1. This mosque is not at Ground Zero. It is two blocks away.

2. This project, officially known as the Cordoba Initiative, is a lot more than a mosque. It will be 13 stories, and includes a performance-art center, a gym, and a swimming pool.

3. The person behind the Cordoba Initiative is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is the founder of the American Society for Muslim Advancement. He is the Imam of a mosque in Manhattan that is 12 blocks away from Ground Zero. The stated objective of the American Society for Muslim Advancement is to bring Muslims and non-Muslims together through programs in academia, policy, current affairs and culture.

4. Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York, is Jewish and Republican, and he has no problem with this project. So why do you have a problem with it?

5. Iman Feisal has as much right to put up a religious centre on Manhattan as you have to put one of your churches in my neighborhood. If you have a problem with this concept, take it up with little Mormon boy Glenn Beck.

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Here is an account of several International Day Against Stoning events: Worldwide Protests in Support of Sakine Mohammadi Ashtiani and Against Stoning and Execution.

Mission Free Iran has made an entirely reasonable request to the United Nations: Stoning, Rape and Execution of Women is Bad Gender Policy; It is Time to Remove the Islamic Republic from the UN Commission on the Status of Women

Op-ed piece by Irwin Cotler, published in the Vancouver Sun: Iran is more than just a nuclear threat. Cotler is a former minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada. He makes a very strong case for an end to enabling the behavior of the Ahmadinejad regime.

Pakistan (allies of the U.S. and Canada in the war in Afghanistan) has sentenced a man and woman to death by stoning for adultery. Here's a story by Saeed Shah in The Guardian: Pakistani couple face death by stoning threat after conviction for adultery.

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I learned a couple of days ago that Sunday, July 11, is the International Day Against Stoning, and protests against this barbaric practice are taking place in at least Washington, DC, Beverly Hills, CA, London, and Sydney, Australia.

The obvious question that this raises for me is, why is it that in the Twenty-First Century, we have a need for such a thing as an "International Day Against Stoning"? Throwing rocks at human beings to put them to death, for "crimes" such as "illicit relations", is something that I learned about in Sunday School. It gave rise to one of Jesus' best known quotes, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

This was two thousand years ago. The creatures who don't have any problem with casting the first, second, or third stones now live in Iran, Pakistan, Somalia, and Nigeria.

I'll write about Pakistan first. I've recently read two books by Greg Mortenson, Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools. I recommend both of them highly, especially Three Cups of Tea, but if you don't have time to read a book, you can watch this video of an interview of Mortenson by Bill Moyers of PBS. Mortenson's low-cost efforts to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan have done far more good than the billions of dollars spent on bombs in that part of the world.

Now, about Iran. In Bill Maher's film "Religulous", Maher points out, near the end when he's summing up, that religious fanatics are making the world a dangerous place, and it's time for us to stop enabling their behaviour. (If you're a religious fanatic, and you're reading this, it's you I'm talking about.) (Click here to watch "Religulous" in its entirety, but the good part is the last ten minutes.)

If you've been paying any attention at all to events in Iran over the past 30 years, you know that the country is governed by religious fanatics who call themselves Shiite Muslims. You know that Iran has a president who denies that the Holocaust happened. He went to New York City and claimed that there are no Gays among Iran's 74 million people. He wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons, but keeps lying about it.

Now, who is enabling Ahmadinejad's behaviour? Two people who are doing it are Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, and Daniel Ortega, President of Nicaragua. So, if you consider Chavez and Ortega to be friends of yours, it's time to find yourself some new friends.

One-half of Iran's government revenue (remember, this article is about the goverment of Iran that stones people for "illicit relations") comes from oil exports. These exports go to Japan, China, India, South Korea, Italy, Spain, Greece, France, and South Africa. If you drive a car, or ride a bus or plane in any of these countries, you're enabling the behaviour of the Iranian government.

If you live elsewhere, you can show your support for the International Day Against Stoning by placing a rock in a public place.

Story by Daphne Bramham in the Vancouver Sun: Public stoning the most repulsive form of capital punishment

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An old friend of mine died of cancer a couple of months ago, at the age of 57. Gail smoked Tareyton 100's for much of her adult life. She underwent chemotherapy a couple of years ago, and started smoking again when the treatments were complete. She wanted to live long enough to see her daughter graduate from medical school, and came up a couple of years short.

This tragic story will be repeated 5.4 million times this year.

In 1980, Terry Fox started a run across Canada to raise awareness about cancer. His effort was completed in 1985 by Steve Fonyo. Over $500 million has been raised for cancer research in Fox's name.

No research whatsoever was necessary to determine the cause of Gail's death, and we've all heard the saying, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Another old friend of mine, Errol Povah, is following in the steps of Fox and Fonyo to raise awareness about prevention.

Errol started the Journey for a Tobacco-Free World on World No Tobacco Day, May 31, 2010, in Victoria, BC. His plan is to run and walk at least as far as Montreal, where the Canadian branch of British American Tobacco has its corporate office. If time permits, he will continue to New York, the headquarters of Philip Morris International.

Errol is doing this to promote what is, for most people, a new idea: the same criteria that was applied to thalidomide and DDT should also be applied to cigarettes. The manufacture and sale of cigarettes should be banned, worldwide. And no, Errol did not come up with this idea as a response to those who say, “if cigarettes are so bad, why doesn't the government just outlaw them?”

The comparison to DDT is especially useful, because it was manufactured and exported by the US until 1985, 13 years after most uses of it were banned in the US. The effort by anti-tobacco activists to de-normalize cigarettes has been successful in most of Canada and the US, but on a global scale, tobacco consumption is increasing, and tobacco production has increased by nearly 30% in China over the past ten years. Unfortunately, Errol was unable to arrange to make his journey across China instead of Canada. Maybe next year, but for now, Errol is making an important point; those of us fortunate to live in Canada or the US can take a plane flight or eat a meal in a restaurant without having someone else's cigarette in our faces, and the tobacco industry's lobbyists (with the notable exception of Barbara McDougall) are no longer very welcome in Ottawa and Victoria. There are people in other parts of the world that are not so fortunate. Within the past three years, I have personally seen a seven-year old boy selling cigarettes in Nicaragua.

I met up with Errol on June 9, about 15 km. beyond Hope. That's an old joke; other than some predictable blisters on his feet, Errol is doing fine. If all goes well, he should arrive in Merritt, BC on June 11, and Kamloops, BC on June 13.

One more thing; you can help send me to Netroots Nation in Las Vegas at the end of July; click here, then click “click here to voice your support...”.

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University of Victoria Professor Andrew Weaver has launched a lawsuit against the National Post, Terence Corcoran, Peter Foster, and Kevin Libin. It's about time.

The National Post columnists stated that Weaver is a "corrupt scientist". They claimed that he fabricated stories about a break-in into his office.

Weaver did no such thing. His office was indeed broken into, and there is a police report to prove it. However, Weaver never made any accusation with regard to who was responsible for it.

Why, then, did it say in the National Post, not once but on four different occasions, by three different authors, Corcoran, Foster, and Libin, that Weaver had accused the fossil fuel industry of being responsible for the break-in?

Because the National Post prints lies, that's why. The editors and management of the National Post know that Terence Corcoran is a liar, but they keep him on the payroll, and don't fact-check his stories.

Here's a couple of examples. On February 3, 1997, Corcoran wrote a piece for the Globe and Mail that stated that the Non-Smokers' Rights Association (NSRA) had used money from public funding to attack tobacco-industry-friendly politicians. The NSRA did no such thing, and the NSRA sued the Globe and Mail and got an apology and a settlement.

In April, 2001, Corcoran, now writing for the National Post, wrote that the British Columbia government "prohibits raw log exports except by exceptional permit". No, it doesn't. Permits are required only for exporting logs from Crown land. Raw log exports tripled in 2000, the year prior to when Corcoran made this false statement.

Weaver is being represented by McConchie Law Corporation in Victoria. Here's their press release: Climate Scientist Sues National Post for Libel. Weaver's suit also intends to hold the National Post responsible for libelous comments posted on their web site.

If you have other examples of lies told by Terence Corcoran, Peter Foster, or Kevin Libin, send me an email, or post a comment to this article. I'll add them to the list here, as well as forward them to McConchie Law Corporation. The idea here is to convince a judge that apologies and retractions have been insufficient in making these liars change their behaviour, and they need to be hit harder in the pocketbook.

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If you didn't know this already, my current major webmastering project is The Common Sense Canadian, thecanadian.org. The principal people in this are Rafe Mair and documentary film maker Damien Gillis.

This site, IMHO, should be represented at Netroots Nation (formerly known as YearlyKos) in Las Vegas July 22-25. It's an opportunity to compare notes with people involved in similar efforts in the US, such as dailykos.com and crooksandliars.com.

To make this happen, I've applied for a scholarship to Netroots Nation. You can help me and The Common Sense Canadian by voting for me. You can do this by clicking here. Then click "Click here to voice your support for this applicant", and do what it says. You will be asked to enter a zip code. If you're Canadian, don't worry about this; your Canadian postal code will work OK.

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In the flurry of disinformation sent out by the Catholic Church last week in response to accusations of Joseph Ratzinger's involvement in the coverup of pedophilia by Catholic priest, one idea that they snuck in was that Ratzinger has diplomatic immunity from prosecution because he is a "head of state".

Head of state? Where, exactly, did the idea come from that by changing his name to Benedict and wearing an expensive hat, Ratzinger became a head of state?

Unfortunately, one of the people who believes it is John B. Bellinger III, a lawyer for the George W. Bush administration who also believes that torture is a good idea. The Bush II administration acted to prevent bringing the Pope into pedophilia cases in 2005.

Fortunately, Bush is no longer president, and when a silly idea like "diplomatic immunity for the Pope" comes along, it doesn't matter whether 100 people or 100 million people believe it; it's still a silly idea.

A rational course of action for law enforcement authorities in Germany, Ireland, the US, and any other country where pedophile activity has possibly been covered up by Ratzinger, would be to issue warrants for Ratzinger's arrest. When Ratzinger sets foot in one of those countries, he could then be arrested, and possibly charged and put on trial. At the very least, he could be given a choice of giving testimony about priests suspected of pedophilia, or being prosecuted for contempt of court.

More on this subject from an article by Geoffrey Robertson in The Guardian: Put the pope in the dock.

Blog Against Theocracy

Update on April 10: It wasn't just Joseph Ratzinger; Karol Józef Wojtyła was in on it, too. See The Vatican's Watergate: Follow The Money, by Andrew Sullivan.

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