What do you call it when someone steals someone else’s money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else’s money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else’s money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice.

- Thomas Sowell

Dispatches From the Religion of Peace

It seems the RoP has gone into overtime mode, assuring they reach their quota for murder, violence, intolerance, and overall thugishness prior to FY 2012.

First, in Nigeria we have the "demands" of the tolerant gentlemen that murdered 39 Christians who committed the intolerable act of going to church on Christmas Day:

“There will never be peace until our demands are met,” the newspaper quoted the spokesman as saying. “We want all our brothers who have been incarcerated to be released; we want full implementation of the Sharia system and we want democracy and the constitution to be suspended.”

Second, we are reassured that the Iranians have decided not to stone a woman to death for adultery. It seems there's a rock shortage or something, so they are prepared to content themselves with just stringing her up instead:

An Iranian woman whose sentence of death by stoning for adultery provoked an international outcry could be executed by hanging instead, the country's judicial authorities have indicated. [...]

Malek Ajdar Sharifi, the head of the judiciary in East Azerbaijan, said on Sunday that the prison does not have the "necessary facilities" to carry out the sentence of stoning. Therefore, he said, authorities are considering hanging as an alternative.

"Sustainable Development"

As an architect, I am compelled to listen to my colleagues blather on endlessly about "sustainability." It's annoying and elitist, because the implication is that the way we practiced architecture before 1990 or so was somehow wrong. Worse, there is a kind of vibe about the whole thing "sustainable" architecture is in some way morally superior.

Here's an excellent blog post by Willis Eschenbach that takes down the myth of sustainability:

Here’s the ugly truth. It’s simple, blunt, and bitter. Nothing is sustainable. Oh, like the sailors say, the wind is free. As is the sunshine. But everything else we mine or extract to make everything from shovels to cell phones will run out. The only question is, will it run out sooner, or later? Because nothing is sustainable. “Sustainable Development” is just an airy-fairy moonbeam fantasy, a New Age oxymoron. In the real world, it can’t happen.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Chris Christie Dismantles Chanting Protestors

End of World; Women and Minorities Etcetera

From CNS News comes this nonsense:

Climate change is a gender issue because it affects men and women differently, feminists told a conference in Washington, D.C., this week.

Women are more adversely affected by climate change because it magnifies pre-existing “gender inequalities,” said Lamie El-Fattal, a member of Women Organizing For Change in Agriculture and Natural Resources (WOCAN).

The report goes on to quote the usual blah blah blah of tiresome militant feminism.

I guess we can add this report to this breathtaking list (try reading it out loud to get the full effect of this climate change nonsense).

Here's a delightful holiday dinner

On one side, you have your militant feminist cousin lecturing you on the wonders of abortion:

Planned Parenthood’s New York City affiliate has posted an article telling visitors to its Web site how to successfully discuss abortion around the “holiday table.”

And on the other side you have your socialist hipster nephew hectoring you to honor the "Occupy Movement."

At your holiday meals, bring up the issue of those who are struggling this Hanukkah or Christmas -- both the poor, the near-poor, and all those who are deeply insecure and frightened. Ask people how they imagine their society would be different if the original messages of Hanukkah or Christmas were being taken seriously today. Would the rabbis who said that the central command of Torah was to "love your neighbor as yourself" and "love the stranger," or would Jesus of Nazareth, our great Jewish teacher who Christians embraced as their messiah, be outraged at a society that celebrated these holidays but turned its back on the poor and the powerless? Ask your friends at their holiday meals to discuss the call of the Occupy movement to stop the class war of the 1 percent on the 99 percent and to reverse the wild inequalities that have accompanied the political and economic triumph of the 1 percent over the rest of the population.

Yeah, that's the Christmas table I want to sit around.