Magic Statistics

Indonesia’s environment minister is threatening to destroy his country’s rainforests unless the West makes it worthwhile to keep them.  Is this a new phase in the battle over so-called global warming—climate change extortion?

Indonesia wants to be paid $US5-$US20 ($A5.50-$A22.20) per hectare not to destroy its remaining forests, the environment minister says, for the first time giving an actual figure that he wants the world's rich countries to pay.
. . .
"We will ask for a compensation of $5-20 per hectare. It's not fixed; it is open to negotiation," Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar told reporters after a cabinet meeting at the presidential palace.

With a total forest area of 91 million ha (225 million acres), Indonesia could receive as much as $US1.8 billion ($A2.01 billion) for preserving its forests under the proposal.

Indonesia will also negotiate a fixed price for other forms of biodiversity, including coral reefs, Witoelar added.

Mr Witoelar says there is “a price tag for preservation”.  No kidding.

This sounds like a perverse re-working of the mob’s protection racket.  Countries could hold the world to ransom by threatening their own environmentally sensitive areas.  Pay me or I’ll wreck the planet’s climate by destroying my own property.

h/t: Andrew Bolt

A Christian father in Borno state, northeastern Nigeria, has lost custody of his three daughters to relatives of his deceased Muslim ex-wife.

Allabe Kaku Chibok’s Muslim wife divorced him in 1996 after he became a Christian.  He maintained custody of their three daughters, even when she re-married four years later.  After she died, however, his ex-wife’s family, with the aid of retired female police officer Hajiya Maryam Aliyu, abducted the girls and prevented him from seeing them, maintaining that his conversion to Christianity rendered him an unfit parent.

Ms Aliyu and the ex-wife’s family launched an action in a Sharia court to obtain legal custody of the daughters.

Aliyu admitted to the court that she abducted the girls in accordance with their mother’s death-bed wishes. In the hospital, Botul Grema had asked Aliyu that the Christian girls be taken away from their father so they would be raised as Muslims.

Aliyu also told the court that the Muslim community authorized her to take the girls into her custody, saying Islamic leaders “authorized me to come with the children to my house, and that they would come and receive them from me,” Aliyu testified.

Islamic lawyers called for Aliyu and the Muslim relatives of Chibok’s ex-wife to obtain custody of the three girls, as under Islamic law the girls were now Muslims and could not be allowed to live with their Christian father.

The court found in favour of the Muslim relatives, ruling that a non-Muslim father cannot have custody of children if the mother—or any of the deceased’s mother’s relatives—is Muslim.

Ironically, the home page of Borno state has as its banner: “Welcome to Borno, Nigeria—The Home of Peace!”

"The Home of Peace" - This acronym well fits Borno State as the State is known for its peaceful and hospitable nature despite its diverse differences in terms of history, religion, culture and languages amongst others. A brief on the State is all that is required to make a visitor to Borno State feel at home.

Yeah, right!  Peace to Muslims and dhimmis is more like it.

Previous related posts:

• Nigeria’s political life mired in corruption and violence
• Muslims rampage against Christians in northern Nigeria
• Muslims threaten to seize Christian land in Nigeria
• Muslim rule oppresses Nigerian church

The rector of an Anglican church in downtown Ottawa says that, if homosexuals can’t get "married" in his church, no one can.  The Rev Canon Garth Bulmer publicised his decision days before Ottawa Synod meets to consider his motion asking the bishop to allow same-sex blessings in the diocese.

"If we can't marry everyone who comes to us in faithful union, we won't marry anyone," said Rev. Canon Garth Bulmer, who introduced a motion that Ottawa's bishop allow clergy "whose conscience permits" to bless same-sex unions.

"If gay people cannot have equal access to the sacraments of St. John's Church, we won't do the sacrament of marriage. It's a symbolic act which would be a gesture of solidarity."

Canon Bulmer needs to brush up on his Anglican theology.  According to the Thirty-Nine Articles, there are only two sacraments, and marriage ain’t one of them.

If the motion passes, the newly installed bishop of Ottawa, The Rt Rev John Chapman, still has the final say as to whether SSBs will be allowed in the diocese.

The Rev George Sinclair, rector of St Alban the Martyr Church and co-chair of Anglican Essentials Canada, believes that Ottawa Anglicans who oppose SSBs have been hushed up.

Sinclair, 51, said critics are afraid to speak.

"We've been marginalized," he said. "I've been called Hitlerite. You are accused of homophobia and bigotry."

Pro-homosexual Anglicans slandering those who maintain orthodox beliefs?  That’s a very serious charge, Rev Sinclair.

"When you're opposing it because it's wrong and sinful and people who engage in those practices are bad, it's homophobic," Bulmer said.

QED.

c/p: Anglican Essentials Canada Blog

Previous related posts:

• Ottawa Diocese to consider motion at odds with General Synod decision
• Michael Ingham hits a new low
• Is Christian ministry about “access to power”?
• Dirty tricks in Ottawa