Magic Statistics

The Director of the Hindu Council UK has warned Christians to "clip back" missionary activity in India, or risk damaging inter-faith relations in Britain.

Jay Lakhani . . . accused Christians of committing a 'crass atrocity' when they converted members of the Dalit community in India, saying that they were stealing 'the most precious thing these poor people possess, their souls'.

Well, that's the issue, isn't it?  What is best for their souls?  Christians hold that Hinduism is a misguided religion that leads adherents away from eternal life with the Lord God.

Speaking during an interview on Christian radio station Premier, Mr Lakhani said Hindus were 'fed up' with missionary activity in India.

That's rich.  Indian Christians are being persecuted, robbed, beaten, and killed for following Jesus, and Hindus are "fed up"?  Consider these recent news stories:

• Brutal attacks on Christian leaders in India
• Christian pastor brutally assaulted while caring for the sick
• Indian public servant killed for his faith in Christ
• Hindu “Religion Army” attacks pastors’ conference
• Christians denounced for offering “moral comfort” to suffering Indians

I'd say the Christians are getting by far the worst of that deal.

"Why do they have to go to the third world and target some destitute, desperate people to spread their good news?

Ummmm . . . Because it's good news.  Is this a trick question?  Besides, if the people are desperate and destitute, it would seem that Hinduism is not serving them particularly well, is it?

“We have to ask, is the reason there are two billion Christians in the world because they discovered Christ or because Christianity was quite literally shoved down their throats?”

Christianity shoved down two billion throats?  The mind boggles.  If Christianity was shoved on two billion people, who’s doing the shoving?  Can’t two billion people make the shovers shove off?

Mr Lakhani also challenged the idea that the hereditary hierarchical caste system that exists in India is part of Hinduism, but explained it is ‘a socio-economic, culturally-based atrocity committed in the name of Hinduism’ which he condemned.

The caste system was perpetrated by a small cabal of cruel pseudo-Hindus. Sounds like the “tiny minority of extremists” line one hears when asking why so many Muslims seem intent on blowing us up.

I have a question. If religion has nothing to do with it, then why does the caste system exist in India and not in, say, western Europe?  What exactly is it about Hinduism that renders it vulnerable to subversion by such a wicked and atrocious social system?

Hindus obviously have issues with other religions, too:

• Hindus attack news outlet for reporting Hindu-Muslim marriage
• Hindu militants block roads to protest Hindu-Muslim marriage

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has let slip more details of his March meeting with Bishop of Harare Nolbert Kunonga.

At a May 1 meeting held at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London, Williams was asked why Anglican church funds were not used to fill trucks with food and send them across Beit Bridge from South Africa to Bulawayo in southern Zimbabwe where people are starving.

Dr Williams said the Zimbabwe government would view aid shipments sent by the Church of England as foreign intervention and bar their entry.

Williams met with Kunonga in March "to ask him whether he would contemplate not only rediscovering his soul, so to speak, in relation to the Mugabe government, but whether he would contemplate an arrangement which we would willingly broker with the World Food Programme administered through the Anglican church in Zimbabwe. The answer was 'No'!"

Bp Kunonga would rather see his fellow Zimbabweans go hungry than buck Robert Mugabe’s political agenda.  The man truly is the Bishop of Mugabe.

The same news article contains an interesting tidbit about the apparently pro-Mugabe pastoral letter from the Anglican bishops of the Province of Central Africa.  It was released with the names of all the bishops, but one of them, Bishop of Masvingo (south-east Zimbabwe) Godfrey Tawonezri, denies actually signing it.

"I have not seen the full statement," said Tawonezri. "No copy was sent to me. I did not sign the statement and I know that most bishops did not sign because the statement was written after the bishops left Harare."

This is very puzzling.  Bp Tawonezri’s assertion would explain the pro-Mugabe content of the letter; but why, then, did The Rt Rev Trevor Mwamba, Bishop of Botswana, argue that the letter was not really as pro-Mugabe as everyone thought?  Why didn’t Bp Mwamba just say that he too did not sign it?

h/t: This Is Zimbabwe

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Scientists at the Canadian government’s CANMET Energy Technology Centre are working on operationalising a technological discovery that promises virtually to eliminate coal pollution. TIPS, Thermo-energy Integrated Power System, was invented by an American scientist and is now being championed by a Canadian scientific organisation.

It's a technology that promises to turn coal, the most abundant fossil fuel in the world, from pure black to pure green.

Invented and patented by Alex Fassbender, a U.S. chemical engineer, TIPS makes coal behave itself - by keeping it under extreme, constant pressure. It strips coal of virtually 100 per cent of pollutants. It emits nothing into the atmosphere. It captures coal's heavier-than-air greenhouse gas emissions essentially for free. It uses off-the-shelf turbines to produce electricity, reducing capital costs and delivering power at a bargain price. And it does all this in plants one-tenth the size of conventional coal-fired plants - now gargantuan structures that rival high-rise apartment buildings in scale.

Says Bruce Clements, the Canmet research scientist who has spent months evaluating the TIPS technology: "This is huge. This is a step change."

Mr Clements has written a 200-page scientific feasibility study concluding that implementation of TIPS faces no major technical barriers.

Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn is now considering Canmet’s proposal to fund a $12 million pilot project to evaluate the viability of TIPS technology.

For more information, see this page at Canmet’s website and this press release from ThermoEnergy Corporation.

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The United Nations used to content itself with corruption, malfeasance, fraud, and sexual exploitation of children.  But that’s not good enough anymore, apparently.  The UN has now decided to move beyond crime to absurdity.  How will they top this?

Today the UN General Assembly, that unerring barometer of world opinion, will acclaim Zimbabwe’s election to chair the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, the panel that deals with development and the environment. Thunderous applause from Africa’s numerous delegations, doubtless joined by Zimbabwe’s good friend China, will make up for the West’s inexplicable lack of enthusiasm.

Zimbabwe’s triumph is certain because it is Africa’s nominee. Under an unwritten UN rule, this was Africa’s “turn” in the seat, so what Africa says, goes. African governments clearly appreciate the example Zimbabwe sets in tackling global warming.

Why, only this week the Mugabe regime announced that households are to be rationed to four hours of electricity a day. No matter that the reason for this enforced curtailment of consumption is the catastrophic mismanagement of Zimbabwean resources: results are what count.

The Rt Rev Nicholas Baines, Bishop of Croydon, has just returned from a two-week visit to Zimbabwe and sheds further light on Zimbabwe’s socio-economic disaster sustainable development achievements.

Nothing has been repaired for years and the country’s infrastructure is collapsing. Constant power cuts, sometimes lasting for days, are interspersed with water shortages. In Gweru, the administrative centre of the Midlands Province, we were without running water for our last five days; in Kadoma, where I preached and presided on Sunday April 22, there has been no running water for two months.

We saw signs of malnutrition in children, and adults suffering from hunger fatigue. Some of the people we stayed with are normally eating what is called ‘zero one zero’ -– no breakfast, a basic lunch and nothing in the evening. This year’s drought has devastated the maize crop.

Agricultural land, once so rich and well-farmed, is now largely abandoned. The land-reform process has been catastrophic, not because it was morally wrong in itself (the UK agreed to it), but because it was ill-conceived, appallingly executed and has proved economically disastrous. You don’t need a GCSE in economics to know that it could never work.

Zimbabwe has had no development—sustainable or otherwise—for years.  To the contrary, the country’s economy and society have regressed to the point of collapse.  The only thing Mugabe has “sustained” is his own despotic power.

The new chair of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development denies everything the commission purportedly stands for.

h/t: Binks

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