March 28, 2012
The Honorable Charles Bolden, Jr.
NASA Administrator
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. 20546-0001
Dear Charlie,
We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.
The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.
As former NASA employees, we feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate. We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject. At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.
For additional information regarding the science behind our concern, we recommend that you contact Harrison Schmitt or Walter Cunningham, or others they can recommend to you.
Thank you for considering this request.
Sincerely,
(Attached signatures)
CC: Mr. John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for Science
CC: Ass Mr. Chris Scolese, Director, Goddard Space Flight Center
Ref: Letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, dated 3-26-12, regarding a request for NASA to refrain from making unsubstantiated claims that human produced CO2 is having a catastrophic impact on climate change.
1. /s/ Jack Barneburg, Jack – JSC, Space Shuttle Structures, Engineering Directorate, 34 years
2. /s/ Larry Bell – JSC, Mgr. Crew Systems Div., Engineering Directorate, 32 years
3. /s/ Dr. Donald Bogard – JSC, Principal Investigator, Science Directorate, 41 years
4. /s/ Jerry C. Bostick – JSC, Principal Investigator, Science Directorate, 23 years
5. /s/ Dr. Phillip K. Chapman – JSC, Scientist – astronaut, 5 years
6. /s/ Michael F. Collins, JSC, Chief, Flight Design and Dynamics Division, MOD, 41 years
7. /s/ Dr. Kenneth Cox – JSC, Chief Flight Dynamics Div., Engr. Directorate, 40 years
8. /s/ Walter Cunningham – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 7, 8 years
9. /s/ Dr. Donald M. Curry – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Leading Edge, Thermal Protection Sys., Engr. Dir., 44 years
10. /s/ Leroy Day – Hdq. Deputy Director, Space Shuttle Program, 19 years
11. /s/ Dr. Henry P. Decell, Jr. – JSC, Chief, Theory & Analysis Office, 5 years
12. /s/Charles F. Deiterich – JSC, Mgr., Flight Operations Integration, MOD, 30 years
13. /s/ Dr. Harold Doiron – JSC, Chairman, Shuttle Pogo Prevention Panel, 16 years
14. /s/ Charles Duke – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 16, 10 years
15. /s/ Anita Gale
16. /s/ Grace Germany – JSC, Program Analyst, 35 years
17. /s/ Ed Gibson – JSC, Astronaut Skylab 4, 14 years
18. /s/ Richard Gordon – JSC, Astronaut, Gemini Xi, Apollo 12, 9 years
19. /s/ Gerald C. Griffin – JSC, Apollo Flight Director, and Director of Johnson Space Center, 22 years
20. /s/ Thomas M. Grubbs – JSC, Chief, Aircraft Maintenance and Engineering Branch, 31 years
21. /s/ Thomas J. Harmon
22. /s/ David W. Heath – JSC, Reentry Specialist, MOD, 30 years
23. /s/ Miguel A. Hernandez, Jr. – JSC, Flight crew training and operations, 3 years
24. /s/ James R. Roundtree – JSC Branch Chief, 26 years
25. /s/ Enoch Jones – JSC, Mgr. SE&I, Shuttle Program Office, 26 years
26. /s/ Dr. Joseph Kerwin – JSC, Astronaut, Skylab 2, Director of Space and Life Sciences, 22 years
27. /s/ Jack Knight – JSC, Chief, Advanced Operations and Development Division, MOD, 40 years
28. /s/ Dr. Christopher C. Kraft – JSC, Apollo Flight Director and Director of Johnson Space Center, 24 years
29. /s/ Paul C. Kramer – JSC, Ass.t for Planning Aeroscience and Flight Mechanics Div., Egr. Dir., 34 years
30. /s/ Alex (Skip) Larsen
31. /s/ Dr. Lubert Leger – JSC, Ass’t. Chief Materials Division, Engr. Directorate, 30 years
32. /s/ Dr. Humbolt C. Mandell – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Program Control and Advance Programs, 40 years
33. /s/ Donald K. McCutchen – JSC, Project Engineer – Space Shuttle and ISS Program Offices, 33 years
34. /s/ Thomas L. (Tom) Moser – Hdq. Dep. Assoc. Admin. & Director, Space Station Program, 28 years
35. /s/ Dr. George Mueller – Hdq., Assoc. Adm., Office of Space Flight, 6 years
36. /s/ Tom Ohesorge
37. /s/ James Peacock – JSC, Apollo and Shuttle Program Office, 21 years
38. /s/ Richard McFarland – JSC, Mgr. Motion Simulators, 28 years
39. /s/ Joseph E. Rogers – JSC, Chief, Structures and Dynamics Branch, Engr. Directorate, 40 years
40. /s/ Bernard J. Rosenbaum – JSC, Chief Engineer, Propulsion and Power Division, Engr. Dir., 48 years
41. /s/ Dr. Harrison (Jack) Schmitt – JSC, Astronaut Apollo 17, 10 years
42. /s/ Gerard C. Shows – JSC, Asst. Manager, Quality Assurance, 30 years
43. /s/ Kenneth Suit – JSC, Ass’t Mgr., Systems Integration, Space Shuttle, 37 years
44. /s/ Robert F. Thompson – JSC, Program Manager, Space Shuttle, 44 years
45. /s/ Frank Van Renesselaer – Hdq., Mgr. Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters, 15 years
46. /s/ Dr. James Visentine – JSC Materials Branch, Engineering Directorate, 30 years
47. /s/ Manfred (Dutch) von Ehrenfried – JSC, Flight Controller; Mercury, Gemini & Apollo, MOD, 10 years
48. /s/ George Weisskopf – JSC, Avionics Systems Division, Engineering Dir., 40 years
49. /s/ Al Worden – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 15, 9 years
50. /s/ Thomas (Tom) Wysmuller – JSC, Meteorologist, 5 years
###
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
A Teachable Moment about Chemophobia
By Alan Caruba
Having written a series, “The BPA File”, in which I detailed the vast efforts made worldwide to ban bisphenol-A, a chemical in use for the last sixty years to protect food containers against spoilage and to strengthen plastic bottles against breakage, I naturally welcomed news that the Food and Drug Administration has recently concluded the claims made against it lacked “scientific information” to justify the claims that have been made against it.
In fact, it was news enough to merit an article in The Wall Street Journal. Ask any physician about the role of chemicals in the lives of humans and you will learn that we are walking chemical machines that not only ingest the chemicals we need to live—food and liquids—but we manufacture them in our bodies to maintain our health and, at the same time, eliminate harmful chemicals on a daily basis. This is necessary because we live in a world composed of chemicals, from ordinary water to the vitamin and nutrient content of what we eat.
Ask any chemophobe—a person subject to fears about any and all chemicals—and they will begin to reel off the names of various compounds they are convinced will kill you. What they never seem to understand is that it is the dose—the amount of the chemical—that can constitute harm. In the case of the foods we eat, their processing and packaging, the dose is so small as to represent no harm whatever. Even ordinary potatoes contain arsenic!
That’s why another story caught my eye. It was from Environment Canada and said, “The government of Canada has decided that Siloxane D5 is not harmful to the environment.” This was a welcomed reversal of a 2009 assessment that questioned D5’s environmental safety. One can only hope that the U.S. government’s massive regulatory machine, in this case the EPA, gets the message that good science is essential to good decisions.
Environment Canada described D5, a material found in many consumer products, saying, “Decamethylcyclopentasiloxane (D5) is an odorless, colorless liquid found in a number of personal care products, including deodorants, antiperspirants, cosmetics, shampoos, and body lotions. It is used in the production of silicone polymers and may also be used as a dry-cleaning solvent and in industrial cleaning.”
One can only imagine how many chemophobes have decided not to wash themselves, use cosmetics or antiperspirants because they are convinced they will die if they do.
I picked up the phone to Karluss Thomas, the Executive Director of the Silicone Environmental health & Safety Council of North America (SEHSC) to inquire whether D5 was on some watch list in the U.S. and he noted it is on a list of some 80 compounds scheduled for review by the EPA.
Mr. Thomas noted that his trade association had filed an objection with Environment Canada regarding earlier concerns about D5 and was pleased that a first-even Board of Review had been convened by the Canadian Environment Minister. The Board, after a rigorous review of the data, completely cleared D5 of any claims regarding its safe use. Three top, independent toxicologists gave it a thorough review. The findings, he said, had “broader implications” for any comparable review here in the U.S.
The Canadian action was a teachable moment for everyone who reads or hears similar claims about any chemical or product. Just as the PR campaign against Alar proved to be false and just as the latest claims against lean meat—labeled pink slime by its opponents—are equally bogus, real science inevitably disproves the claims.
Reliance on sound science leads to sound policy and spares society the harm that junk science causes to the economy, consumers, and to science itself.
© Alan Caruba, 2012
Having written a series, “The BPA File”, in which I detailed the vast efforts made worldwide to ban bisphenol-A, a chemical in use for the last sixty years to protect food containers against spoilage and to strengthen plastic bottles against breakage, I naturally welcomed news that the Food and Drug Administration has recently concluded the claims made against it lacked “scientific information” to justify the claims that have been made against it.
In fact, it was news enough to merit an article in The Wall Street Journal. Ask any physician about the role of chemicals in the lives of humans and you will learn that we are walking chemical machines that not only ingest the chemicals we need to live—food and liquids—but we manufacture them in our bodies to maintain our health and, at the same time, eliminate harmful chemicals on a daily basis. This is necessary because we live in a world composed of chemicals, from ordinary water to the vitamin and nutrient content of what we eat.
Ask any chemophobe—a person subject to fears about any and all chemicals—and they will begin to reel off the names of various compounds they are convinced will kill you. What they never seem to understand is that it is the dose—the amount of the chemical—that can constitute harm. In the case of the foods we eat, their processing and packaging, the dose is so small as to represent no harm whatever. Even ordinary potatoes contain arsenic!
That’s why another story caught my eye. It was from Environment Canada and said, “The government of Canada has decided that Siloxane D5 is not harmful to the environment.” This was a welcomed reversal of a 2009 assessment that questioned D5’s environmental safety. One can only hope that the U.S. government’s massive regulatory machine, in this case the EPA, gets the message that good science is essential to good decisions.
Environment Canada described D5, a material found in many consumer products, saying, “Decamethylcyclopentasiloxane (D5) is an odorless, colorless liquid found in a number of personal care products, including deodorants, antiperspirants, cosmetics, shampoos, and body lotions. It is used in the production of silicone polymers and may also be used as a dry-cleaning solvent and in industrial cleaning.”
One can only imagine how many chemophobes have decided not to wash themselves, use cosmetics or antiperspirants because they are convinced they will die if they do.
I picked up the phone to Karluss Thomas, the Executive Director of the Silicone Environmental health & Safety Council of North America (SEHSC) to inquire whether D5 was on some watch list in the U.S. and he noted it is on a list of some 80 compounds scheduled for review by the EPA.
Mr. Thomas noted that his trade association had filed an objection with Environment Canada regarding earlier concerns about D5 and was pleased that a first-even Board of Review had been convened by the Canadian Environment Minister. The Board, after a rigorous review of the data, completely cleared D5 of any claims regarding its safe use. Three top, independent toxicologists gave it a thorough review. The findings, he said, had “broader implications” for any comparable review here in the U.S.
The Canadian action was a teachable moment for everyone who reads or hears similar claims about any chemical or product. Just as the PR campaign against Alar proved to be false and just as the latest claims against lean meat—labeled pink slime by its opponents—are equally bogus, real science inevitably disproves the claims.
Reliance on sound science leads to sound policy and spares society the harm that junk science causes to the economy, consumers, and to science itself.
© Alan Caruba, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
This Week With Alan Caruba
By Rich Kozlovich
I have had the pleasure of reading Alan's work for years. I don't know how I stumbled on to his original site, but I have followed him ever since, not to mention that Alan has always been a strong advocate of our industry. I also can say that Alan and I are friends, although we have never met in person. Occasionally we disagree, as friends will, but it is rare. We also have mutual friends in the industry, and everyone standing against the green movements insane actions know Alan. Alan publishes daily and Warning Signs should be in everyone's 'favorites' section. It is my pleasure to link this week's articles. RK
The Environmental Terrorizing of Children
By Alan Caruba
In many ways, the worst aspect of environmentalism is why Greens not only feel free to terrorize children with doomsday scenarios, but feel compelled to do so. I have been reviewing books for some fifty years and with the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962 and books such as Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” have been offering scenarios intended to move people and governments to take action that, in retrospect, were based on bad “science” and absurd doomsday predictions. The same week I received “Our House is Round”, I also received “The Big Green Book of the Big Blue Sea” and “Earth-Friendly Buildings, Bridges, and More.” You could stack all the environmentally-themed children’s books I’ve seen and it would reach up several stories.
How (and Why) Obama has Impeded Recovery
By Alan Caruba
During and after his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama was hailed as the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt. History records that Roosevelt presided over the Great Depression, begun in the previous administration of Herbert Hoover who got most of the blame. Roosevelt’s policies extended it well beyond the normal recovery from a recession.
News Note: AmericanThinker.com Article Quotes Caruba
I am accustomed to quoting other people so it is very nice when I find myself quoted today in an AmericanThinker.com article about "Fakegate", the effort to silence The Heartland Institute by trickery. The Institute has been a leader in exposing the lies about global warming. Regular readers of this blog know they read about it here first.
The Utter Desperation of Global Warmists
By Alan Caruba
In the “glory years” of the global warming hoax, you had Al Gore picking up Oscars and Nobel Prizes (shared with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and government employees like James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies were picking up wads of cash as awards, speech fees, and grants.
Passover 2012
By Alan Caruba
If you want to understand what Israelis and most Diaspora Jews think about the threats made against Israel, ask any Holocaust survivor. They will tell you, “When somebody says they want to kill you, you should believe them.” Below are two excerpts from a March 30 Jerusalem Post article by Martin Sherman:
Fakegate: The War on Science
By Alan Caruba
Generations of Americans have been raised to venerate science and those who have enhanced and extended our lives through its application. The rise of environmentalism, however, has generated a war on science, first by distorting it, and then by propagandizing the “findings”, “studies” and resulting claims based on them. Science hoaxes have been around a long time, most famously, the “Piltdown Man”, a paleontological fraud that began in 1912, claiming to be the “missing link” between man and ape when a fake skill was discovered in a gravel pit in England. In 1869, a fake “giant petrified human body” of a ten foot tall man. Carved out of gypsum, it was quickly debunked, but the public loved the story.
In more recent times, in the 1970s, there was the claim of a discovery of a Stone Age tribe in the Philippines. This was followed by “crop circles” and, in 1999, the Archaeorapter, an archaeological fake claimed to be the link between birds and dinosaurs, debunked by 2002.
The Queen and I
By Alan Caruba
I have known Queen Elizabeth my entire life. Not personally, mind you, but she was always in the news via the early newsreels one saw at a Saturday matinee between movies and then on television since the 1950s. Newspapers, magazines, and tabloids have provided ample coverage over the years.
###
I have had the pleasure of reading Alan's work for years. I don't know how I stumbled on to his original site, but I have followed him ever since, not to mention that Alan has always been a strong advocate of our industry. I also can say that Alan and I are friends, although we have never met in person. Occasionally we disagree, as friends will, but it is rare. We also have mutual friends in the industry, and everyone standing against the green movements insane actions know Alan. Alan publishes daily and Warning Signs should be in everyone's 'favorites' section. It is my pleasure to link this week's articles. RK
The Environmental Terrorizing of Children
By Alan Caruba
In many ways, the worst aspect of environmentalism is why Greens not only feel free to terrorize children with doomsday scenarios, but feel compelled to do so. I have been reviewing books for some fifty years and with the publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962 and books such as Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” have been offering scenarios intended to move people and governments to take action that, in retrospect, were based on bad “science” and absurd doomsday predictions. The same week I received “Our House is Round”, I also received “The Big Green Book of the Big Blue Sea” and “Earth-Friendly Buildings, Bridges, and More.” You could stack all the environmentally-themed children’s books I’ve seen and it would reach up several stories.
How (and Why) Obama has Impeded Recovery
By Alan Caruba
During and after his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama was hailed as the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt. History records that Roosevelt presided over the Great Depression, begun in the previous administration of Herbert Hoover who got most of the blame. Roosevelt’s policies extended it well beyond the normal recovery from a recession.
News Note: AmericanThinker.com Article Quotes Caruba
I am accustomed to quoting other people so it is very nice when I find myself quoted today in an AmericanThinker.com article about "Fakegate", the effort to silence The Heartland Institute by trickery. The Institute has been a leader in exposing the lies about global warming. Regular readers of this blog know they read about it here first.
The Utter Desperation of Global Warmists
By Alan Caruba
In the “glory years” of the global warming hoax, you had Al Gore picking up Oscars and Nobel Prizes (shared with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and government employees like James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies were picking up wads of cash as awards, speech fees, and grants.
Passover 2012
By Alan Caruba
If you want to understand what Israelis and most Diaspora Jews think about the threats made against Israel, ask any Holocaust survivor. They will tell you, “When somebody says they want to kill you, you should believe them.” Below are two excerpts from a March 30 Jerusalem Post article by Martin Sherman:
Fakegate: The War on Science
By Alan Caruba
Generations of Americans have been raised to venerate science and those who have enhanced and extended our lives through its application. The rise of environmentalism, however, has generated a war on science, first by distorting it, and then by propagandizing the “findings”, “studies” and resulting claims based on them. Science hoaxes have been around a long time, most famously, the “Piltdown Man”, a paleontological fraud that began in 1912, claiming to be the “missing link” between man and ape when a fake skill was discovered in a gravel pit in England. In 1869, a fake “giant petrified human body” of a ten foot tall man. Carved out of gypsum, it was quickly debunked, but the public loved the story.
In more recent times, in the 1970s, there was the claim of a discovery of a Stone Age tribe in the Philippines. This was followed by “crop circles” and, in 1999, the Archaeorapter, an archaeological fake claimed to be the link between birds and dinosaurs, debunked by 2002.
The Queen and I
By Alan Caruba
I have known Queen Elizabeth my entire life. Not personally, mind you, but she was always in the news via the early newsreels one saw at a Saturday matinee between movies and then on television since the 1950s. Newspapers, magazines, and tabloids have provided ample coverage over the years.
###
Observations From the Back Row
...
Government arrogance and pious hypocrisy reaches a new high when the sinister Environmental Protection Agency strikes out to save the children. The official position on the EPA website has one singing the Amerika version of "Don’t cry for me Argentina". EPA Proposes First Carbon Pollution Standard for Future Power Plants.
"Today we’re taking a common-sense step to reduce pollution in our air, protect the planet for our children, and move us into a new era of American energy," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. "Right now there are no limits to the amount of carbon pollution that future power plants will be able to put into our skies – and the health and economic threats of a changing climate continue to grow. We’re putting in place a standard that relies on the use of clean, American made technology to tackle a challenge that we can’t leave to our kids and grandkids."What is missing from this statement is that regular citizens are under direct assault from their utility companies that force "so called" Green electric generation into the mix. Soon people will be living like beggars in order to pay the overpriced schemes that impoverish the population.
The EPA with Easter Egg on Its Face
Marita Noon
During the three-day Supreme Court review of Obamacare, Justice Anthony Kennedy created news with his statement that the government has a “heavy burden of justification” to prove its case. All of America is watching and waiting for the expected June decision from the Supreme Court. The question remians: Did the Obama administration overstep its authority with its landmark healthcare legislation? But, at least in one case, we do not have to wait for a decision that the Obama administration has “overstepped its authority”—a federal judge has already handed down that decision. In this case, healthcare is not at the center of the debate; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is. The agency have been issuing regulations and finalizing rules with no “burden of justification.”
Big Green Wants a Repeal of Industrial Revolution (Part 1)
Marita Noon
Environmentalists would have everyone believe that oil, gas, and coal—all fossil fuels—are at the base of much of the world’s ills. Nuclear is no better. They even oppose hydropower, wind energy, and commercial solar. Yet, they claim the high ground and position themselves as the moral authority. What would the world look like if they were setting truly setting energy policy rather than merely influencing it? An in-depth study of environmental groups’ energy-related goals as posted on their websites’ shows that there is not an energy project they like. In short, they want to “kill,” “block,” and “deny.” The only thing they want to expand is moratoriums. If environmentalists are in charge, expect these changes to American life:
The Environmental Extremists (Part 2)
Marita Noon
So who are all these evil-appearing “environmentalists?” Should all Birkenstock wearers be suspect? What about the lady at the grocery store with the canvas sack for her purchases? There is a difference between those of us who care for the earth, want to use it wisely, and believe in recycling—and those who are in decision-making positions, setting policy and/or funding the programs. We are talking about something bigger, something organized, and something with plans greater than saving polar bears or spotted owls; something with plans to fundamentally transform the United States. There are hundreds of these groups influencing policy in America….. Columnist George Will states: “Today’s green left is the old red left revised. The left exists to enlarge the state’s supervision of life, narrowing individual choices in the name of collective good. Hence the left’s hostility to markets. And to automobiles—people going wherever they want whenever they want. … The green left understands that the direct route to government control of almost everything is to stigmatize, as a planetary menace, something involved in almost everything—carbon. Environmentalism is, as Lawson (author of An Appeal to Reason: a Cool Look at Global Warming) writes, an unlimited ‘license to intrude.’ ‘Eco-fundamentalism,’ which is ‘the quasi-religion of green alarmism’ promises ‘global salvationism.’”
Green is Taking Us for a Ride (Part 3)
Marita Noon
The environmental movement has used “green schemes”—campaigns that changed an industry or damaged the economy for naught. Three specific schemes, with a long history available, offer a glimpse of the environmentalist’s modus operandi. It is hard to imagine a bigger failure—or a greater success. If you strive for open and honest government policy that is straight forward about its goals, the twenty-year spotted owl experiment failed. If you believe the end justifies the means, regardless of the cost in life or livelihood, then it represents a great success.
The PETA Principle
By Fred Gielow
April 15, 2006
The mainstream media, and the rest of the Left, seem to have a love affair with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), and other animal-rights groups. Whenever there's a PETA campaign, or announcement, or any save-the-animal demonstration, the press covers it with enthusiasm and fawning support. Look closely, however, and very often you'll find that animal-rights advocates are – underneath their disguise – nut cases, loonies, and extremists, wildly out of step with traditional American values. But, don't take my word for it. Listen to what these animal kooks themselves say: "Mankind is the biggest blight on the face of the earth." PETA statement "I don't believe human beings have the "right to life." That's a supremacist perversion. A rat is a pig, is a dog, is a boy." Ingrid Newkirk, PETA co-founder and national director
Environmentalism secrets
By Fred Gielow
April 1, 2006
If you think environmentalism is all about saving the Earth, protecting the whales, stopping pollution, and the like, here's some news. It's not! Listen to what environmental advocates themselves have to say:
• "I think if we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don't think it's possible under capitalism." - Judi Bari, Earth First! member.
• "No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits... [C]limate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world." Christine Stewart, Canadian Environment Minister.
###
Friday, April 6, 2012
The Birth Certificate Saga, Part 6
____
New sheriff calls for roundup of Obama records
Corsi wins over officials in New Jersey on eligibility - A presentation by WND’s Jerome Corsi to a standing-room-only crowd has convinced a New Jersey lawmaker and a local sheriff that the issue of President Obama’s eligibility for office “will have to be addressed.” “The easiest way to put this to rest is to have the records unsealed,” Morris County Sheriff Ed Rochford told the Huffington Post in an email following the April 4 event in Morristown. “Mr. Corsi made a very convincing argument that President Obama may not be a natural born citizen of the United States.”
High court justice: Obama birth certificate fishy
Says evidence raises 'serious questions about authenticity' - An Alabama State Supreme Court justice earlier this week agreed that findings suggesting Barack Obama presented a forged birth certificate to the nation “would raise serious questions about the [document's] authenticity” if presented as evidence in court. Though the Alabama court denied a a petition filed by Hugh McInnish seeking to require an original copy of Obama’s birth certificate before the sitting president would be allowed on the state’s ballot in November, Justice Tom Parker filed a special, unpublished concurrence in the case arguing that McInnish’s charges of “forgery” were legitimate cause for concern. Parker writes, “Mclnnish has attached certain documentation to his mandamus petition, which, if presented to the appropriate forum as part of a proper evidentiary presentation, would raise serious questions about the authenticity of both the ‘short form’ and the ‘long form’ birth certificates of President Barack Hussein Obama that have been made public.”
Feds refuse to release Obama draft docs to Sheriff Joe
Arizona lawman's team believes registration fraudulent -The Selective Service System has declined Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s request to see the original copy of Barack Obama’s Selective Service registration form. Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse investigating Obama’s eligibility announced at a March 1 press conference that it believes there is probable cause that the registration is fraudulent. A three-sentence March 22 letter written on behalf of Selective Service Director Lawrence G. Romo, however, dismissed the request. “This Agency has no evidence that President Obama’s 1980 registration is not authentic,” wrote Richard S. Flahavan, associate director of public & intergovernmental affairs Apparently refusing to take seriously Arpaio’s investigation, Flahavan referred the sheriff to the FBI.
U.S. military purging 'birthers'?
Lakin speaks out after Marines push to discharge man who questioned Obama - Dr. Terry Lakin, an officer who was drummed out of the Army for questioning Obama’s eligibility, says that a veteran Marine facing discharge after he posted a comment on Facebook contending the president’s birth certificate is fake shows the need for the military and Congress to resolve the issue. As WND reported, Marine Sgt. Gary Stein is under investigation and facing possible discharge over a Facebook page he created for military members to speak out called Armed Forces Tea Party, in which he, too, questioned Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president under the U.S. Constitution. Lakin said there are many soldiers in the military like Stein who have questions about Obama, but they are often afraid to speak out. “While I was in the Army there were a lot of people in the Pentagon who were concerned about this issue,” Lakin said, “but they were concerned about their career and paycheck.”
###
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Zone of Reality: Castro Notes
Today I am deviating from my normal posting on this subject by including this article by Mary Grabar entitled:
Rallying Around Che at a 'Literary' Conference
By Mary Grabar
When charges of doctrinaire Marxism are leveled against professors, the standard procedure is to charge the accusers with misinterpretation---they just can't understand the subtleties of the literary and philosophical profundities being dispensed. In English departments these theories have touched deconstruction, new historicism, post-colonialism, gender studies, disability studies, etc. Most in the field--promoters and detractors alike--know that these theories have roots in Marxism. For those of us alarmed by the politicization of literary studies, it's a difficult message to get out to the world because the cloud of academic verbiage obscures the real sources and aims of such theories…..While most of the public might believe that courses in world literature advance the Western Enlightenment ideas of cosmopolitanism and openness to learning about other cultures, they would be shocked at learning how boldly these professors used the pretext of teaching world literature to advance a political agenda explicitly Marxist and aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement.
But could there be a bright note? At one time I despaired about explaining to the average person the cultural rot that passes as scholarship in English departments today. The more they invoke Che Guevaras their hero, the easier it is to show people what's going on.
Rallying Around Che at a 'Literary' Conference
By Mary Grabar
When charges of doctrinaire Marxism are leveled against professors, the standard procedure is to charge the accusers with misinterpretation---they just can't understand the subtleties of the literary and philosophical profundities being dispensed. In English departments these theories have touched deconstruction, new historicism, post-colonialism, gender studies, disability studies, etc. Most in the field--promoters and detractors alike--know that these theories have roots in Marxism. For those of us alarmed by the politicization of literary studies, it's a difficult message to get out to the world because the cloud of academic verbiage obscures the real sources and aims of such theories…..While most of the public might believe that courses in world literature advance the Western Enlightenment ideas of cosmopolitanism and openness to learning about other cultures, they would be shocked at learning how boldly these professors used the pretext of teaching world literature to advance a political agenda explicitly Marxist and aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement.
But could there be a bright note? At one time I despaired about explaining to the average person the cultural rot that passes as scholarship in English departments today. The more they invoke Che Guevaras their hero, the easier it is to show people what's going on.
The Utter Desperation of Global Warmists
By Alan Caruba
I would like to thank Alan for his consideration in permitting me to repubish his works. Alan posts intelligent, insightful thoughts daily at Warning Signs.
In the “glory years” of the global warming hoax, you had Al Gore picking up Oscars and Nobel Prizes (shared with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and government employees like James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies were picking up wads of cash as awards, speech fees, and grants.
The folks who conjured up the computer models featured in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports also did quite well for themselves, along with all the others who climbed on the gravy train of global warming grants.
And then in 1998 a cooling cycle set in. It was hard to hide because the weather satellite data was indisputable, but try to hide it they did. Even then, however, there was a handful of outspoken meteorologists and climatologists who were trying hard to get out the message that the perfectly natural warming cycle was over and had been replaced, thanks to—guess what?—a lower output of solar radiation by the SUN.
Still the warmists persisted, infiltrating school systems to frighten children, brainwashing students in colleges, and coercing the public through apocalyptic books, through magazine and newspaper articles, and on television and the Internet.
In 2009, the release of a huge cache of emails between the IPCC global warming perpetrators instantly became known as “Climategate” as the world learned that it was all a scam, a hoax, a fraud based on deliberately falsified computer models, and force fed to the public.
The desperation of the warmists was palpable.
In 2006, Grist, an eco-magazine, called for Nurenberg-style trials for skeptics. By 2007, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had called any doubts about global warming treason. “This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.” Two years later in 2009, Kennedy called coal companies “criminal enterprises”, declaring that their CEO’s “should be in jail…for all of eternity.” In 2008 NASA’s Hansen was calling for trials of climate skeptics for “high crimes against humanity.”
Didn’t like the warmist’s bogus science? A former member of the Clinton administration, Joe Romm, defended a comment on his Climate Progress website that warned that a generation of brain-washed youth would see to it that skeptics would “be strangled in their beds.”
And in true totalitarian fashion reminiscent of the Stalin era when people simply disappeared from public records and reports, on April 2nd Norgaard’s bio for Whitman College could no longer to be found on the its website. True to the eco-fascist approach, she had become a liability, a non-person for having revealed their plans for humanity.
I would like to thank Alan for his consideration in permitting me to repubish his works. Alan posts intelligent, insightful thoughts daily at Warning Signs.
In the “glory years” of the global warming hoax, you had Al Gore picking up Oscars and Nobel Prizes (shared with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and government employees like James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies were picking up wads of cash as awards, speech fees, and grants. And then in 1998 a cooling cycle set in. It was hard to hide because the weather satellite data was indisputable, but try to hide it they did. Even then, however, there was a handful of outspoken meteorologists and climatologists who were trying hard to get out the message that the perfectly natural warming cycle was over and had been replaced, thanks to—guess what?—a lower output of solar radiation by the SUN.
Still the warmists persisted, infiltrating school systems to frighten children, brainwashing students in colleges, and coercing the public through apocalyptic books, through magazine and newspaper articles, and on television and the Internet.
In 2009, the release of a huge cache of emails between the IPCC global warming perpetrators instantly became known as “Climategate” as the world learned that it was all a scam, a hoax, a fraud based on deliberately falsified computer models, and force fed to the public.
The desperation of the warmists was palpable.
In 2006, Grist, an eco-magazine, called for Nurenberg-style trials for skeptics. By 2007, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had called any doubts about global warming treason. “This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.” Two years later in 2009, Kennedy called coal companies “criminal enterprises”, declaring that their CEO’s “should be in jail…for all of eternity.” In 2008 NASA’s Hansen was calling for trials of climate skeptics for “high crimes against humanity.”
Didn’t like the warmist’s bogus science? A former member of the Clinton administration, Joe Romm, defended a comment on his Climate Progress website that warned that a generation of brain-washed youth would see to it that skeptics would “be strangled in their beds.”
Today, another Clinton appointee, Carol Browner, former Environmental Protection Agency administrator is one of Obama’s “czars” and the unseen specter whispering in the ear of Lisa Jackson, the current EPA administrator. She is joined by John Holden, an Obama science advisor, and Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu.
If threats of jail and murder couldn’t shut up the skeptics, then Professor Kari Marie Norgaard, speaking at a warmist confab, “Planet Under Pressure”, put forth the notion that any science-based skepticism—based on actual, not fictional data—should be “recognized and treated” as some sort of aberrant behavior.
Doubt global warming? Well, you must be nuts!
 |
| Prof. Kari Norgaard |
Norgaard is a professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Oregon. As she put it, “Climate change poses a massive threat to our present social, economic and political order. From a sociological perspective, resistance to change is to be expected. People are individually and collectively habituated to the ways we act and think. That habituation must be recognized and simultaneously addressed at the individual, cultural and societal level—how we think the world works and how we think it should work.”
“Should work”? The Earth—the oceans, the clouds, and its entire eco-system—doesn’t give a rat’s patoot about how warmists and other weather crazies think it “should work.” All that intellectual claptrap adds up to a totalitarian belief that people who disagree with global warming should be jailed or killed.
Regular people who actually do something useful with their lives know that intellectuals like Norgaard hold them in utter contempt, but it is those who profess belief in global warming that should be regarded with grave and serious suspicion.
Those who use global warming, i.e., the assertion that carbon dioxide emissions should be restricted and controlled, are the true enemies of progress, of freedom, and of humanity.
In the twentieth century intellectuals foisted Communism on the world, thus ensuring that millions of Russians, Chinese, Cambodians and others would be killed for their dissent. Intellectuals are always the first to embrace every dictator and to excuse their methods.
The warmists are increasingly desperate as their dreams of global domination are falling apart.
In Europe and here in America all their schemes to replace the real production of electricity with solar panels and wind turbines are being rejected. Their plans for herding populations into cities and onto mass transit meet with resistance. Parents are objecting to their eco-curricula in schools. Al Gore has become a joke.
Consider this, if they were in charge, anyone who voiced dissent from their global warming-climate change lies would be in concentration camps, undergoing “re-education”, being “treated” with mind-altering drugs, or dead.
© Alan Caruba, 2012
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Logical Fallacy of the Week, Week 29: Etymological fallacy
…
Etymological fallacy
The etymological fallacy is a genetic fallacy that holds, erroneously, that the present-day meaning of a word or phrase should necessarily be similar to its historical meaning. This is a linguistic misconception.[1] An argument constitutes an etymological fallacy if it makes a claim about the present meaning of a word based exclusively on its etymology. A variant of the etymological fallacy involves looking for the "true" meaning of words by delving into their etymologies,[3] or claiming that a word should be used in a particular way because it has a particular etymology. A similar concept is that of false friends.
An etymological fallacy becomes possible when a word has changed its meaning over time. Such changes can include a shift in scope (narrowing or widening of meanings) or of connotation (amelioration or pejoration). In some cases, meanings can also shift completely, so that the etymological meaning has no evident connection to the current meaning.
For example:
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Federalist Number 15
...
Federalist Number 15
The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union
Author: Alexander Hamilton
To the People of the State of New York:
IN THE course of the preceding papers, I have endeavored, my fellow-citizens, to place before you, in a clear and convincing light, the importance of Union to your political safety and happiness. I have unfolded to you a complication of dangers to which you would be exposed, should you permit that sacred knot which binds the people of America together be severed or dissolved by ambition or by avarice, by jealousy or by misrepresentation. In the sequel of the inquiry through which I propose to accompany you, the truths intended to be inculcated will receive further confirmation from facts and arguments hitherto unnoticed. If the road over which you will still have to pass should in some places appear to you tedious or irksome, you will recollect that you are in quest of information on a subject the most momentous which can engage the attention of a free people, that the field through which you have to travel is in itself spacious, and that the difficulties of the journey have been unnecessarily increased by the mazes with which sophistry has beset the way. It will be my aim to remove the obstacles from your progress in as compendious a manner as it can be done, without sacrificing utility to despatch.
In pursuance of the plan which I have laid down for the discussion of the subject, the point next in order to be examined is the "insufficiency of the present Confederation to the preservation of the Union." It may perhaps be asked what need there is of reasoning or proof to illustrate a position which is not either controverted or doubted, to which the understandings and feelings of all classes of men assent, and which in substance is admitted by the opponents as well as by the friends of the new Constitution. It must in truth be acknowledged that, however these may differ in other respects, they in general appear to harmonize in this sentiment, at least, that there are material imperfections in our national system, and that something is necessary to be done to rescue us from impending anarchy. The facts that support this opinion are no longer objects of speculation. They have forced themselves upon the sensibility of the people at large, and have at length extorted from those, whose mistaken policy has had the principal share in precipitating the extremity at which we are arrived, a reluctant confession of the reality of those defects in the scheme of our federal government, which have been long pointed out and regretted by the intelligent friends of the Union.
We may indeed with propriety be said to have reached almost the last stage of national humiliation. There is scarcely anything that can wound the pride or degrade the character of an independent nation which we do not experience. Are there engagements to the performance of which we are held by every tie respectable among men? These are the subjects of constant and unblushing violation. Do we owe debts to foreigners and to our own citizens contracted in a time of imminent peril for the preservation of our political existence? These remain without any proper or satisfactory provision for their discharge. Have we valuable territories and important posts in the possession of a foreign power which, by express stipulations, ought long since to have been surrendered? These are still retained, to the prejudice of our interests, not less than of our rights. Are we in a condition to resent or to repel the aggression? We have neither troops, nor treasury, nor government. [1] Are we even in a condition to remonstrate with dignity? The just imputations on our own faith, in respect to the same treaty, ought first to be removed. Are we entitled by nature and compact to a free participation in the navigation of the Mississippi? Spain excludes us from it. Is public credit an indispensable resource in time of public danger? We seem to have abandoned its cause as desperate and irretrievable. Is commerce of importance to national wealth? Ours is at the lowest point of declension. Is respectability in the eyes of foreign powers a safeguard against foreign encroachments? The imbecility of our government even forbids them to treat with us. Our ambassadors abroad are the mere pageants of mimic sovereignty. Is a violent and unnatural decrease in the value of land a symptom of national distress? The price of improved land in most parts of the country is much lower than can be accounted for by the quantity of waste land at market, and can only be fully explained by that want of private and public confidence, which are so alarmingly prevalent among all ranks, and which have a direct tendency to depreciate property of every kind. Is private credit the friend and patron of industry? That most useful kind which relates to borrowing and lending is reduced within the narrowest limits, and this still more from an opinion of insecurity than from the scarcity of money. To shorten an enumeration of particulars which can afford neither pleasure nor instruction, it may in general be demanded, what indication is there of national disorder, poverty, and insignificance that could befall a community so peculiarly blessed with natural advantages as we are, which does not form a part of the dark catalogue of our public misfortunes?
This is the melancholy situation to which we have been brought by those very maxims and councils which would now deter us from adopting the proposed Constitution; and which, not content with having conducted us to the brink of a precipice, seem resolved to plunge us into the abyss that awaits us below. Here, my countrymen, impelled by every motive that ought to influence an enlightened people, let us make a firm stand for our safety, our tranquillity, our dignity, our reputation. Let us at last break the fatal charm which has too long seduced us from the paths of felicity and prosperity.
It is true, as has been before observed that facts, too stubborn to be resisted, have produced a species of general assent to the abstract proposition that there exist material defects in our national system; but the usefulness of the concession, on the part of the old adversaries of federal measures, is destroyed by a strenuous opposition to a remedy, upon the only principles that can give it a chance of success. While they admit that the government of the United States is destitute of energy, they contend against conferring upon it those powers which are requisite to supply that energy. They seem still to aim at things repugnant and irreconcilable; at an augmentation of federal authority, without a diminution of State authority; at sovereignty in the Union, and complete independence in the members. They still, in fine, seem to cherish with blind devotion the political monster of an imperium in imperio. This renders a full display of the principal defects of the Confederation necessary, in order to show that the evils we experience do not proceed from minute or partial imperfections, but from fundamental errors in the structure of the building, which cannot be amended otherwise than by an alteration in the first principles and main pillars of the fabric.
The great and radical vice in the construction of the existing Confederation is in the principle of LEGISLATION for STATES or GOVERNMENTS, in their CORPORATE or COLLECTIVE CAPACITIES, and as contradistinguished from the INDIVIDUALS of which they consist. Though this principle does not run through all the powers delegated to the Union, yet it pervades and governs those on which the efficacy of the rest depends. Except as to the rule of appointment, the United States has an indefinite discretion to make requisitions for men and money; but they have no authority to raise either, by regulations extending to the individual citizens of America. The consequence of this is, that though in theory their resolutions concerning those objects are laws, constitutionally binding on the members of the Union, yet in practice they are mere recommendations which the States observe or disregard at their option.
It is a singular instance of the capriciousness of the human mind, that after all the admonitions we have had from experience on this head, there should still be found men who object to the new Constitution, for deviating from a principle which has been found the bane of the old, and which is in itself evidently incompatible with the idea of GOVERNMENT; a principle, in short, which, if it is to be executed at all, must substitute the violent and sanguinary agency of the sword to the mild influence of the magistracy.
There is nothing absurd or impracticable in the idea of a league or alliance between independent nations for certain defined purposes precisely stated in a treaty regulating all the details of time, place, circumstance, and quantity; leaving nothing to future discretion; and depending for its execution on the good faith of the parties. Compacts of this kind exist among all civilized nations, subject to the usual vicissitudes of peace and war, of observance and non-observance, as the interests or passions of the contracting powers dictate. In the early part of the present century there was an epidemical rage in Europe for this species of compacts, from which the politicians of the times fondly hoped for benefits which were never realized. With a view to establishing the equilibrium of power and the peace of that part of the world, all the resources of negotiation were exhausted, and triple and quadruple alliances were formed; but they were scarcely formed before they were broken, giving an instructive but afflicting lesson to mankind, how little dependence is to be placed on treaties which have no other sanction than the obligations of good faith, and which oppose general considerations of peace and justice to the impulse of any immediate interest or passion.
If the particular States in this country are disposed to stand in a similar relation to each other, and to drop the project of a general DISCRETIONARY SUPERINTENDENCE, the scheme would indeed be pernicious, and would entail upon us all the mischiefs which have been enumerated under the first head; but it would have the merit of being, at least, consistent and practicable Abandoning all views towards a confederate government, this would bring us to a simple alliance offensive and defensive; and would place us in a situation to be alternate friends and enemies of each other, as our mutual jealousies and rivalships, nourished by the intrigues of foreign nations, should prescribe to us.
But if we are unwilling to be placed in this perilous situation; if we still will adhere to the design of a national government, or, which is the same thing, of a superintending power, under the direction of a common council, we must resolve to incorporate into our plan those ingredients which may be considered as forming the characteristic difference between a league and a government; we must extend the authority of the Union to the persons of the citizens, --the only proper objects of government.
Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience. If there be no penalty annexed to disobedience, the resolutions or commands which pretend to be laws will, in fact, amount to nothing more than advice or recommendation. This penalty, whatever it may be, can only be inflicted in two ways: by the agency of the courts and ministers of justice, or by military force; by the COERCION of the magistracy, or by the COERCION of arms. The first kind can evidently apply only to men; the last kind must of necessity, be employed against bodies politic, or communities, or States. It is evident that there is no process of a court by which the observance of the laws can, in the last resort, be enforced. Sentences may be denounced against them for violations of their duty; but these sentences can only be carried into execution by the sword. In an association where the general authority is confined to the collective bodies of the communities, that compose it, every breach of the laws must involve a state of war; and military execution must become the only instrument of civil obedience. Such a state of things can certainly not deserve the name of government, nor would any prudent man choose to commit his happiness to it.
There was a time when we were told that breaches, by the States, of the regulations of the federal authority were not to be expected; that a sense of common interest would preside over the conduct of the respective members, and would beget a full compliance with all the constitutional requisitions of the Union. This language, at the present day, would appear as wild as a great part of what we now hear from the same quarter will be thought, when we shall have received further lessons from that best oracle of wisdom, experience. It at all times betrayed an ignorance of the true springs by which human conduct is actuated, and belied the original inducements to the establishment of civil power. Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit of faction, which is apt to mingle its poison in the deliberations of all bodies of men, will often hurry the persons of whom they are composed into improprieties and excesses, for which they would blush in a private capacity.
In addition to all this, there is, in the nature of sovereign power, an impatience of control, that disposes those who are invested with the exercise of it, to look with an evil eye upon all external attempts to restrain or direct its operations. From this spirit it happens, that in every political association which is formed upon the principle of uniting in a common interest a number of lesser sovereignties, there will be found a kind of eccentric tendency in the subordinate or inferior orbs, by the operation of which there will be a perpetual effort in each to fly off from the common centre. This tendency is not difficult to be accounted for. It has its origin in the love of power. Power controlled or abridged is almost always the rival and enemy of that power by which it is controlled or abridged. This simple proposition will teach us how little reason there is to expect, that the persons intrusted with the administration of the affairs of the particular members of a confederacy will at all times be ready, with perfect good-humor, and an unbiased regard to the public weal, to execute the resolutions or decrees of the general authority. The reverse of this results from the constitution of human nature.
If, therefore, the measures of the Confederacy cannot be executed without the intervention of the particular administrations, there will be little prospect of their being executed at all. The rulers of the respective members, whether they have a constitutional right to do it or not, will undertake to judge of the propriety of the measures themselves. They will consider the conformity of the thing proposed or required to their immediate interests or aims; the momentary conveniences or inconveniences that would attend its adoption. All this will be done; and in a spirit of interested and suspicious scrutiny, without that knowledge of national circumstances and reasons of state, which is essential to a right judgment, and with that strong predilection in favor of local objects, which can hardly fail to mislead the decision. The same process must be repeated in every member of which the body is constituted; and the execution of the plans, framed by the councils of the whole, will always fluctuate on the discretion of the ill-informed and prejudiced opinion of every part. Those who have been conversant in the proceedings of popular assemblies; who have seen how difficult it often is, where there is no exterior pressure of circumstances, to bring them to harmonious resolutions on important points, will readily conceive how impossible it must be to induce a number of such assemblies, deliberating at a distance from each other, at different times, and under different impressions, long to co-operate in the same views and pursuits.
In our case, the concurrence of thirteen distinct sovereign wills is requisite, under the Confederation, to the complete execution of every important measure that proceeds from the Union. It has happened as was to have been foreseen. The measures of the Union have not been executed; the delinquencies of the States have, step by step, matured themselves to an extreme, which has, at length, arrested all the wheels of the national government, and brought them to an awful stand. Congress at this time scarcely possess the means of keeping up the forms of administration, till the States can have time to agree upon a more substantial substitute for the present shadow of a federal government. Things did not come to this desperate extremity at once. The causes which have been specified produced at first only unequal and disproportionate degrees of compliance with the requisitions of the Union. The greater deficiencies of some States furnished the pretext of example and the temptation of interest to the complying, or to the least delinquent States. Why should we do more in proportion than those who are embarked with us in the same political voyage? Why should we consent to bear more than our proper share of the common burden? These were suggestions which human selfishness could not withstand, and which even speculative men, who looked forward to remote consequences, could not, without hesitation, combat. Each State, yielding to the persuasive voice of immediate interest or convenience, has successively withdrawn its support, till the frail and tottering edifice seems ready to fall upon our heads, and to crush us beneath its ruins.
1. "I mean for the Union."
Explanation
Zone of Reality: Castro Notes
By Rich Kozlovich
This next article was in the order in which it appeared and I posted them accordingly. Who would have thought it would have been so poignant. The timing is perfect in light of the reaction to the Trayvon Martin killing. Race baiters are out in force raging against 'the man', demanding that Zimmerman be arrested or else. They could care less whether he is guilty or not. These are the same people who idolize a man whose regime believes that "The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent... We're going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the Cuban revolution. By which I mean: NOTHING!"- (Ernesto "Che" Guevara.) In spite of the horrors black Cubans are suffering and have suffered for over fifty years; they adore him! The real question that must be asked is this; are they sane?
This appeared on April 9, 2009
Congressional Black Caucus Smitten With Castro
By Humberto Fontova
By Humberto Fontova
Cuba's atrocious record on race was somehow overlooked by the Congressional Black Caucus. Last week the Stalinist regime that jailed and tortured the longest suffering black political prisoner in modern history (Eusebio Penalver) rolled out the red carpet for 6 smitten members of the CBC. All of these U.S. legislators met with "President" Raul Castro while a lucky three secured back-stage passes to meet Fidel himself. Not since Ann Margaret's reaction to Conrad Birdie's kiss has anything been recorded to match these U.S. legislators' reaction to these meetings.
"He looked directly into my eyes!" gasped Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Ca.) ...- "It was quite a moment to behold!" hyperventilated Rep. Barbara Lee. (D-CA)... - "He's one of the most amazing human beings I've ever met!" gushed Emanuel Cleaver(D-Mo) ...- "Raul Castro was a very engaging, down-to-earth and kind man," according to Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) "someone who I would favor as a neighbor. It was almost like visiting an old friend," (a Freudian slip, perhaps? Bobby Rush, after all, was a card-carrying Black Panther who did prison time.
Today the prison population in Stalinist/Apartheid Cuba is 90 percent black while only 9 percent of the ruling Stalinist party is black. As these Black legislators cavorted in Cuba, a Black Cuban anti-communist named Antunez, who suffered 17 years in Castro's dungeons (essentially for quoting Martin Luther King and the UN Declaration of Human Rights in a public square), was on a hunger strike against Castroism.:.....
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This next article was in the order in which it appeared and I posted them accordingly. Who would have thought it would have been so poignant. The timing is perfect in light of the reaction to the Trayvon Martin killing. Race baiters are out in force raging against 'the man', demanding that Zimmerman be arrested or else. They could care less whether he is guilty or not. These are the same people who idolize a man whose regime believes that "The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent... We're going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the Cuban revolution. By which I mean: NOTHING!"- (Ernesto "Che" Guevara.) In spite of the horrors black Cubans are suffering and have suffered for over fifty years; they adore him! The real question that must be asked is this; are they sane?
This appeared on April 9, 2009
Congressional Black Caucus Smitten With Castro
By Humberto Fontova
By Humberto Fontova
Cuba's atrocious record on race was somehow overlooked by the Congressional Black Caucus. Last week the Stalinist regime that jailed and tortured the longest suffering black political prisoner in modern history (Eusebio Penalver) rolled out the red carpet for 6 smitten members of the CBC. All of these U.S. legislators met with "President" Raul Castro while a lucky three secured back-stage passes to meet Fidel himself. Not since Ann Margaret's reaction to Conrad Birdie's kiss has anything been recorded to match these U.S. legislators' reaction to these meetings.
"He looked directly into my eyes!" gasped Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Ca.) ...- "It was quite a moment to behold!" hyperventilated Rep. Barbara Lee. (D-CA)... - "He's one of the most amazing human beings I've ever met!" gushed Emanuel Cleaver(D-Mo) ...- "Raul Castro was a very engaging, down-to-earth and kind man," according to Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) "someone who I would favor as a neighbor. It was almost like visiting an old friend," (a Freudian slip, perhaps? Bobby Rush, after all, was a card-carrying Black Panther who did prison time.
Today the prison population in Stalinist/Apartheid Cuba is 90 percent black while only 9 percent of the ruling Stalinist party is black. As these Black legislators cavorted in Cuba, a Black Cuban anti-communist named Antunez, who suffered 17 years in Castro's dungeons (essentially for quoting Martin Luther King and the UN Declaration of Human Rights in a public square), was on a hunger strike against Castroism.:.....
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Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Is the Worm Turning? One Can Only Hope!
By Rich Kozlovich
One of the things that was so attractive about the green movement was their seemingly altruistic motives and goals. Self sacrifice for the common good plays big with Americans. In the beginning I do believe that was largely true for many of the original organizers of organizations such as Greenpeace. However, there was always a small group with different motives and goals. As the years went by they became a larger and larger segment of the green population, which is why Greenpeace member and c0-founder Patrick Moore left around 1985.
Greenpeace even lost it’s tax free status from what was a very green Canadian government in 1999. This is clearly a step that should be taken by everyone against all of the green organizations, which is now big business. This may be changing now, but for years the green movement worldwide took in more money that 60 of the world’s nations, and no trade organization in the world could stand against them financially. That can only continue as long as they can convince everyone that everything mankind is doing is so destructive to the planet that it will become damaged beyond repair.
Now the new conservative government in Canada is insisting that they all obey the rules regarding tax exempt status; and they hate it saying;
One of the things that was so attractive about the green movement was their seemingly altruistic motives and goals. Self sacrifice for the common good plays big with Americans. In the beginning I do believe that was largely true for many of the original organizers of organizations such as Greenpeace. However, there was always a small group with different motives and goals. As the years went by they became a larger and larger segment of the green population, which is why Greenpeace member and c0-founder Patrick Moore left around 1985.
“In 2005, Moore criticized what he saw as scare tactics and disinformation employed by some within the environmental movement, saying that the environmental movement "abandoned science and logic in favor of emotion and sensationalism." Moore contends that for the environmental movement "most of the really serious problems have been dealt with", seeking now to "invent doom and gloom scenarios". He suggests they romanticise peasant life as part of an anti-industrial campaign to prevent development in less-developed countries, which he describes as "anti-human".
Greenpeace even lost it’s tax free status from what was a very green Canadian government in 1999. This is clearly a step that should be taken by everyone against all of the green organizations, which is now big business. This may be changing now, but for years the green movement worldwide took in more money that 60 of the world’s nations, and no trade organization in the world could stand against them financially. That can only continue as long as they can convince everyone that everything mankind is doing is so destructive to the planet that it will become damaged beyond repair.
Now the new conservative government in Canada is insisting that they all obey the rules regarding tax exempt status; and they hate it saying;
“The Conservatives are continuing their dishonourable attack meant to intimidate environmental groups, in a budget item that stands out for adding a needless new cost. Non-profit groups will be required to “provide more information on their political activities, including the extent to which these are funded by foreign sources,” budget documents say. And somehow the government has found $8-million, at a time of restraint, for the Canada Revenue Agency to spend on “education and compliance,” $3-million of which is for extra audits to ensure the existing 10-per-cent rule is maintained (no more than 10 per cent of funds can be spent on advocacy). Witch-hunts don’t come cheap.”As one commenter stated:
“Canada revoked the tax-free status of Greenpeace, the greenies should be glad it didn’t happen to the rest of them. Or maybe it will, if they become as ‘transparent’ as they want everyone else to be.”One can only hope!
Eco-Loons on the March
By James Delingpole
I would like to thank James for allowing me to republish his works. This appeared in The Spectator here. RK
Only this morning I got an email from an evidently very bright 17-year-old at a certain nameless public school. ‘I’m so sick of having to study “environmental ethics” for hours on end, being split into “study groups”, and making lovely colourful mind-maps for presentations; the syllabus is infantile, and I feel increasingly infantilised by my relativist, happy-clappy and downright incompetent teachers,’ he wrote. Amen, brother.
I’m not sure who I feel sorrier for: the poor kids being force-fed this drivel; or the poor parents who probably imagined that for the price of £30,000 a year they’d bought the right not to have their beloved ones indoctrinated with all this specious eco-propaganda. But there’s no escape, unfortunately, from the ‘Clamour of the Times’. More unfortunately still, this clamour is going to have truly dangerous consequences for us all.
One of these consequences — the growth of eco-terrorism — was explored in this week’s Storyville: If a Tree Falls — a Story of the Earth Liberation Front (BBC4, Monday). It concerned the various members of ELF (a bit like ALF, only for tree-huggers rather than animal-rights Nazis) imprisoned for a wave of arson attacks on the logging industry in the Pacific North West.
Despite having burned down dozens of buildings and having caused millions of dollars-worth of damage and disruption, the ELF activists still couldn’t see that they’d done wrong. ‘No one got hurt, no one got injured,’ said one of their ringleaders, Daniel McGowan, piously. As for the suggestion that he was guilty of terrorism, this was clearly beyond absurd. ‘Most people who know me, when they hear I’m being charged for terrorism offences, are like “Whaaat?!”’ said McGowan. Then again, since most of McGowan’s ‘people’ seemed to be fellow eco-terrorists, that’s probably not so much of a surprise as he thinks.
McGowan’s description of the moment he was radicalised sounded awfully similar to the way Islamists are recruited on campus. He went along to a meeting where he was shown movie montage of sundry environmental ‘crimes’ — forests being chopped down; oil wells leaking; whales being harpooned — which made him go, ‘Holy crap! What the hell are we doing?’
Though McGowan was at pains to present himself as just an ordinary, caring, sensitive guy driven to radical action by a sense of burning injustice, one of his comrades rather gave lie to this. ‘We used to call him “the Disgruntled One”,’ remembered the friend. ‘Because he was nasty and bitter.’ McGowan’s long-suffering sister, meanwhile — who had put up his bail money and housed him (and his even more irritating girlfriend) while he was awaiting trial — told the story of his obsessive environmentalism. One day, she came home to find he had removed all the labels from the cans so he could recycle the paper. ‘But now I can’t tell what’s in the cans, whether it’s soup or peas or corn or what,’ she said. ‘I never thought of that,’ said Daniel.
And that, of course, is the problem. Like all zealots, these eco-loons are so persuaded of the unassailable righteousness of their cause that they simply cannot see the bigger picture. For example, though clearly it is not a pretty sight when an entire hillside’s-worth of mighty trees that have been growing for 500 years are brutally felled, it’s not as though a bunch of nasty men are doing it just for fun. It’s because wood is an invaluable (and renewable) resource which, like it or not, our civilisation uses in great quantities.
This is exactly the kind of muddled thinking that drove Greenpeace founder member Patrick Moore (not the astronomer; this one’s Canadian) to quit the organisation in disgust in the 1980s. As he writes in his book Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout, ‘Apparently the people who used the wood to build their homes, print their books and magazines, and wipe their bottoms were not to blame. It was the loggers and most particularly the multinational forest corporations who employed them who were the real evil-doers, according to activist theory.’
It’s one of the reasons I spent a good chunk of the past two years of my life writing Watermelons — not because I’m obsessed with ‘Global Warming’ (God, no! I’m sick to death of it) but because I’m excruciatingly aware just how pervasive a hold the global environmental religion has exerted on the public imagination. I never wanted to be the boy who points out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. But some poor sod’s got to or we’ll be stuck with this lunacy for ever.
That’s a plug for my new book, out this week, by the way. It’s brilliant, it’s funny and you’ll love it. And just in case you failed to get the hint, here it is: Watermelons: How Environmentalists Are Killing The Planet, Destroying The Economy And Stealing Your Children’s Future (Biteback) is out now.
###
I would like to thank James for allowing me to republish his works. This appeared in The Spectator here. RK
Only this morning I got an email from an evidently very bright 17-year-old at a certain nameless public school. ‘I’m so sick of having to study “environmental ethics” for hours on end, being split into “study groups”, and making lovely colourful mind-maps for presentations; the syllabus is infantile, and I feel increasingly infantilised by my relativist, happy-clappy and downright incompetent teachers,’ he wrote. Amen, brother.
I’m not sure who I feel sorrier for: the poor kids being force-fed this drivel; or the poor parents who probably imagined that for the price of £30,000 a year they’d bought the right not to have their beloved ones indoctrinated with all this specious eco-propaganda. But there’s no escape, unfortunately, from the ‘Clamour of the Times’. More unfortunately still, this clamour is going to have truly dangerous consequences for us all.
One of these consequences — the growth of eco-terrorism — was explored in this week’s Storyville: If a Tree Falls — a Story of the Earth Liberation Front (BBC4, Monday). It concerned the various members of ELF (a bit like ALF, only for tree-huggers rather than animal-rights Nazis) imprisoned for a wave of arson attacks on the logging industry in the Pacific North West.
Despite having burned down dozens of buildings and having caused millions of dollars-worth of damage and disruption, the ELF activists still couldn’t see that they’d done wrong. ‘No one got hurt, no one got injured,’ said one of their ringleaders, Daniel McGowan, piously. As for the suggestion that he was guilty of terrorism, this was clearly beyond absurd. ‘Most people who know me, when they hear I’m being charged for terrorism offences, are like “Whaaat?!”’ said McGowan. Then again, since most of McGowan’s ‘people’ seemed to be fellow eco-terrorists, that’s probably not so much of a surprise as he thinks.
McGowan’s description of the moment he was radicalised sounded awfully similar to the way Islamists are recruited on campus. He went along to a meeting where he was shown movie montage of sundry environmental ‘crimes’ — forests being chopped down; oil wells leaking; whales being harpooned — which made him go, ‘Holy crap! What the hell are we doing?’
Though McGowan was at pains to present himself as just an ordinary, caring, sensitive guy driven to radical action by a sense of burning injustice, one of his comrades rather gave lie to this. ‘We used to call him “the Disgruntled One”,’ remembered the friend. ‘Because he was nasty and bitter.’ McGowan’s long-suffering sister, meanwhile — who had put up his bail money and housed him (and his even more irritating girlfriend) while he was awaiting trial — told the story of his obsessive environmentalism. One day, she came home to find he had removed all the labels from the cans so he could recycle the paper. ‘But now I can’t tell what’s in the cans, whether it’s soup or peas or corn or what,’ she said. ‘I never thought of that,’ said Daniel.
And that, of course, is the problem. Like all zealots, these eco-loons are so persuaded of the unassailable righteousness of their cause that they simply cannot see the bigger picture. For example, though clearly it is not a pretty sight when an entire hillside’s-worth of mighty trees that have been growing for 500 years are brutally felled, it’s not as though a bunch of nasty men are doing it just for fun. It’s because wood is an invaluable (and renewable) resource which, like it or not, our civilisation uses in great quantities.
This is exactly the kind of muddled thinking that drove Greenpeace founder member Patrick Moore (not the astronomer; this one’s Canadian) to quit the organisation in disgust in the 1980s. As he writes in his book Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout, ‘Apparently the people who used the wood to build their homes, print their books and magazines, and wipe their bottoms were not to blame. It was the loggers and most particularly the multinational forest corporations who employed them who were the real evil-doers, according to activist theory.’
It’s one of the reasons I spent a good chunk of the past two years of my life writing Watermelons — not because I’m obsessed with ‘Global Warming’ (God, no! I’m sick to death of it) but because I’m excruciatingly aware just how pervasive a hold the global environmental religion has exerted on the public imagination. I never wanted to be the boy who points out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. But some poor sod’s got to or we’ll be stuck with this lunacy for ever.
That’s a plug for my new book, out this week, by the way. It’s brilliant, it’s funny and you’ll love it. And just in case you failed to get the hint, here it is: Watermelons: How Environmentalists Are Killing The Planet, Destroying The Economy And Stealing Your Children’s Future (Biteback) is out now.
###
Greenies Almost Have a Monopoly on Being Wrong
By Rich Kozlovich
As you read this please keep in mind that we hear over educated under smart people telling us that we are at a tipping point and we must ________(fill in the blank) right now or we will destroy all living things on the Earth. What they want us to do would put mankind back into the most primitive conditions imaginable. Here is an example of their insane thinking.
Bonnie Prince Charlie has warned everyone over and over again that we reached a critical tipping point regarding global warming and we must adopt a program that would seriously reduce mankind’s carbon emissions. He then promptly jetted off to spew the same nonsense elsewhere. That time has passed and he keeps flying….and others take up the same cry, and history and reality shows it is all scientific corruption promoting green ideology.
We have now abandoned the Keystone pipeline because of a beetle. Not because we know it will go extinct; it is because we don’t’ know if it will go extinct. Please read my article, More Coprolite Anyone?
It turns out that those on my side of the argument are now, and always have been…..well..…dare I think it....dare I say it? I will say it! They were…..Right! Oops…there it is; reality staring everyone in the face.
This appeared on Junkscience.com today. Shocker: Nature Conservancy chief scientist admits ‘data simply do not support the idea of a fragile nature at risk of collapse’
"The eco-fragility trope of Rachel Carson and Al Gore is wrong, says an unlikely source. … The fragility trope dates back, at least, to Rachel Carson, who wrote plaintively in Silent Spring of the delicate web of life and warned that perturbing the intricate balance of nature could have disastrous consequences. Al Gore made a similar argument in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance. And the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment warned darkly that, while the expansion of agriculture and other forms of development have been overwhelmingly positive for the world’s poor, ecosystem degradation was simultaneously putting systems in jeopardy of collapse.
The trouble for conservation is that the data simply do not support the idea of a fragile nature at risk of collapse. Ecologists now know that the disappearance of one species does not necessarily lead to the extinction of any others, much less all others in the same ecosystem. In many circumstances, the demise of formerly abundant species can be inconsequential to ecosystem function. The American chestnut, once a dominant tree in eastern North America, has been extinguished by a foreign disease, yet the forest ecosystem is surprisingly unaffected. The passenger pigeon, once so abundant that its flocks darkened the sky, went extinct, along with countless other species from the Steller’s sea cow to the dodo, with no catastrophic or even measurable effects."
The fact of the matter is the only people who were sold on this stuff are those who have an agenda and the ignorant. Being ignorant is a legitimate excuse because it means that we simply don't know. We are all ignorant about an unending number of things. Being unwilling to find out is what makes people stupid. As for those with an agenda; they aren't ignorant, they are corrupt! They have screamed in rage about everything that makes living in an advanced society possible. They claim that modern living deprives everyone of utopia, which they can deliver by forcing everyone to ‘go green'. Yet, all they have ever delivered is dystopia.
That'ss their history! So if they keep promoting things that leave disaster in its wake, we must conclude that absolutely is their agenda! The greenies hate humanity...we really do need to get that!
We need to get this! Everything we are told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality; and reality shows that over 95% of all species that has ever lived are extinct. Extinction is the rule, not the exception. When species become biologically incompetent the cease to exist! The rest of the world goes on in spite of that. I have asked repeatedly; what terrible ecological disaster occurred when the dodo bird went extinct? There was none. I understood this and I’m just a bug man; so how did these highly educated super smart people miss it?
There is a side bar to this story that has always fascinated me. The very ones that insist on demanding that we must spend any amount of money and bear any and every sacrifice necessary to save every species or nature will unravel are for the most part neo-Darwinists. Shouldn’t they want incompetent species to go extinct in order for species that are better equipped to survive to take their place? Is this possibly a case of cognitive dissonance?
The reality is that scientific integrity is an oxymoron because ideology really does make smart people dumb!
###
As you read this please keep in mind that we hear over educated under smart people telling us that we are at a tipping point and we must ________(fill in the blank) right now or we will destroy all living things on the Earth. What they want us to do would put mankind back into the most primitive conditions imaginable. Here is an example of their insane thinking.
Bonnie Prince Charlie has warned everyone over and over again that we reached a critical tipping point regarding global warming and we must adopt a program that would seriously reduce mankind’s carbon emissions. He then promptly jetted off to spew the same nonsense elsewhere. That time has passed and he keeps flying….and others take up the same cry, and history and reality shows it is all scientific corruption promoting green ideology.
We have now abandoned the Keystone pipeline because of a beetle. Not because we know it will go extinct; it is because we don’t’ know if it will go extinct. Please read my article, More Coprolite Anyone?
It turns out that those on my side of the argument are now, and always have been…..well..…dare I think it....dare I say it? I will say it! They were…..Right! Oops…there it is; reality staring everyone in the face.
This appeared on Junkscience.com today. Shocker: Nature Conservancy chief scientist admits ‘data simply do not support the idea of a fragile nature at risk of collapse’
"The eco-fragility trope of Rachel Carson and Al Gore is wrong, says an unlikely source. … The fragility trope dates back, at least, to Rachel Carson, who wrote plaintively in Silent Spring of the delicate web of life and warned that perturbing the intricate balance of nature could have disastrous consequences. Al Gore made a similar argument in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance. And the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment warned darkly that, while the expansion of agriculture and other forms of development have been overwhelmingly positive for the world’s poor, ecosystem degradation was simultaneously putting systems in jeopardy of collapse.
The trouble for conservation is that the data simply do not support the idea of a fragile nature at risk of collapse. Ecologists now know that the disappearance of one species does not necessarily lead to the extinction of any others, much less all others in the same ecosystem. In many circumstances, the demise of formerly abundant species can be inconsequential to ecosystem function. The American chestnut, once a dominant tree in eastern North America, has been extinguished by a foreign disease, yet the forest ecosystem is surprisingly unaffected. The passenger pigeon, once so abundant that its flocks darkened the sky, went extinct, along with countless other species from the Steller’s sea cow to the dodo, with no catastrophic or even measurable effects."
The fact of the matter is the only people who were sold on this stuff are those who have an agenda and the ignorant. Being ignorant is a legitimate excuse because it means that we simply don't know. We are all ignorant about an unending number of things. Being unwilling to find out is what makes people stupid. As for those with an agenda; they aren't ignorant, they are corrupt! They have screamed in rage about everything that makes living in an advanced society possible. They claim that modern living deprives everyone of utopia, which they can deliver by forcing everyone to ‘go green'. Yet, all they have ever delivered is dystopia.
That'ss their history! So if they keep promoting things that leave disaster in its wake, we must conclude that absolutely is their agenda! The greenies hate humanity...we really do need to get that!
We need to get this! Everything we are told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality; and reality shows that over 95% of all species that has ever lived are extinct. Extinction is the rule, not the exception. When species become biologically incompetent the cease to exist! The rest of the world goes on in spite of that. I have asked repeatedly; what terrible ecological disaster occurred when the dodo bird went extinct? There was none. I understood this and I’m just a bug man; so how did these highly educated super smart people miss it?
There is a side bar to this story that has always fascinated me. The very ones that insist on demanding that we must spend any amount of money and bear any and every sacrifice necessary to save every species or nature will unravel are for the most part neo-Darwinists. Shouldn’t they want incompetent species to go extinct in order for species that are better equipped to survive to take their place? Is this possibly a case of cognitive dissonance?
The reality is that scientific integrity is an oxymoron because ideology really does make smart people dumb!
###
Media distortion bears fruit as Harvard academic laps it up without checking
By Jon Ray in Dissecting Leftism.
The following paragraph was written by Nancy Gertner, a retired US District Court judge, and a professor at Harvard Law School:
What a clown she is! If that's what passes for proper judicial scrutiny at Harvard, we are all in big trouble. Anybody who appeared before when she was a judge and lost his case should take a screenshot of her original article above and use it to petition for a re-opening of his case.
I've got a question for the learned lady. What would she feel if she found the guy in the photo below looking down on her on a dark night? Because that's a picture of the 17 year old 6'3" Trayvon Martin that Zimmerman encountered. And don't forget that it is she, not I who said that height is important.
The first time I saw the media pictures of Martin and then read his age I smelt a rat. Blind Freddy would know that a normal black male would be at or near full physical maturity at age 17 -- as Martin indeed was -- so why were they showing pictures of what looked like a 12-year-old kid? Easy answer: The whole thing is a media beatup designed to sell newspapers. And people lacking in critical thinking ability -- such as Harvard faculty -- fell for it hook line and sinker.
And if you think it's not a beatup consider the two cases below for contrast:
Shawn Tyson (above) was sentenced this week for murdering two white British tourists in Florida. No rallies against violence and no charges of racism. Tyson even referred to his victims as "crackers" so it was a clear hate crime.
Terry Moore, 32, was beaten this week by a mob of black males. Again, no rallies against racism; no public outpouring of support for the victim. Such black-on-White violence is the norm and only rarely makes it to anything but local headlines.
QED
###
The following paragraph was written by Nancy Gertner, a retired US District Court judge, and a professor at Harvard Law School:
"Nothing prevents the Sanford police from critically evaluating Zimmerman’s account, as police do in so many situations, and concluding that it was contradicted by the girlfriend’s account, by 911 tapes of other bystanders shortly before the killing, that it makes no sense for Martin to start a fight since Zimmerman obviously had a gun in a holster, was substantially larger than Martin, since the encounter took place close to where Martin was staying and he was moments away from safety."She's accepted uncritically the relevance of all those pretty media pictures showing Martin when he was about 12 years old. She really thinks that Zimmerman was the tall one -- when in fact Martin was 6" taller than Zimmerman.
What a clown she is! If that's what passes for proper judicial scrutiny at Harvard, we are all in big trouble. Anybody who appeared before when she was a judge and lost his case should take a screenshot of her original article above and use it to petition for a re-opening of his case.
I've got a question for the learned lady. What would she feel if she found the guy in the photo below looking down on her on a dark night? Because that's a picture of the 17 year old 6'3" Trayvon Martin that Zimmerman encountered. And don't forget that it is she, not I who said that height is important.
The first time I saw the media pictures of Martin and then read his age I smelt a rat. Blind Freddy would know that a normal black male would be at or near full physical maturity at age 17 -- as Martin indeed was -- so why were they showing pictures of what looked like a 12-year-old kid? Easy answer: The whole thing is a media beatup designed to sell newspapers. And people lacking in critical thinking ability -- such as Harvard faculty -- fell for it hook line and sinker.
And if you think it's not a beatup consider the two cases below for contrast:
Shawn Tyson (above) was sentenced this week for murdering two white British tourists in Florida. No rallies against violence and no charges of racism. Tyson even referred to his victims as "crackers" so it was a clear hate crime.
Terry Moore, 32, was beaten this week by a mob of black males. Again, no rallies against racism; no public outpouring of support for the victim. Such black-on-White violence is the norm and only rarely makes it to anything but local headlines.
QED
###
Zone of Reality: Castro Notes
This first appeared on April 14, 2009
Cuba's Bailout
By Humberto Fontova
On April 13th President Obama lifted all restrictions on travel and remittances by family members to their kin in Cuba. Most Cuba-watchers see this as the first step towards a rapid dismantling of what little is left of the so-called "Cuban embargo."
Here's a few things you're not hearing from the MSM regarding travel and remittances to Cuba. Until fairly recently, the Castro regime (classified by the U.S. State Department as a state-sponsor-of terrorism, and classified by the liberal media as a victim of a "cruel U.S. embargo") was in fact enjoying a (conservatively estimated) $1 billion a year lifeline straight from the U.S., which also serves as Cuba's biggest food-supplier and 5th biggest commercial partner. The $1 billion plus bundle came in the form of cash remittances to Cuba from some of Castro's former subjects and from the spending by these former subjects upon their frequent visits to their homeland. This $1 billion in remittances approached China's monetary infusion into Cuba.
###
Cuba's Bailout
By Humberto Fontova
On April 13th President Obama lifted all restrictions on travel and remittances by family members to their kin in Cuba. Most Cuba-watchers see this as the first step towards a rapid dismantling of what little is left of the so-called "Cuban embargo."
Here's a few things you're not hearing from the MSM regarding travel and remittances to Cuba. Until fairly recently, the Castro regime (classified by the U.S. State Department as a state-sponsor-of terrorism, and classified by the liberal media as a victim of a "cruel U.S. embargo") was in fact enjoying a (conservatively estimated) $1 billion a year lifeline straight from the U.S., which also serves as Cuba's biggest food-supplier and 5th biggest commercial partner. The $1 billion plus bundle came in the form of cash remittances to Cuba from some of Castro's former subjects and from the spending by these former subjects upon their frequent visits to their homeland. This $1 billion in remittances approached China's monetary infusion into Cuba.
###
New at Environmentalism is Fascism
___
Dowie's Conservation Refugees
The author of Conservation Refugees, Mark Dowie, is the former publisher and editor of Mother Jones magazine. Six books and 200 articles have won him 18 awards. Researching this peer-reviewed M.I.T. Press-published text involved years of globe-trotting and the interviewing of many conservation and indigenous leaders. Dowie was privy to several leaked documents from major conservation organizations. Unusually, this book has no Acknowledgements section and does not mention Dowie’s patrons.
Highlights:
Between 1900 and 1950 about 600 wilderness parks were created worldwide. 400 were added in the 1950s. Today there are 110,000 such parks. 12% of Earth’s land is now conservationist controlled. This is an area larger than Africa. This is an area equal to half of humanity’s farmland.
There is nothing civil about Third World environmental activism. Truckloads of armed men arrive at frontier villages. They torch shacks, wreck wells, rustle livestock, and confiscate firearms. This has happened thousands of times.
The global tally of conservation refugees is somewhere between 5 and 20 million. Dowie estimates 10 million. One scholar estimates 14 million conservation refugees in Africa alone. The topic of conservation refugees has been assiduously neglected by academia. Conservation refugees are invisible because visibility raises the price of conservation.
After 1970, in a top-down process, elite enviro-organizations recruited and indoctrinated an auxiliary from the world’s most atavistic indigenous peoples. This puppet sub-movement is now fronting much environmentalist obstruction.
Conservationists are divided between those who advocate complete depopulation of hinterlands and those who want indigenous-environmentalist auxiliaries to govern these areas.
###
China: Always Inscrutable!
By Rich Kozlovich
There is an old term, “the inscrutable Oriental”! What does that mean and why? I have my own personal view about this. It's a cultural thing. The Chinese are not direct in coming to the point. They were more concerned with being “more tactful, [their] chief concern being to make the other fellow feel comfortable, to give him “face,” rather than to tell the truth.
This comes from hundreds of years of Confucian thought and the need to get along in often crowded and uncomfortable surroundings.” We have the tendency to “find this tactfulness exaggerated and the emphasis on face irritating and incomprehensible.” Thus we have the tendency to find it means there is something going on in the background. And with the Chinese, there probably is. Much like Don Corleone…”never let anyone outside the family know what you are thinking.
Many years ago I read a book dealing with the old Chinese system of study known as “The Classics”, which was required in order to rise within the ranks of the Mandarin; the bureaucrats that ran the Empire. That created interesting paradigms within the Chinese government. If during some internal power struggle one were to openly attack on adversary it would be looked down upon by the rest of the leadership. But if you could get them downgraded cleverly, or even executed, without anyone being able to trace it to you…while at the same time making sure everyone knew you did it; it was looked on with favor. Although this system changed during the centuries; after all those centuries the training molded the thinking of the entire culture until became a cultural paradigm, no matter who was ruling. That hasn’t changed.
However, when Henry Kissinger (the guy that is supposed to be so smart) went to China he told Mao Tse Tung that the nice thing about this visit was that neither of them wanted anything from the other. Mao looked over at him and said; “If I didn't want something from you I wouldn't have invited you, and if you didn't want something from me you shouldn't have come." The only "face" Mao was concerned about was his own. He wouldn't even let his main henchman in mass murder, Chow En Lai, receive medical treatment to save his life. The thinking is that he didn't want any of his close associates to outlive him and spill the beans about his activities.
Now the Chinese leadership faces the same dilemma the Russians face. In order to maintain their socialist systems they have to keep repainting history in order to justify their existence. Although in Russia it is a bit different, the same party apparatchiks still run everything…even more incompetently than did the Soviets. There are even people in Russia who declare that Stalin really didn't kill all those people. I guess Hitler didn't kill all those Jews either.
In so many socialist tyrannies there seems to be a recurring theme. So many bodies turn up in mass graves that no one killed.
Coup Rumors Spur China to Hem In Social Networking Site
By IAN JOHNSON
China started a sweeping crackdown of its vibrant social networking media over the weekend, detaining six people, closing 16 Web sites and shutting off the comment function for two gigantic micro-blogs. The campaign, which was announced late Friday and put in place in stages through Saturday, was directly linked to the political instability that has gripped China since one of its most charismatic politicians, Bo Xilai, lost his post in mid-March. That spurred rumors of a coup, which the government-run Xinhua news agency cited as the reason for the measures. Xinhua quoted an official with the State Internet Information Office as saying that the sites had spread reports of “military vehicles entering Beijing and something wrong going on in Beijing.”…. In addition to the six detainees — whose names were not released — Xinhua said others were “admonished and educated” and had promised to “repent.”
Insight: China wrestles Mao's ghost after official's divisive fall
By Chris Buckley
Former Red Guard leader Tang Dahua says memories of the fanatical bloodshed that tore apart the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing return to him with startling clarity. Decades after Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution made Chongqing a bloody ideological battleground, the riverside megacity, China's largest, is at the heart of a different political storm - one that has exposed rifts inside the ruling Communist Party after the ouster of the city's charismatic leader, Bo Xilai. Tang was a prominent leader in the late 1960s battles between Red Guard factions in Chongqing that killed many hundreds in ferocious fighting, and he dismissed the idea that the violence that ravaged China then could return. But Bo's downfall has exposed ideological fault lines in the government and the public that could trouble the party months before a delicate reshuffle of top leaders.
China’s Defence Budget 2012: An Analysis
Mandip Singh and Lalit Kumar
China’s Defence Budget for 2012 continues to follow anticipated trend lines in keeping with its plan of carrying out Revolution in Military Affairs in a calibrated, coordinated and comprehensive manner. The actual figures of the Chinese Defence budget continues to be a source of conjecture and no standard factors can assist in accurate prediction of the real expenditure. The allocation for 2012 appears to suggest that ‘it is business as usual’ for the PLA, although there are reports of a substantial rise in salaries and expenditure on improving the living standards even as it finds new ways to woo young men and women to join the PLA. It would be prudent to assume that the bulk of the monies will be directed at ensuring domination of the Asia- Pacific by developing its ‘ Anti-Access Area Denial’ strategies while building on a nascent expeditionary capability for power projection and protection of its interests globally. As far as India is concerned, we will see no let up in the momentum of infrastructure development in the TAR and the possible establishment of the PLA`s first base overseas in the Indian Ocean in the near future.
###
The Trayvon Martin Saga, Part 4
___
Philly Mayor: Bad Spinach Gets More National Attention Than Black-on-Black Violence
By Penny Starr
Black-on-black violence is a “disease” that deserves a “national investigation,” Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter told a Youth Violence Prevention forum in Washington on Monday….. Nutter said tainted food gets more attention than young people killing each other: “If there were five bad bags of spinach on the shelf somewhere, someone would put out a national alert. Every bag would be snatched off the shelves until someone figured out where they came from, what was going on, and there would be a national investigation.”…..Nutter noted that homicide is the leading cause of death for black men between the ages of 16 and 34. In Philadelphia last year, 75 percent of the city’s 316 murder victims were black men and 80 percent of the arrests involved black men, he said. Nutter told CNSNews.com that the Trayvon Martin case has received a great deal of attention, partly because the people involved were of different races. While Martin is black, the neighborhood watch captain suspected of shooting him is half white and half Hispanic.
Castle Doctrine is 'not guilty'
Amid rhetoric about “legalized vigilantism,” national media rush to indict both George Zimmerman and Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” (SYG) law. But even as editorialists call for curtailing such laws, Zimmerman’s own lawyer admits SYG probably doesn’t apply. In 2007, I wrote North Carolina’s first “Castle Doctrine” bill (our version of SYG), shepherding it though countless iterations of eight different bills. Far from “sloppily written,” as one editorial alleged, our law, effective December 1st, was vetted by legislators, legislative counsel and legal experts. Castle Doctrine comprises three parts: The first establishes legal presumption that if somebody “unlawfully and forcefully” enters your home, workplace or vehicle, you have a “reasonable fear of imminent death or serious bodily harm” and may use up to deadly force in self-defense. You may not, as some suggest, shoot door-to-door salesmen; invasive entries must be both unlawful and forceful……As media feed on Zimmerman, consider cases they haven’t mentioned: Just four weeks into our law, two men broke down the door of a Vance County home containing a 14-year-old boy and his 17-year-old sister. As she called 911, he shot an advancing assailant. Should that boy waste precious seconds pondering whether his attacker poses a deadly threat? Far from being “flawed,” as some claim, Castle Doctrine saves lives.
Parents of murdered British students criticise Barack Obama
The parents of two British students murdered in Florida have criticised President Barack Obama for his lack of compassion over their son's deaths. His failure to respond to three letters sent to the White House was because there was no "political value" and not worthy of a few minutes of his time. They spoke out as teenager Shawn Tyson began a life sentence after being found guilty of the murder of James Cooper and James Kouzaris last April. The 17 year old, who shot the men as they begged for their lives, will die in prison.
NAACP Denounces Rev. Al Sharpton’s Battle Cry for Escalation of Civil Disobedience & Economic Sanctions in Trayvon Martin Case
Kudos to the NAACP for doing the right thing (for a change) in stepping back and denouncing the blind hate that has been growing concerning the shooting of suspected drug-dealing gang banger Trayvon Martin, for the ugly lynch-mob mentality of attacks and death threats against neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. At least two witnesses have come forward with information that suggests that Martin was attacking Zimmerman, not the other way around. The NAACP civil rights organization has denounced the latest irresponsible theatrical stunt of Rev. Al “Resist We Much” Sharpton.
My Take - I'm not so sure of this last one since I see far more posts with some NAACP groups declaring solidarity with the race baiters. RK
CNN’s Piers Morgan and MSNBC’s Touré in Volcanic Blow-up over Trayvon Martin’s Death (video)
If you’ve not had your fill of race-baiting trash journalism yet this weekend, look no further than this exchange on Friday between CNN’s Piers Morgan and MSNBC’s Touré about 17-year-old Trayvon Martin who was shot and killed last month in Florida by neighborhood watch member George Zimmerman. During the volatile interview, Touré (he doesn’t use his last name, like Cher and Madonna) attacked the CNN host on his interview with Zimmerman’s brother Robert. He also said that Piers doesn’t have “the depth of the pain in the soul” of Americans because he wasn’t born in America. Touré said that he had already determined that Zimmerman is a racist and has appointed himself judge and jury finding Zimmerman guilty of murder. Morgan responded at one point with, “What a load of fatuous nonsense.”
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Monday, April 2, 2012
Sackett versus the EPA: There is more!
Today the United States Supreme Court issued an opinion in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, a case brought by an Idaho couple represented by our friends at the Pacific Legal Foundation. It is a great victory for landowners facing the wrath of the EPA.
Wyoming Liberty Group's Steve Klein's article was a refreshing change from the dozen or so articles I read or skimmed in the liberty-media and elsewhere in the days after the SCOTUS decision was announced. I even posted a comment – in general praising Steve's work – though it has not (as of Saturday the 24th at 1800 hours MT) been screened and posted. Perhaps they thought that I was being too critical of Steve's article. To read more.....
This ruling handles the surface issue but this goes far deeper than the surface issue. RK
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Wyoming Liberty Group's Steve Klein's article was a refreshing change from the dozen or so articles I read or skimmed in the liberty-media and elsewhere in the days after the SCOTUS decision was announced. I even posted a comment – in general praising Steve's work – though it has not (as of Saturday the 24th at 1800 hours MT) been screened and posted. Perhaps they thought that I was being too critical of Steve's article. To read more.....
This ruling handles the surface issue but this goes far deeper than the surface issue. RK
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Zone of Reality: Castro Notes
This first appeared on April 17, 2009
An Anniversary of Heroism and Shame
By Humberto Fontova
"Freedom is our goal!" roared commander Pepe San Roman to the men assembled before him 48 years ago this week. "Cuba is our cause! God is on our side! On to victory!"
Fifteen hundred men crowded before San Roman at their Guatemalan training camps that day. The next day they'd embark for a port in Nicaragua, the following day for a landing site in Cuba named Bahia De Cochinos (Bay of Pigs).... The hour of liberation was nigh -- and these men (all volunteers) were putting their lives on the line to see their dream fulfilled... a Cuba free from the Soviet barbarism that tortured it, free from firing squads, torture chambers and the teeming Castroite Gulag….. "The liberal cannot strike wholeheartedly against the Communist,".... "for fear of wounding himself in the process." ....JFK was in white tails and a bow tie that evening, having just emerged from an elegant social gathering.... replied. "We can't get involved in this."….
These things went on for three days... spent ammo inevitably forced a retreat. Castro's jets... were roaming overhead at will and tens of thousands of his Soviet-lavished troops were closing in. The... planes now concentrated on strafing the helpless, ammo-less freedom-fighters men.
"Can't continue, " Lynch's radio crackled - it was San Roman again. "Have nothing left to fight with ...out of ammo...Russian tanks in view....destroying my equipment ...How can you people do this to us?" The radio went dead.
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An Anniversary of Heroism and Shame
By Humberto Fontova
"Freedom is our goal!" roared commander Pepe San Roman to the men assembled before him 48 years ago this week. "Cuba is our cause! God is on our side! On to victory!"
Fifteen hundred men crowded before San Roman at their Guatemalan training camps that day. The next day they'd embark for a port in Nicaragua, the following day for a landing site in Cuba named Bahia De Cochinos (Bay of Pigs).... The hour of liberation was nigh -- and these men (all volunteers) were putting their lives on the line to see their dream fulfilled... a Cuba free from the Soviet barbarism that tortured it, free from firing squads, torture chambers and the teeming Castroite Gulag….. "The liberal cannot strike wholeheartedly against the Communist,".... "for fear of wounding himself in the process." ....JFK was in white tails and a bow tie that evening, having just emerged from an elegant social gathering.... replied. "We can't get involved in this."….
These things went on for three days... spent ammo inevitably forced a retreat. Castro's jets... were roaming overhead at will and tens of thousands of his Soviet-lavished troops were closing in. The... planes now concentrated on strafing the helpless, ammo-less freedom-fighters men.
"Can't continue, " Lynch's radio crackled - it was San Roman again. "Have nothing left to fight with ...out of ammo...Russian tanks in view....destroying my equipment ...How can you people do this to us?" The radio went dead.
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