American Thinker Blog: Global Warming Ruled a Religion by British Judge

“Great” (ha!) Britain Down the Toilet – Part 33,003

April 30, 2009

Global Warming Ruled a Religion by British Judge

Marc Sheppard
A fired British executive is suing his former employer on the grounds that he was unfairly dismissed due to religious views – his belief in global warming.

According to the Independent:

“In the first case of its kind, employment judge David Sneath said Tim Nicholson, a former environmental policy officer, could invoke employment law for protection from discrimination against him for his conviction that climate change was the world's most important environmental problem.”

The judge ruled that Nicholson’s extreme green views fit the definition of “a philosophical belief under the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations, 2003.” So strong were these “beliefs,” that they “put him at odds with other senior executives within the firm.” The 41-year-old told the employment tribunal that, as head of sustainability at Grainger plc, Britain's largest residential property investment company, he constantly tangled with fellow-executives over the company’s environmental policies and corporate social responsibility.

Nicholson complained that senior executives obstructed his attempts to lower the company’s “carbon footprint,” and that while Grainger advertised green policies, executives actually drove "some of the most highly polluting cars on the road". He also griped that chief executive Rupert Dickinson refused numerous requests to change the company’s policy toward employee air travel. Nicholson even included this personally upsetting example in his written complaint: "He [Mr. Dickinson] showed contempt for the need to cut carbon emissions by flying out a member of the IT staff to Ireland to deliver his BlackBerry that he had left behind in London."

All of which offended Nicholson’s green beliefs, which he says dictate his very existence, "including my choice of home, how I travel, what I buy, what I eat and drink, what I do with my waste and my hopes and my fears".
Harry Trory, counsel for Grainger, argued that Nicholson’s “views on climate change and the environment were based on fact and science, and did not constitute a philosophical belief.”

But the judge agreed with Nicholson, finding that “his belief goes beyond a mere opinion.”
The decision makes Nicholson the first person ever to be allowed to sue for religious discrimination with environmentalism listed as the affronted creed.

What next, Earth Day declared a religious holiday, tax-exempt status extended to recycling plants, or defacing effigies of Al Gore prosecuted as a hate crime? Not likely.

On the other hand, greenies scoffed when Michael Crichton first called environmentalism “one of the most powerful religions in the Western World” over five years ago, insisting that “settled science” was on their side. Since then it’s become increasingly evident that alarmists’ warming beliefs are based not on reason or evidence, but a trusting acceptance in the absence of either. They outright refuse to discuss it, debate it, or abide those daring to question it.

Antitheist Sam Harris once wrote:

“The difference between science and religion is the difference between a willingness to dispassionately consider new evidence and new arguments, and a passionate unwillingness to do so.”

If British carbo-chondriacs now choose to capitulate which better exemplifies their position in an effort to exploit victims’ status, we can only hope their American counterparts soon follow their lead.

It’d be well worth a few silly law-suits to establish precedent necessary to keep this nonsense out of our public schools on those very same grounds.
And that’s just the tip of the expanding iceberg

American Thinker Blog: Global Warming Ruled a Religion by British Judge

My private foundation is urgently stepping up its drive to raise money to fund colonization of the moon. Not for those of us who want sanity restored on earth, but to forcefully deport the moonbats who have temporarily seized power in the USA, UK, and elsewhere. You may contribute directly to me, Lord Lunch, c/o Hamsammich Castle, Worcestershiresauce, England. Donations excepted in all currencies, in any amount, cash only. Thank you too much.

Yours, etc., etc., etc.

Lunch

Hamsammich Castle, Worcestershire, England

UK launches massive, one-year program to archive every email : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech

Posted with the greatest trepidation by Lord Lunch

In a move that even the most nonchalant of privacy advocates is crying foul over, the UK has put into effect a European Union directive which mandates the archival of information regarding virtually all Internet traffic for the next 12 months. The program formally goes into effect today.

The data retention rules require the archival of all email traffic (the identities of the sender and receiver, but not the contents of the messages), records of VOIP telephone calls (traditional phone calls are already monitored), and information about every website visited by any computer user in the country. The rules are being pushed down "across the board to even the smallest company," as every ISP large or small will be required to collect and store the data. That data will then be accessible -- to fight "crime and terrorism," of course -- by "hundreds of public bodies" to investigate whatever crimes they see fit.

Technically the new directive applies to all countries of the EU, but individual nations appear to be complying with the rules to various degrees. Privacy-obsessed Sweden is reportedly ignoring the rule completely, for example.

The privacy implications of the rule are enormous, as everything UK citizens do online will now be under the watchful eye of EU's powerful Home Office. One privacy advocate, whose anger is clearly barely being held back, called it "the kind of technology that the Stasi would have dreamed of." Naturally, the government counters that this kind of information has already proven invaluable in tracking down criminals, including the killer of an 11-year-old boy a couple of years ago.

UK launches massive, one-year program to archive every email : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech

If you Colonials would but peruse our papers here in once Great Britain, a daily dose of horrors like this you would get. Sadly for me, I've kept up with news from the rebel colonies you call the USA, and I see that the Fresh Prince of D.C. is racing pell mell to catch up with, and then outpace, we wee British on the expressway to hell.

When m'Lord Cornwallis surrendered to Gen. Washington at Yorktown in 1781, he ordered his drum & fife corps to play 'The World Turned Upside Down.' Time for someone to do a cover recording, is it not?

Pip pip (though I feel rather like saying 'poop poop.')

Lord Lunch

Hamsammich Castle, Worcestershiresauce, England

You Have A Marvelous Virgin
Hit the Reset Button, Ma

By Lord Lunch with help from the Catholic News Agency.
On her visit to Mexico last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a surprise early morning visit to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, bearing a bouquet of white flowers “on behalf of the American people.”

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is Mexico's most popular religious and cultural symbol, and the Basilica is the second most visited Catholic shrine in the world. (Pope John Paul II visited four times.)

On a hill near Mexico City in 1531, a peasant named Juan Diego saw a vision of a young girl surrounded by light. The Lady asked for a church to be built at that site in her honor. From her words, Juan Diego recognized her as the Virgin Mary.

Miracles of the Image
When Juan Diego told his story to the Spanish bishop, an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe miraculously appeared on the back of his simple peasant’s cloak.

The image has maintained its integrity for 500 years, though replicas made with similar materials normally disintegrate after about 15 years. In 1791, an ammonia spill made a considerable hole in the cloak, but the image reportedly mended itself within two weeks with no external help. In 1921, an anarchist hid a bomb in an offering of flowers placed next to the image. The bomb's explosion destroyed the shrine, but the image was undamaged.

Photographers and ophthalmologists have reported images reflected in the eyes of the Virgin. A Nobel Prize winning chemist concluded that the tint on the fabric is not from any known mineral, vegetable, or animal source. An infrared study of the image found portions of the face, hands, robe, and mantle appear to have been painted in one step, with no sketches or corrections, and no apparent brush strokes.

Mrs. Clinton’s Reaction to the Image
When Mrs. Clinton arrived at the Basilica, she was greeted by the rector, Msgr. Diego Monroy.

After respectfully viewing the image of the Virgin for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked the rector “Who painted it?”

Msgr. Monroy responded “God!”

As she left the Basilica, Mrs. Clinton told a crowd of Mexicans gathered outside, “You have a marvelous virgin!”

Feds spending millions on Kennedy legacy in Mass.

Lord Lunch gags on his morning muffin.

More than one out of every five dollars of the $126 million Massachusetts is receiving in earmarks from a $410 billion federal spending package is going to help preserve the legacy of the Kennedys.

The bill includes $5.8 million for the planning and design of a building to house a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate.

The bill also includes $22 million to expand facilities at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum and $5 million more for the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a park system in downtown Boston named after Kennedy's mother.

The $22 million JFK library earmark was sponsored by fellow Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John Kerry, who is also a top sponsor for the money for the Kennedy Senate Institute. Kerry defended the project, saying, "This shovel-ready project will also bring much-needed jobs to the area."

Local officials are seeking up to $100 million to build the institute, which will focus on the Senate in general and Kennedy's more than four decades of service to the body.

Tentative plans called for a replica of the Senate chamber itself, as well as programs to train new senators.

"These funds will create jobs that are desperately needed, and will provide lasting benefits for all our citizens long into the future," Kennedy said in statement accompanying a list of earmarks.

Feds spending millions on Kennedy legacy in Mass.