows how to handle the media. His appearances are strictly choreographed, as if they were held on movie sets, and you only get access to the star if you fit the marketing concept. During his visit to Berlin, for example, he only allowed hand-picked journalist to interview him — with one exception.

“Bild Reporter with Obama in the Gym,” was the banner headline of the Friday edition of the German tabloid Bild published the day after Obama’s visit to the German capital. “While thousands waited for him at the Victory Column,” wrote Judith Bonesky [sic],” I, the Bild reporter, met Barack Obama alone — in the gym!”

The story contained a florid description of Obama’s physical attributes, praising his “well-trained arms,” “his tight rear view,” and how he lifted the masculine 32-kilogram (70-pound) dumbbells “first 10 times with his right arm, then 10 times with his left.” And then there was the culmination: “Barack put his arm around my shoulders. I held him round the waist. Wow! He isn’t even sweating!” And, lastly, there was Bonesky’s conclusion: “What a man!”

Now Obama has revealed how he experienced the encounter. “She hustled us,” he told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

“We walk into the gym,” Obama told Dowd. “She’s already on the treadmill. She looks like just an ordinary German girl. She smiles and sort of waves, shyly, but doesn’t go out of her way to say anything. As I’m walking out, she says: ‘Oh, can I have a picture? I’m a big fan.’ Reggie takes the picture.” Reggie Love is Obama’s personal assistant.

So, according to Obama, he didn’t know she was a reporter.

By contrast, here’s Bonesky’s version: “The door opens. It’s really HIM! At 1.87 meters (6.14 feet), he’s much taller than I’d imagined. He is wearing a gray T-shirt and black sweatpants, both from Nike, with white jogging shoes from Asics. And a dazzling smile! ‘Hallo, how are you?,’ he asks in English in his strong , very masculine voice. I reply: ‘Very good. And how are you?’ He responds: ‘Very well, thanks!’”

“I call out: ‘Mr Obama, sorry, could I take a picture?’ He smiles: ‘Of course!’ Obama asks me my name. I reply: My name is Judith.’ He says: ‘I’m Barack Obama. Nice to meet you, Judith!’” …

Everything is subjective. Bild even published a video on its Web site with the introduction: “Bonesky can hardly believe her luck.” The reporter describes Obama as “very cute,” and says, “I’m still in a dream.”

Obama saw the newspaper and the headline that same evening, at 10:45 p.m., while he was eating dinner at a Berlin restaurant. While there, Bild editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann presented him in person with a copy of the next day’s paper and had his picture taken while he was doing it. This photo was also published on the Internet.

In his conversation with Dowd, Obama likened his experience in the Berlin gym with a scene from the movie “The Color of Money.”

“Do you remember ‘The Color of Money’ with Paul Newman?” Obama asked Dowd. “And Forest Whitaker is sort of sitting there, acting like he doesn’t know how to play pool. And then he hustles the hustler.” …

What does this story teach us? Even Obama — with his amazing people skills — still has lessons to learn. “I’m just realizing what I’ve got to become accustomed to,” he told Dowd.

No, what this story teaches us is that Mr. Obama will not accept responsibility for anything.

Not even for a ridiculously fawning article.

From those progressive thinkers at the Associated Press:

Police: Man shot churchgoers over liberal views

By DUNCAN MANSFIELD, Associated Press Writer

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Knoxville’s police chief says the man accused of a shooting that killed two people at a Tennessee church targeted the congregation because of its liberal social stance.

Chief Sterling Owen IV said Monday that police found a letter in Jim D. Adkisson’s car. Owen said Adkisson was apparently frustrated over being out of work and had a “stated hatred of the liberal movement.”

Adkisson is charged with first-degree murder. Police say a gunman entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church during a children’s performance Sunday. No children were hurt.

The church is known for advocating women’s and gay rights and founding an American Civil Liberties Union chapter.

At last the Associated Press has found something to crow about. Still, it’s funny how seldom the political views of other murderers gets mentioned, isn’t it?

Moreover, is Mr. Adkisson really a conservative?

Other reports say he was ticked off about losing his job and having his food stamps cut off. Which would seem to make him a liberal welfare recipient.

He is also reported to have told friends he was confused by the Bible and got angry whenever anyone would talk about Christianity. Which would also seem to make him a liberal.

Lastly, Mr. Adkisson shot people at a church. Which would also seem to indicate progressive tendencies.

Instead, he has one line about hating the liberal movement, so the media calls him a conservative.

So why isn’t the headline: “welfare recipient shoots people at church”?

(Thanks to Franco for the heads up, and Ann for her brilliant elucidation)

From those tireless defenders of the faith at the New York Times:

Wounded people lie at a bomb blast site in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad July 26, 2008.

Terrorist Attacks Unsettling India

By SOMINI SENGUPTA
July 29, 2008

NEW DELHI — Over the past several years, terrorist attacks in India have become an everyday presence in everyday places. The targets seem to have nothing in common except that they are ordinary and brazenly easy to strike.

In eastern Varanasi, a deadly explosion interrupted Hindu devotees as they lighted oil lamps to Hanuman, the monkey god, one Tuesday at dusk. In southern Hyderabad, a homemade bomb planted inside a historic mosque killed worshipers on a Friday afternoon. In Mumbai, India’s largest city, nearly 200 commuters on packed city trains died in a series of blasts.

And, in the most recent attack, 17 back-to-back explosions struck shoppers and strollers on Saturday evening in Ahmedabad in western India, and then two blasts hit the very hospitals where the wounded and their relatives rushed for help, killing 49 people and wounding more than 200.

In a country long familiar with sharply focused violence — whether sectarian or fueled by insurgencies in Kashmir in the 1990s — the impersonal nature of the latest violence is new and deeply unsettling…

Officials have said the attacks are attempts to provoke violence between Hindus and Muslims that have not succeeded so far. Virtually none of the attacks have resulted in convictions; a suspect in the Varanasi bombings was shot and killed by the police…

A report last year by the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington concluded that from January 2004 to March 2007, the death toll from terrorist attacks in India was 3,674, second only to that in Iraq during the same period.

Ahmedabad, home to 3.5 million people and Gujarat’s commercial center, is no stranger to violence. In 2002, a train fire that killed several dozen Hindus led to the killing of 1,000 Muslims over several days, one of the worst outbreaks of religious violence in India’s history.

An obscure group calling itself the Indian Mujahedeen warned Saturday that an attack was about to take place “in revenge of Gujarat,” plainly referring to the 2002 killings. The statement was sent in an e-mail message, written in English, to television stations just before the first blasts…

On Friday, there was a series of similar low-intensity blasts in southern Bangalore, one of which killed a woman standing at a bus stop. Two months ago in Jaipur, synchronized blasts on bicycles killed 56 people; the Indian Mujahedeen sent an e-mail message claiming credit for those attacks.

On Sunday, a police official, P. P. Pandey, said “a single mind” was suspected to be behind the three latest attacks. The police said they had detained people for questioning; The Associated Press reported 30 were in custody. Officials offered no further details about who was involved in the group or a possible motivation behind the bombings…

This is highly laughable even by the standards of the New York Times.

Over the past several years, terrorist attacks in India have become an everyday presence in everyday places. The targets seem to have nothing in common except that they are ordinary and brazenly easy to strike.

Of course what these bombings all have in common is that they are perpetrated by Muslims upon Hindus. Except for the very rare occasions when the Hindus actually strike back with their own attacks.

And this has been going on for hundreds of years.

But all this is much too mysterious for the Solons at the New York Times.

Officials have said the attacks are attempts to provoke violence between Hindus and Muslims that have not succeeded so far.

Once again The Times trots out this preposterous line. These attacks are not “violence,” but only “attempts to provoke violence.”

Even when they go on to admit in the next few paragraphs:

A report last year by the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington concluded that from January 2004 to March 2007, the death toll from terrorist attacks in India was 3,674, second only to that in Iraq during the same period.

And yet these bombings in India are not “violence,” while only slightly more deadly terrorist attacks are the end of the world in Iraq.

At least according to the New York Times.

Officials offered no further details about who was involved in the group or a possible motivation behind the bombings.

Perhaps we’ll never know.

Well, not if the New York Times has its way.

(Thanks to David for the heads up.)

From an elated Associated Press:

Suicide attacks kill 57 in Baghdad, Kirkuk

By SELCAN HACAOGLU, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD – Suicide bombers struck a Shiite pilgrimage in Baghdad and a Kurdish protest rally in northern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 57 people and wounding nearly 300, police said.

Three female suicide bombers blew their explosive vests in the middle of pilgrims in Baghdad, moments after a roadside bomb attack, killing at least 32 people and wounding 102, Iraqi officials said.

In the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, 25 people were killed and 185 wounded when a blast tore through a crowd of Kurds protesting a draft provincial elections law, officials said…

“At about 8 a.m. three female suicide bombers detonated themselves among pilgrims heading to Kazimiyah,” the main Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said in a statement posted on his Web site.

The pilgrims are marking the death of an eighth-century saint. The attacks took place in the mainly Shiite Karradah district, which is several miles away from the destination of the pilgrimage in Kazimiyah in northern Baghdad. Most of the dead were women and children, police and health officials said…

In Kirkuk, the suicide bomber targeted Kurdish demonstrators who were protesting a provincial elections measure blocked in parliament because of disagreement over a power-sharing formula in the disputed city of Kirkuk, an oil-rich area…

Suicide bombings are increasingly carried out by women, who are more easily able to hide explosives under their all-encompassing black Islamic robes, or abayas, and often are not searched at checkpoints…

In 2005, at least 1,000 people also were killed in a bridge stampede caused by rumors of a suicide bomber in Baghdad during the Kazimiyah pilgrimage.

Elsewhere, a roadside bomb attack on Monday killed four civilians near Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said.

  Update!

Oh joy, the Associated Press is now reporting that the bomber in Kirkuk was also of the female persuasion:

4 female bombers strike in Iraq, killing 57

By SELCAN HACAOGLU

… In the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, 25 people were killed and 185 wounded when a blast tore through a crowd of Kurds protesting a draft provincial elections law, officials said.

Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Burhan Tayeb Taha said the Kirkuk bomber was also a woman, and that he had seen her remains at the site…

Muslim women blowing up Muslims on their way to a Muslim religious shrine?

Short of killing all the Muslims, how can you put an end to such madness?

From NBC’s Meet The Press, via YouTube:

Enjoy the anointed one’s latest spinning about his mistaken pronouncements about the surge, starting around eight minutes into the clip.

Also, Mr. Obama’s willful ignorance about the “Anbar Awakening” which precedes this is equally disgusting.

Another beautiful stone in the gorgeous mosaic, from BBC News:

Tanzania albinos targeted again

Sunday, 27 July 2008

Tanzanian police say another albino man has been murdered – the 26th victim in less than a year. His wife, also an albino, was hurt in the attack.

Unidentified attackers reportedly severed his right foot and genitalia.

Witchdoctors want the parts for potions which they say make people rich, says the BBC’s Vicky Ntetema

In an undercover report last week, she was offered albino body parts by witchdoctors, who said their clients included police officers.

Jovin Majaliwa is reported to have been killed in his home in a remote Lake Victoria village after dark on Thursday – but police have only now released details of his murder.

His wife, also an albino, was attacked but managed to raise the alarm. She is being treated in hospital.

Neighbours have asked the police to look after two of her children who also live with albinism.

Our correspondent’s investigation revealed that witchdoctors are behind the killings. They use albino organs such as hair, arms, legs and blood to make potions which they claim make people wealthy.

The BBC has also obtained evidence that suggests the police are involved in the racket which is why it has been difficult to catch the culprits…

One hundred and seventy three witchdoctors have been arrested since March, when President Jakaya Kikwete had ordered a crackdown of all those involved in these ritualistic killings for riches.

But the minister was not able to give details about what had happened to them.

And here is an update from Ms Ntetema, who had the temerity to report on this charming practice:

In hiding for exposing Tanzania witchdoctors

By Vicky Ntetema
BBC News

I am living in hiding after I received threats because of my undercover work exposing the threat from witchdoctors to albinos living in Tanzania.

I do not regret it, even if I am very scared.

Mine is just one life, compared to the several thousand people living with albinism in the country.

If nothing is done about this network, they could kill every albino in the country – estimates vary between 4,000 and 173,000…

Continue…

An all too typical piece of reportage from those tireless defenders of the faith at the New York Times:

At Least 45 Killed in Explosions in India

By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: July 27, 2008

NEW DELHI — For the second time in two days, small explosions rocked an Indian city, this time in Ahmedabad on Saturday evening, killing at least 45 people. The Indian government said cities across the country had been put on alert for similar attacks.

At least 16 explosions went off shortly after 6:30 p.m. in several crowded neighborhoods in the western city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat State, the chief minister, Narendra Modi, told reporters late Saturday. According to the latest details available Sunday, another 110 people were wounded, The Associated Press reported.

One of the targets was a public bus, which appeared to be badly damaged, according to televised reports…

Indian television stations reported that they had received a statement on Saturday from a group that called itself “Indian Mujahedeen” that warned of attacks. There was no way to know whether the statement was authentic or who was behind the group, which had claimed responsibility for serial blasts in Jaipur, in western India, two months ago.

On Friday, a series of similar low-intensity blasts went off in the southern technology hub of Bangalore, killing one woman. The police said the explosions were intended to sow panic.

Home Minister Shivraj Patil said in a statement: “Anti-national elements have been trying to create panic among the people of our country.”

In recent years, well-planned bombings have struck several Indian cities, from an entertainment center in southern Hyderabad to crowded markets here in the capital, in what officials have said were attempts to provoke violence between Hindus and Muslims. So far, those attempts have not succeeded.

Gujarat, of which Ahmedabad is the commercial center, is particularly sensitive to ethnic tensions. In 2002, a train fire that killed dozens of members of a Hindu nationalist group set off Hindu-on-Muslim violence across Gujarat, most prominently in Ahmedabad.

All told, 1,000 Muslims were killed, and Mr. Modi, a firebrand Hindu nationalist politician, was accused of doing little to stop the violence…

To review, for two days dozens of bombs have gone off in a region where Muslims have attacked Hindus countless times over the years.

(A history the New York Times characterizes as “attempts to provoke violence between Hindus and Musliims.” You see, the bombings were not violence in themselves. And of course no group was actually behind them. They just happened.)

Furthermore, an Islamic terrorist group has even claimed responsibility for the bombings. A group that was responsible for similar bombings just two months ago.

Still, the New York Times only sees fit to mention with any specificity “Hindu-on-Muslim violence,” which was done in reprisal for “a train fire” that obviously broke out spontaneously.

And The Times goes on to castigate a “firebrand Hindu nationalist.”

But the New York Times is not on the side of the Muslim terrorists.

No way.

http://farm4.static.notflickr.com/3111/2765679945_bd2871a021_o.jpg

From those open minded worshippers of Gaia at the Scripps Howard News Service:

Kitten births are booming, and climate change could be cause

By Alyse Knorr, Scripps Howard News Service

07/26/2008

Global warming and kittens. While it may seem hard to see the connection between the two – a climate phenomenon that melts glaciers and acidifies oceans, and cuddly, 4-ounce balls of fur – experts say there could be one.

Each spring, the onset of warm weather and longer days drives female cats into heat, resulting in a few months of booming kitten populations known as “kitten season.”

“The brain receives instructions to produce a hormone that basically initiates the heat cycle in a cat,” said Nancy Peterson, feral cat program manager of the Humane Society of the United States, “and those instructions are affected by the length of day and usually the rising temperatures of spring.”

Peterson said kitten season generally starts in March or April, as the days get warmer and longer, and the flood of kittens continues throughout the spring and early summer.

What shelter officials and veterinarians have begun noticing, however, is that kitten season is starting to begin earlier and last longer…

Where does global warming fit in? Some experts say rising temperatures could be lengthening kitten season by altering cat reproductive cycles.

“It might make sense that if temperatures are rising, cats will go into heat more often,” Peterson said.

On its Web site, the Environmental Protection Agency states that rising temperatures may cause some small mammals to start breeding earlier in the year.

“Domestic cats evolved from African ancestors,” said Julie Levy, a veterinarian and shelter medicine professor at the University of Florida. “Although they have adapted to climates throughout the world, it is possible that global warming is mimicking their ancient origins and helping them reach their full reproductive potential.”

Other experts disagree, holding that the heat cycle in cats is based on day length and light exposure, not temperature.

“A cat’s cycle is based on day length, and day length isn’t changing,” said Christine Petersen, assistant professor at Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “Temperature’s going up a little, but the sexual cycle of the cat isn’t based on temperature.”

Even if rising temperatures are not directly influencing cats’ heat cycles, they can play a role in other ways. Some experts believe, for instance, that milder weather increases kitten survival rates.

And Levy offered another theory – that warming could hasten the onset of puberty in cats, as it does in some other species, creating a larger pool of fertile cats each breeding season.

Yet another explanation could be a “food-chain effect,” in which warm weather may help more rats and mice survive, providing feral and stray cats with more prey and allowing their numbers to thrive, said Gail Buchwald, vice president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Adoption Center in New York…

“We were part of the problem,” Buchwald said. “We need to be part of the solution.”

Isn’t science grand?