Shire Network News #132 has been released. The feature interview is with Ann Bayefsky, editor of the Eye on the UN website and Director of the Touro College Institute of Human Rights and the Holocaust.  She says the 2001 Durban Conference on Racism, which turned into an anti-semitic hatefest, is being repeated shortly in Geneva, and as happened the first time, it’s been hijacked by Islamic countries, who seem bent on widening the focus to include taking away the right to free speech. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News, asking you to "Consider This!"

It’s time to go through the "Consider This" mailbag because, well, frankly, it’s never been gone through before, and my wife is wanting some floor space back in our basement.  So I’ve combed through the sacks and sacks of letters, found that most of them were filled with clothes our kids have outgrown, and come up with some of the burning questions that simply must be answered.

Is your real name Doug Payton, or is it a pen name, like Tom Paine or Brian of London?  Indeed, that is my real name.  If I was going to use a fake name, I’d hope I could come up with something more interesting and more obviously fake, like Barack Obama.

Why are we losing in Iraq?  Well, Mr. Bin Laden, I find it very interesting you should ask that question.  The fine folks at the Strategy Page website have indeed been reading what different factions in your organization have been saying on that very matter.  Aside from the fact that most of your leadership and soldiers are dead, captured, running away or just quitting, I’d have to say that killing fellow Muslims in an attempt to kill the infidels probably had a lot to do with it.  Framing those casualties with the oxymoronic term "involuntary martyrs", while probably enriching some public relations firm, didn’t seem to turn the tide.

Will Susan Sarandon really move to Italy or Canada if McCain is elected US President?  I think she technically said she’d "be checking out a move".  And, like all those other Hollywood types that threatened a move when Bush was elected, and then re-elected, maybe she’s just acting.  The "Consider This" Magic 8 Ball replies, "My sources say no."

I read that Harvey Korman died.  Who was he?  Oh, you poor, poor youngster.  Harvey Korman, who died at 81 this past week, was a comedian who, among many other things such as a few Mel Brooks movies, was one of the regulars on the old Carol Burnett Show.  Now that was comedy.  It was so funny that Korman himself, after rehearsing the sketches over and over, still often had to stifle his own laughter, or turn his back to the audience to hide it, when Tim Conway delivered some zingers.  But Korman most certainly pulled his own weight on the show and made it the classic it is. 

Is Al Gore’s movie "An Inconvenient Truth" really going to be done as an opera?  Yes, it seems so, for the 2011 season in Milan, Italy.  No, you just can’t make up stuff like this.  Pavarotti with charts and graphs just seems like it would chase off all but the most liberal of opera lovers, but if it works, I wonder if setting the US Constitution to music would be useful.  I’m betting that the opera house will initially have its thermostat set at a chilly 65 degrees, and programmed to rise to 80 by the end, just to enhance the experience.  Dave Barry thinks that, at the end, the fat lady will burst into flames.

I like Obama’s idea of talking with our enemies without preconditions.  We just need to sit down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, explain our point of view, give him some economic incentives, and make friends with him.  Then he won’t pursue nuclear weapons, if you really believe that’s what he’s doing.  Is that all it would take?  Have a heart-to-heart, give him some goodies, try to identify with his inner anti-Semite, and we’d all be hunky-dory.  I don’t know, Mr. Carter, I just seem to remember that that sort of "diplomacy" didn’t work out so well with North Korea.

Where are people disappearing from at an alarming rate?  From Barack Obama’s "Faith Testimonials" page.  First Jeremiah Wright mysteriously disappeared.  Now Father Michael Pfleger has dropped off the radar after saying, from the pulpit of Trinity Church, that Hillary Clinton thought she was entitled to the presidency because she’s white, which is demonstrably false.  Actually, she thinks she entitled to it because she’s a Clinton.  And now, Obama himself is disappearing from the Trinity Church rolls.  I guess after 20 years, the Trinity pulpit got too outrageous in just 6 short months.

I have a math question: If a missile leaves Tehran at 3pm traveling 125 miles per hour, and 10 minutes later a missile defense system in Jerusalem launches countermeasures traveling at 150 miles per hour, where will they meet and who can I blame it on?  Well, Mr. Ahmadinejad, I’m just going to forward this to someone who could figure that out.  "Jimmy Carter, Plains, Georgia."  There, that should be educational, for the both of you.

Consider that.

Technorati Tags: podcast, humor, Shire Network News, Barack Obama, Osama bin Laden, Iraq, Harvey Korman, Carol Burnett, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran, Jimmy Carter, Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger

Shire Network News #131 has been released. The feature interview is with French media analyst Philippe Karsenty, a long-term critic of France 2, the TV channel that broadcast the famous footage of Mohammed Al-Durah, the 10 year old Palestinian shot allegedly shot dead in his father’s arms by Israeli soldiers. Not only does Phillipe say it was a hoax, he now has a court ruling backing him up. But he needs help to get this message past an entrenched state controlled media. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News asking you to "Consider This!"

This is another Global Warming Update.  It seems that there has been quite a lot of news that has, again, gone unreported by much of the mainstream media.  So we here at SNN are providing the balance in an otherwise unbalanced news world.

An editorial in the Washington DC Examiner last Thursday noted a number of data points that are all trending in the same direction.

New data produced by more than 3,000 sophisticated ocean buoys scattered across the world’s oceans indicate average water temperatures have been decreasing since 2003, not increasing as would be the case in Gore’s globally warming world. NASA’s Josh Willis, who studies the output of the sophisticated buoys that take temperature readings from thousands of feet below the surface, says the significance of the new data is unclear.

Of course, it’s unclear.  Now, if the data had shown that the ocean was warming, the significance of the new data would have been immediately clear, and Al Gore would have held a press conference by now. 

The average land temperature of the globe dropped precipitously last year, according to the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction. The temperature drop — more than enough to “wipe out most of the global warming of the past 100 years,” according to the online technology publication Daily Tech — was also recorded by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Somehow, this must all be Bush’s fault.  Or Karl Rove’s.  Either way, it seems rather, shall we say, convenient that this happened so close to an election year?  Things like this simply do not happen during a Republican administration.  And "wiping out" something sounds a bit too much like the Bush Doctrine of preemption. 

The severity of this global temperature drop was reflected in the fact the average U.S. temperature in January was lower than the average for the previous century, according to the U.S. Climactic Data Center. Also, the Canadian Ice Service reports the Arctic ice pack is 10 to 20 centimeters thicker in many places this year than it was in 2007.

Well so what?  All this means is that the ice floes those poor polar bears are floating on are 8 inches thicker.  Let’s just hope they float far, far away from Dick Cheney’s hunting party.

Professor Oleg Sorokhtin of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences is advising people “to stock up on fur coats” because he expects an extended period of global cooling, an assessment that is echoed by Kenneth Tapping of the U.S. National Academy of Science’s National Research Council. Both scientists contend solar activity explains most of the temperature variation in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Solar activity affects Earth’s temperature?  Yeah, right.  And ocean currents affect fish migration.  Puhleeze.  (Besides, we can’t tax the Sun.  Yet.)

A peer-reviewed study published recently in the journal Nature suggests there will be no global warming until 2015, due to the effects of the Meridional Overturning Circulation, a giant oceanic conveyor belt that moves warmer water into the North Atlantic in a 70- to 80-year cycle, according to the London Telegraph.

Oh, for goodness sake, so they are going to bring up ocean currents!  Solar cycles, weather cycles, ocean cycles, yadda yadda yadda.  This is global warming we’re talking about!  What does history have to do with it?

>ahem<

In any event, if you’re waiting for these items to gain prominence in the news reporting of the day, hold not thy breath. 

Consider that.

Shire Network News #130 has been released. The feature interview is with Dr. Walid Phares, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies where he focuses on Middle East history and politics, global terrorist movements, democratization and human rights.  He speaks to us about the Hizbollah intimidation of the government of Lebanon, and whatever happened to the amazing disappearing Bush doctrine.  Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

I did not have a commentary this week.

Shire Network News #129 has been released. The feature interview is with Patti Patton-Bader, founder of Soldiers Angels, which organizes a surprisingly vast array of methods by which you, the ordinary civilian at home, can show real support for the troops. Whether it be by sending care packages, baked goods, blankets and cards, providing practical assistance for soldiers families, assisting chaplains with their work, or even organizing voice-activated laptop computers for wounded soldiers, Soldiers Angels can help you to help the troops. Go visit www.soldiersangels.org. You will also find news there of the Mom of the Year award that Patti received on Mother’s day in the US.  Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.  (OK, not so serious this week.)

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News, asking you to "Consider This!"

We have a full-blown international crisis on our hands.  The world does not know how or why this situation continues to get progressively worse, nor does it have any satisfactory solution to the problem.  Scientists from across the globe have put their heads together and come up with precious little to solve something that primarily affects them, but its ripples can be felt throughout our everyday lives.

I speak, of course, of the plight of the Kilogram.  More precisely, the question of, "What is a kilogram, exactly?"  The story in The Los Angeles Times detailing this conundrum starts out like a James Bond novel.

Forty feet underground, secured in a temperature- and humidity-controlled vault here, lies Kilogram No. 20.
It’s an espresso-shot-sized, platinum-iridium cylinder that is the perfect embodiment of the kilogram — almost perfect.

In the more than a century since No. 20 and dozens of other exact copies were crafted in France to serve as the world’s standards of the kilogram, their masses have been mysteriously drifting apart.

The article goes on to say that some kilograms have been apparently sneaking out at night and hitting the Taco Bell drive-through and thus gaining weight, while others have apparently been watching their carbs.  The fluctuations have sent the scientific world into chaos.  "In essence," says the Times, getting to the heart of the matter, "no one really knows today what a kilogram is."

I thought that the Metric System was (allegedly) supposed to make everything so much simpler.  And yet here we are now, totally unaware of what a kilogram is!  It’s a unit of weight, for goodness sake!  I’m sorry, but if it’s that easy to forget what a kilogram is, I’d say that’s a good argument for bringing back the English system, or, as England has pretty much abandoned the English system, the American system.

That’s right, once again, America is going to have to come to the rescue of the world.  The military will have to be deployed, bringing gallons, yards and ounces back to a world gone mad.  Once again, people can extract their pound of flesh, give an inch and take a mile, rename the two-and-a-half-centimeter-worm, and stop having to sing,

You gotta have heart
Kilometers and kilometers and kilometers of heart

And since everybody knows that a pound of feathers weighs the same as a pound of lead, there’s never any question as to how much a pound is.  As difficult as it may be to have to change so drastically, and as much as I know many countries loathe American intervention, I know you’ll thank us someday.

As for England, we’ll let you call it the "English System" again.  It’s only fair since you have, in at least one respect, stuck with those good old measurements.  Instead of the Euro, you still pay your bills in pounds.

Consider that.

Shire Network News #128 has been released.

This week week we conclude our chat with Prof. Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal .  As we approach the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the modern state of Israel, Barry joins us to talk about his latest reprinting of "The Israel Arab Reader". The book provides over 300 original source documents and gives a massive amount of background into the Israeli Arab struggle.

Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

I did not have a commentary this week.

Shire Network News #127 has been released.  This week week’s guest is Prof Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal .  As we approach the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the modern state of Israel, Barry joins us to talk about his latest reprinting of "The Israel Arab Reader". The book provides over 300 original source documents and gives a massive amount of background into the Israeli Arab struggle.  Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News, asking you to "Consider This!"

The Los Angeles Times ran a story last Thursday noting a widening "ideology gap" between Al Qaeda and its allies.  Those once-loyal allies are now upset that bin Laden’s crew emphasizes suicide bombings instead of political action. 

I gotta’ ask; where were these allies in September of 2001?  Did they somehow explain those attacks as "political action"?  This wasn’t a bunch of angry protestors yelling "What do we want?  The Caliphate!  When do we want it?  Now!"  Did they imagine that this radical act would lead to later moderation?  "Well, now that we’ve killed 3,000 Americans in this massive attack, we’ll just stick to the ballot box and the ‘war of ideas’ from here on out."

And these allies are shocked — SHOCKED — that innocent Muslims are also being targeted.  I hate to break it to you fellas (OK, I actually love to break it to you) that a radical is a radical.  The cause is the only thing, and anything in the way has no value.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to the allies of Al Qaeda, but apparently the nuances of radical Islamo-fascism have been lost on them.  They just thought, hey, kill a few infidels, strongarm a few politicians, and this whole affair would be over by Spring. 

Instead, Ayman al Zawahiri, in his latest audio message, found it necessary to respond to angry questions submitted online.  Kind of like a CNN presidential primary debate, except that in the end, if you vote for the wrong guy, you’re beheaded.  He spent an hour and a half responding to what he considered the most important questions, but not all the questions got a response.

But here on Shire Network News, we have, from the home office in Camillus, NY, the Top 9 Questions Ayman al Zawahiri Didn’t Have Time To Answer:

9 – What’s with all the guns in your videos?  Are they a show of machismo, or do you really use them?

8 – Will he be doing that hilarious "Carnac the Magnificent" act with Osama?

7 – How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck Danish cartoons?

6 – Are bribe..er..subsidies to the Canadian Human Rights Commission causing the budget shortfalls?

5 – Are we really taking our marching orders from Evil Bert?

4 – Before the advent of guns, what did they shoot into the air to celebrate the killing of civilians?

3 – Who does your hair?

2 – Where’s all the merchandising revenue from "Bin Laden, the T-shirt", "Bin Laden, the lunchbox", "Bin Laden, the coloring book", and "Bin Laden, the flamethrower"?

And the #1 Question Ayman al Zawahiri Didn’t Have Time To Answer:

Jihadi group?  I was told this would be the Al Qaeda Knitting Club!

Yes, it seems AQ and OBL could use some serious PR.  I hear some Hollywood war movie producer are available.

Consider that.

Shire Network News #126 has been released. The feature interview is with Kate McMillan of Small Dead Animals and Kathy Shaidle of Five Feet of Fury, two of the Canadian bloggers being sued by former Human Rights Commission employee Richard Warman. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News, asking you to “Consider This!”

As you know, if you’ve been an SNN listener for more than a month or so, that the Canadian Human Rights Commission has been prosecuting bloggers, writers and journalists over thought crimes regarding their views of radical Islam. Publishing the Danish cartoons is not, apparently, the problem. Having the wrong thoughts while publishing them seems to be the horror that the Canadian HRC is trying to abolish (while, of course, enriching the plaintiffs’ wallets).

The United States, however, has apparently decided that it needs to keep up with the Joneses. In New Mexico, that state’s HRC has now decided what pictures you simply must take. You no longer have a choice in the matter.

The New Mexico Human Rights Commission ruled on Wednesday that an evangelical Christian photographer discriminated against a lesbian couple by refusing a job to photograph the couple’s same-sex commitment ceremony. Religious rights attorneys plan to appeal.

The commission ordered Elaine and Jon Huenins, owners of Elane Photography in Albuquerque, N.M., to pay the lesbian couple $6,600 in attorney fees.

The old saying goes that when all you have is a hammer, everything around you looks like a nail. It’s also well known that government agencies tend to expand into areas not originally in their purview. I give you Exhibit A.

Contributing to its descent into being inaptly-named, the Human Rights Commission has now found that, in spite of our Constitution’s First Amendment protections of free speech and religion, people can no longer act on their conscience when picking up their camera. One might find it shocking hearing that, in Canada, an HRC investigator, when asked about freedom of speech, replied, “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.” (One might find it odd to hear this when that “American concept” seems to have made it into section two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.) But if we were to assume that this idea is indeed an “American concept”, one then needs to be outraged that one of our American states seems not to give it any value, either. Guess “freedom of speech” is no long a human right, hmm?

You might be led to think that there was not a single other photographer in all of Albuquerque. You’d, of course, be quite wrong. My suggestion to Vanessa Willock, the woman bringing the complaint, is: Google is your friend. We still have, as far as I know, a concept here called “the free market”, even (I think) in New Mexico.

This is obviously a case of using the club of government to beat into submission those who do not agree with you. How “tolerant” and “open minded”. I’m so glad that homosexuals don’t want any “special rights”. Choosing who you enter into a contract with is still a matter of some personal choice, unless the HRC thinks that lesbians now have some sort of “special right” to force you into signing on the dotted line. The Supreme Court said the Boy Scouts had a choice in the matter vis a vis homosexuals. Unless Elane Photography is government run or government funded, which I rather doubt, chances are they get the same choice.

Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law School professor and noted constitutional scholar put another ironic twist on this. Seems that the law says that the government can only compel someone to violate their religious beliefs if there is a “compelling government interest”. The twist is that New Mexico does not recognize same-sex marriages! So the only compelling interest there might be is for the HRC to justify its existence, or perhaps to pander to the compelling liberal interest groups that traffic in political correctness.

Well lemme’ tell you; Canada is not going to one-up the good ol’ US of A when it comes to bureaucratic silliness and big-government insanity. That, may I say, is truly an “American concept”.

Brian of London, welcome to my country. I’m glad to have you, but consider that.

Technorati Tags: human rights, Canadian Human Rights Commission, New Mexico Human Rights Commission, New Mexico, Elaine Huenins, Jon Huenins, Elane Photography, freedom of speech, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Vanessa Willock, homosexuality, Christianity, First Amendment, Eugene Volokh

Shire Network News #125 has been released.

This week we continue a deep and meaningful discussion that ranges across the political spectrum. Douglas Murray and Nick Cohen join Tom Paine to discuss the failures on both Left and Right to come to terms with a Jihadi threat.

On the Right we have Douglas Murray, the director of the think tank, Centre for Social Cohesion and the author of "Neo-Conservatism: Why We Need It".

From the Left, broadly speaking, as he’s not on good terms with most of his former comrades just at present, is British journalist Nick Cohen, author of "What’s Left: How Liberals Lost their Way".

Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

I did not have a commentary this week.

Shire Network News #124 has been released. This week we have a deep and meaningful discussion that ranges across the political spectrum. Douglas Murray and Nick Cohenjoin Tom Paine to discuss the failures on both Left and Right to come to terms with a Jihadi threat. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News, asking you to “Consider This”.Last week in Pennsylvania, Barack Obama was speaking to a crowd about some of his political positions, including abstinence-only education. During that speech, he said this:

I’ve got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby….

Children are a punishment, eh? I’m sure your kids are proud to hear that, Senator.

Oh, you mean just unwanted, unplanned babies are a punishment? From whom? From God, perhaps? The God who put life into that baby? The God who said, in the Bible you hold dear:

Sons are a heritage from the LORD,
children a reward from him.

Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one’s youth.

Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.

From That Guy?

Obama’s context was that all the information should be made available to kids (presumably in public school, safely out of earshot from those inconvenient parents), but it’s one thing to be concerned about curriculum, and another thing entirely to consider unplanned children “punishment” and worthy of disposal.

But considering this, and through our super secret backchannels in the Obama campaign, here, from the home office in Camillus, NY, are the top 9 other punishments Barack Obama wouldn’t wish on anyone.

9. Have their newly-washed car located underneath a flock of flying penguins. (Yes, I know it’s an April Fool’s joke.)

8. Listen to “You’re a Grand Old Flag Pin”.

7. Get their own money back from a >shudder< tax cut.

6. Not allow them to find out who the final human-looking Cylon is on “Battlestar Galactica”.

5. Get interviewed by Tom Paine. (He asks those tough questions.)

4. Spend a few years at the “Hanoi Hilton”. (Oh, sorry, that’s a punishment John McCain wouldn’t wish on anyone.)

3. Sit through an entire Michael Moore movie. (Hey, some things we can all can agree on.)

2. Be the unlucky superdelegate that suggests to Bill Clinton that he needs to “chill out”.

And the number one punishment Barack Obama wouldn’t wish on anyone:

Listen to Obama himself decide whether he’s for or against gun control, for or against decriminalizing marijuana, for or against mandatory minimum sentences, for or against…well, you get the idea.

Consider that.

Shire Network News #123 has been released. The feature interview is part 2 of a talk with British Member of Parliament for Wells, David Heathcote-Amery about the precarious state of democracy in Europe. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

I did not have a commentary this week.