Earth Summit Babble

By Alan Caruba

This first appeared here. Alan blogs daily with profound and insightful commentaries; accurately presented, with no thought of spinning reality to a certain direction. Alan is only interested in the facts and is prepared to follow them wherever they may lead. I recommend making Warning Signs a part of your daily routine. RK



Why anyone still believes anything the UN Environmental Program and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has to say is one of those great imponderable questions. To prepare you for the flood of totally idiotic predictions to which you will be treated during the June 20-21 Earth Summit, here are just a few and I strongly advise you to ignore all of them.

A 550-page preparatory UN report, put together by “600 experts”, the Global Environmental Outlook—intended to soften up global suckers—predicts that Earth’s environmental systems are nearly at “their biophysical limits” thus subjecting the Earth to “irreversible and possibly cataclysmic world changes” and “If humanity does not urgently change its ways” it is doomed.

Notably, the Earth Summit will abandon “global warming” and “climate change” as its main theme and instead focus on “sustainability”, the utterly bogus notion that humans are using up all of the Earth’s resources.

The people most famous for really bad predictions these days are environmentalists. Rachel Carson kicked it off fifty years ago with her book, “Silent Spring”, assuring everyone that all the birds would fall dead out of the sky because of pesticide use. These days they are more likely to be chopped to shreds by wind turbines.

Ever since the early days of environmental hysteria just about every awful scenario cooked up in the fevered brains of the Greens has become front page news. There is method to their madness and it comes down to a simple equation: Scaring People Equals Money and Power.

Environmentalism is all about controlling you while picking your pocket. By any other name it is Socialism or its big brother Communism. It depends on lies backed up by a massive propaganda machine, funded by ultra-wealthy foundations, by governments who support Green programs of all sorts, and by the members of an endless succession of environmental organizations.

For example, you may recall that global warming, a massive heating of the Earth due to carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gas emissions” was predicted to occur twenty, thirty or fifty years hence when the hoax kicked off in the late 1980s. Keep that in mind when the Rio+20 United Nations Earth Summit is held in Rio de Janeiro, the site of the first conference.

Supported by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the so-called “scientists” backed up their claims with all manner of computer models, dubious graphs, and tons of “scientific” papers to convince governments and people that massive changes had to occur—primarily a huge reduction in the use of fossil fuels—or we were all doomed.

Exposed in November 2009 by the “Climategate” release of thousands of emails between the perpetrators, I still find it astonishing that not one single member of this conspiracy has gone to jail. Indeed, in 2007 the IPCC and Al Gore shared a Nobel Peace Prize.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has issued a formal request that all the “researchers” who contributed to the global warming hoax be granted immunity from prosecution. Unbelievable, eh?

Back in 1956, a geologist named M. King Hubbert released the findings of his calculations to let the world know that U.S. oil production would “peak” between 1965 and 1970. It didn’t. What has since slowed oil production in the U.S. has been the refusal of the Obama administration to issue the permits necessary to drill on federal lands and offshore. The world is afloat on an ocean of oil and, in addition, the U.S. is not running out of coal or natural gas.

Similarly, all the population predictions made by Prof. Paul R. Erhlich and his wife in 1968 have proven false as well. A colleague of his, Dr. John Holdren, is the science advisor to the President. One of the central themes of environmentalism is that humanity is to blame for harming the Earth and that there are too many people.

The other theme is that all these people are “consuming” too much of the Earth’s natural resources and should be penned up in cities and kept out of most places on Earth in order to protect its “endangered species”, etc. Meanwhile, as this is being written, huge sections of western states’ forests are going up in flames thanks to Mother Nature setting off fires off with lightning strikes.

Does it surprise anyone that the Earth Summit is calling for a “climate fund” and wants nations to kick in $100 billion? The proposal for the fund called “The Earth We Want” covers an extraordinary range of topics that includes gender equality, woman’s empowerment, and all the usual social justice and environmental clap-trap that is intended to ensnare everyone in a web of laws, regulations, and treaties aimed directly at eliminating the freedoms the West has and that many in other parts of the world want.

There is one good reason to not ignore the Earth Summit. They are telling you just what kind of an Orwellian and totalitarian world they have in mind for you.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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LOST Memories

By Rich Kozlovich

Since I have been following the Law of the Sea Treaty for years, and have been linking articles about it and making comments about it, I have more than the normal amount memories about this treaty. I am fascinated at who is for this thing and how the worm keeps turning. I wonder how these generals got to be generals. I wonder if the only generals and admirals that got promoted to those jobs were "politically correct" and how many colonels who were not remained colonels. Make no mistake about it. In the military it is go along to get along....and promoted. The military and academia have a great deal in common. PhD’s don't become PhD’s if they are rocks in the current....that is why everything that they say must be questioned to the n’th degree.

The next article was the inspiration for what appears here today. I decided that a little history would be helpful. My number one rule for understanding everything is, 'tell me the history and I will give you the answer.' Here is some history.

Battling for the hearts and minds of American generals
When top military officers march out in lockstep to support an administration agenda point, those with an opposing view tend to be suspicious. During 2010 Senate hearings on the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) grilled then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, looking for an honest assessment behind the party line.

No surprise, then, that much of a Thursday hearing on the UN Law of the Sea Convention featuring a row of top military brass centered on whether the general officers who testified really meant what they were saying. Twice, members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations asked the panel of six four-stars from the Navy, Coast Guard, and Army, to say exactly that….

“I’m looking right now at 24 stars, and that’s very impressive,” he said. “But I’m looking at a letter that is signed by 33 stars. And these guys are all retired.”

The letter Inhofe mentioned, signed by nine retired officers including former Marine Corps Commandant Carl Mundy and former Chief of Naval Operations Thomas Hayward, urged the committee to reconsider signing the treaty on the grounds that the U.S. would lose much more in terms of sovereign authority and purview than its stood to gain in navigational provisions......

The U.S.A. Can’t Win with LOST 

by Nathan Tabor Posted by Senior Editor on 2005/5/4 14:06:39

“Well, it’s the Law of the Jungle, or it’s the Law of the Sea . . . .” That’s the stark contrast presented by legendary leftist icon Bob Dylan in a recent song. It is exactly how globalists want to frame the debate on the disastrous Law of the Sea Treaty, now pending in the U.S. Senate for the second year in a row.   Liberals desperately want the dumbed-down denizens of America to see the issue as a clear choice between the primitive violence inspired by national self-interest (“the Law of the Jungle”) and a more civilized cooperation for the common good of all mankind (“the Law of the Sea”).

But the REAL choice confronting those 100 Senators in 2005 is between the survival of the United States as a sovereign nation and the enthronement of the United Nations as a de facto world government.

The Ultimate in Paper Guarantees

By Doug Bandow

The return of piracy to the high seas demonstrates the limits of international law. The "international community" might agree that it is wrong to seize ships for ransom, but a few thugs with guns in Somalia beg to differ. Paper guarantees can do nothing to stop ocean hijackings.

Yet a Democratic administration and Congress are expected to take early action on the Law of the Sea Treaty, the ultimate in paper guarantees. A complex amalgam of ocean-related provisions joined together in one massive agreement, the LOST was first concocted decades ago. Blocked and then renegotiated, the treaty recently won support from a curious coalition ranging from environmental activists to profit-seeking oil companies. …. Environmentalist activists also look forward with anticipation to using LOST Article 207, which directs countries to "adopt laws and regulations to prevent, reduce and control pollution of the marine environment from land-based sources." When questioned, treaty advocates claim the provision is merely hortatory, without effect. Yet it already has occasioned litigation between Ireland and Great Britain….. In fact, in a private email mistakenly sent to me, one LOST lobbyist warned his colleagues that it would be difficult as a result to allay "conservative fears" of the treaty being "some kind of green Trojan Horse."……. Finally, the UN's own Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea proclaims that LOST is not "a static instrument, but rather a dynamic and evolving body of law that must be vigorously safeguarded and its implementation aggressively advanced." If you like activist judges at the national level, imagine what you will get at the international level.

Before the Senate rushes to bind the U.S. through the Law of the Sea Treaty, members should consider the trade-off they are being asked to make. The convention offers paper benefits but imposes real costs. It's a deal only a pirate could love.

White House LOST at Sea - TCS DailyBy Pejman Yousefzadeh

…….As Carrie Donovan points out, the Treaty allows for the regulation of intelligence and submarine activities even when they are conducted in territorial waters. Additionally, the Treaty's mandatory dispute resolution provisions under the auspices of the United Nations naturally raise sovereignty questions and the fact that the United Nations is hardly a model international institution does little to raise one's confidence in placing jurisdiction on maritime issues in the hands of the U.N….. So why is the Bush Administration pushing for passage of this treaty? Deputy Secretaries Negroponte and England list the following as one rationale in their editorial:……

……..The Law of the Sea Treaty remains flawed. It does little to advance American interests when it comes to freedom of navigation, it could prove environmentally harmful, it restricts American military and intelligence naval operations and it calls for technology transfers that could run afoul of intellectual property laws and be dangerous to boot. President Reagan was right to reject calls to sign the Treaty in 1982. The Bush Administration should reverse course and refuse to push for the enactment of the Treaty in the present day. 

Jane Chastain warns Senate about to give U.N. taxing authority

LOST created the International Seabed Authority, which member nations agree will have complete jurisdiction over all the oceans and virtually everything that flows into them, including the power to tax and control everything that sails on them or is conducted in or beneath them. Furthermore, at last week's hearing in the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., proved, by reading from a section entitled "Pollution for Land-Based Sources," that U.N. authority under the LOST will not stop at the water's edge.

(I know some think that I don’t have a life, but I have been following this treaty for years.  This is one of the most profound treaties that the Senate will ever take up.  Yet, when I bring it up to people they look at me as if they are completely lost.  Almost no one knows anything about it!  The potential to the pesticide application industry is frightening!!!!!!!! Although this article is filled with nuances, the issue regarding the pesticide application industries is cited here.  This along with the Montreal Protocol and the Kyoto protocols will give U.N. authority over every chemical used in the world.  If you think that this isn’t the ultimate goal take a look at the Clean Water Act of 2007.  Exclusive: Henry Lamb warns most Americans have caved to government control of our land .  RK)

“In urging ratification, former President Bill Clinton described LOST as “a far reaching environmental accord” that would “harmonize” U.S. laws to “prevent, reduce and control pollution” in the “best practical means.” But Article 213 requires nations to adopt “laws and regulations…to prevent, reduce and control pollution of the marine environment from land-based sources.” Thus, LOST could become a means of enforcing another agreement we never ratified: the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Al Gore – call your office.”

Cliff Kincaid -- Senator Calls Sea Treaty a "Disaster" For America

 The fingerprints of the U.N. are all over this treaty. That is why it’s officially called the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. But because the U.N. has such a bad reputation, supporters of the treaty have been trying to obscure the U.N.’s role.   For example, State Department Legal Adviser John Bellinger III has been claiming that it’s a “myth” to suggest that the treaty sets up any U.N. institutions or is part of the global U.N. bureaucracy. But this is the same John Bellinger who told the Senate Committee on September 27 that the treaty has nothing to do with regulating pollution from land-based sources. Vitter exploded that lie by citing actual provisions from the treaty authorizing regulation of land-based sources of pollution in accordance with international agreements. These give international lawyers an opportunity to sue the U.S. and implement the unratified global warming treaty. 

"LOST: Backdoor Kyoto" -
"There are many serious objections to LOST, but one of the chief is that it provides a backdoor route to implementing UN environmental treaties, including the Kyoto protocol." (Myron Ebell, Cooler Heads Blog)

More Here

Bald-faced lies about the U.N.  

MEESE ON LOST IN The Wall Street Journal this past Monday,

Why America Doesn't Ratify Treaties

One of the leading sources of anti-Americanism relates to America's supposed arrogance in failing to sign or ratify international treaties that the rest of the world endorses. This particular complaint arises from a failure to understand the role of treaties in the US Constitution and is not confined to the left.  In most countries, treaties are ratified by a vote of Parliament or by an executive decision.  They then supposedly have the force of law, but few countries have means of citizen enforcement of such law, which is why they can be safely ignored when convenient.  Thus, the western European nations are mostly quite happily failing to get anywhere near on target for their Kyoto Protocol commitments, with a couple of nations resting on the laurels of structural changes made before Kyoto was signed. …………….. The US Constitution, say(s) ……….treaties trump national law, having the same status as the Constitution.  This means that activists can take the US Government to court and have national law quashed on the basis of a treaty commitment.  Judges can also instruct the Federal Government to take steps to meet treaty commitments ………………….The current treaty up for debate is the Law of the Sea Treaty, or LOST.  Most of the rest of the world has ratified the treaty, but the US stood fast against it during Ronald Reagan's presidency.  Owing to claims that the treaty has now been "fixed," it is up for debate again.  …………In particular, provisions relating to environmental impacts on the oceans are an open invitation for environmental groups to sue to the detriment of the United States as a whole. It is sad that the United States gets blamed for failing to play along with the rest of the world on such treaties.  The main reason why it does not is because, as in Kyoto's case, other nations don't play by the rules of the game, whereas the US is forced to.  If we are to free the world from the curse of meaningless platitudes masquerading as international agreements, the US model for dealing with treaties should be held up as the example, to follow, not a reason for criticism.

Law of the Sea Meets 'Legacy Time'

Both Kyoto and LOST purport to regulate Parties’ land-based pollution, and as such also provides a vehicle for far-reaching unconstitutional regulatory regimes.  Unlike Kyoto, however, LOST has a Tribunal, one which made clear in an early ruling that it will decide its own scope and jurisdiction for Parties subject to its authority, ad hoc.  This Tribunal would have authority over Americans and their economy, and would be unaccountable under our laws or limited by our Constitution………As such it represents attainment of the environmentalists’ long-sought goal of inserting the global judiciary into our energy supply mix (The underlying goal of LOST?) LOST’s Preamble asserts that we aspire to “realization of a just and equitable international economic order which takes into account the interests and needs of mankind as a whole and, in particular, the special interests and needs of developing countries, whether coastal or land-locked.” 

(At this point I would like to restate the obvious.  The combination of the Montreal Protocol, the Kyoto Accords and LOST will turn absolute control of all the chemicals in the world to the United Nations.  Furthermore, LOST will give the U.N. the authority to impose Montreal and Kyoto whether ratified or not. RK ) 

“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them: One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” 

Senate Republicans may sink Bush's U.N. Treaty
By Cliff Kincaid Can the U.N.'s Law of the Sea Treaty not only be delayed but defeated outright in the Senate? That's the question that conservatives are delightfully pondering as a remarkable series of events has put the pact, supported by the Bush Administration and the liberal leadership in the Senate, in serious jeopardy...

Law of the Sea Treaty sails ahead  
Senate panel overwhelmingly passes measure empowering U.N. The United Nations' Law of the Sea Treaty, a wide-ranging measure critics say will grant the U.N. control of the 70 percent of the planet under its oceans, is now headed to the full Senate for ratification……..Other critics fear the treaty will be used as a back-door to implement policies against global warming without any accountability to the American people. Parts of the treaty, they say, mandate international regulation of U.S. economic and industrial activities on land. With that in mind, critics of the treaty believe so-called greenhouse gases could be viewed as ocean pollutants………For instance,

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte testified the U.N. body established by the treaty has "no jurisdiction over marine pollution disputes involving land-based sources." 

         

 "Why is there a section entitled pollution from land-based sources?" questioned Vitter.

    

 "We will decide that. We consider that within our sovereign prerogative," said Negroponte.

"Where does the treaty say that we decide that and an arbitral body does not decide that?" questioned Vitter.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England answered: "My understanding – and I'll ask my lawyer behind me – that that's in the treaty that we make that determination and that's not subject to review by anyone else." 

    

"It's not in the treaty because I point to Article 298 1b where it simply says disputes concerning military activities are not subject to dispute resolution," explained Vitter. "But it doesn't say who decides what is and what is not a military activity." England conceded the point.  "We say it is up to us, but nobody else in the world says it is up to us," Vitter said.

“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them: One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”

LOST Directed to Full Senate Vote!
Tom DeWeese

Last Friday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 17-4 to surrender U.S. sovereignty to Third World countries and the corrupt United Nations! …….The Law of the Sea Treaty was largely written by World Federalists devoted to world government, under the auspices of peace advocacy. They were moved by the horrors of World War II to embrace world government; but some of the world federalist groups were infiltrated or manipulated by communists sympathetic to the Soviet Union…….The ISA maintains the right to adopt "appropriate rules, regulations, and procedures for ... the prevention, reduction and control of pollution and other hazards to the marine environment," which would undoubtedly mean imposing the Kyoto Protocol on the American economy at the earliest opportunity.

Here is a web site of archived articles dedicated to outlining the truth about LOST.  

Final Thoughts - Convention on the Law of the Seas means that the Montreal Protocol,  Kyoto Accords,  International Criminal Court, Convention on Biological Diversity will be imposed whether they have been agreed to or not and will use the “President's Council on Sustainable Development to consolidate the administrative power of federal agencies in the implementation of the U.N.'s LOST Agenda.”  It is interesting to note that the agency with oversight, The International Seabed Authority, is permitted to amend LOST without anyone’s consent.  In short they can determine their own jurisdiction.  What pesticides will be left after that?  For that matter….what will be left?  As one prominent socialist once said…”if we control the seas we will control the land”.

 “Doubtless, many of you are saying, it could never happen here, our constitution protects us.  Don't be so sure.  Let me read a brief section from the US Constitution itself, Article VI: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

XXX

Scientific Intergrity is an Oxymoron: The UCLA Saga

By Rich Kozlovich

Normally I get my daily update from the American Council on Science and Health containing a number of links to articles dealing with every conceivable health issue, and every scare monger public release from activists of every kind. Today was different. There was only one issue discussed. One that bears repeating over and over again! Is there a massive level of corruption in the universities? I believe the facts about Anthropogenic Climate Change has exposed the lies and hypocrisy of the scientific community, which has been a pattern repeated for decades. Was it there before? I believe this has been a problem for over fifty years...ever since the release of Silent Spring. That was the spear point for the corruption as it was the driving impetus for the creation of the EPA and eventually a host of unscientifically indefensible laws and regulations. It didn't happen overnight, but government grant money has made science rich. That made it politics. There can only be one answer. Universities must no longer be treated as sacred cows. The total elimination of government grant money to the universities will have a massive cleansing effect on all of them. Kind of like flushing the toilet!

In Academia: “Our Way or the Highway”  
EDITOR'S NOTE: We often address light-hearted themes in Friday Dispatch. Today, however, we have the unpleasant task and mission of exposing a very serious issue. In fact, we’ve decided to devote today’s Dispatch to a single story, that of the unjust termination of Dr. James Enstrom from his research position of 34 years at UCLA, based on independent research that didn’t accord with the University’s ideological agenda. We think the story’s that important. Last August, we at ACSH were troubled to learn that esteemed scientist and ACSH trustee Dr. James Enstrom had been terminated from his research position in UCLA’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences following a secret faculty vote. After Enstrom’s 34 years of service to the university, what could have led the faculty to such a radical decision? …….ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross finds UCLA’s decision to fire Dr. Enstrom reprehensible. “This is nothing more than vengeance against an iconoclastic thinker, based purely on a political agenda in the guise of scientific purity, waged against someone who has dared to step outside the party line,” he says. “And sadly, the damage to his stellar reputation is, at this point, substantial, and perhaps irreversible.”…..“Dr. Enstrom’s case is about more than a single individual; it’s about academic freedom, and how it has been imperilled.” …..Dr. Enstrom concludes, "I plan to overturn my wrongful termination from UCLA by continuing to educate Californians about the devastating consequences of politically corrupt science."

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The 50th Anniversary of "Silent Spring": A Lethal Legacy

By Alan Caruba

This first appeared here. I wish to thank Alan for allowing me to reprint his works. I would also like to encourage everyone who hasn't read Silent Spring to check it out of the library (Don't buy it. I hate to see money go to whomever is the beneficiary of this work) and read it with an eye to accurate and validly presented science. I am working on an article now dealing with this and hope to have it completed over the weekend. I read Silent Spring many years ago and was impressed. I re-read it two years ago and wondered what was wrong with my mind back then.   The EPA calls her a great scientist who won through against her detractors with her great writing ability. In that they were right....she was a magnificent writer.....but she can only be described by non-ideologues as a poor scientist.

Real scientists, such as Norman Borlaug are hardly known to the general public and he saved untold millions of lives with his work on the Green Revolution. Rachel Carson is the mother of junk science and it can be reasonably claimed that she must bear a large share of the responsibility for the unnecessary deaths of tens of millions and the hundreds of millions who have been sickened with insect borne diseases as a result of the ban on DDT.   Yet she is known and lauded far and wide. As Viv Forbes says about Global Warming; "The public has been misled by an unholy alliance of environmental scaremongers, funds-seeking academics, sensation-seeking media, vote-seeking politicians and profit-seeking vested interests." The same is true about Silent Spring and the corresponding ban on DDT. RK

There are books that have doomed millions to death. “Das Capital” by Karl Marx kicked off the worst economic system of the modern era, claiming the lives of millions of Russians and Chinese, along with others in the process.

Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” mobilized Nazi Germany, led to World War Two in Europe, and was responsible for the deliberate killing of six million Jews and another five million Christians in its concentration camps, not counting the millions more in war dead. The Nazi leaders were ardent environmentalists.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson; a book that is credited with giving rise to the environmental movement in general and, in particular, America’s unfounded fears of pesticides, especially DDT.

Eight years would pass between its publication and the first Earth Day in 1970 that mobilized the beginning of the environmental movement by putting government muscle behind it with the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“Silent Spring at 50: The False Crises of Rachel Carson” ($25.95, Cato Institute) has a publication date in September, but given the June 20-12 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, it is particularly timely. Its chapters had titles like “Elixirs of Death”, “Needless Havoc”, and “Rivers of Death.” What their content lacked was real science and real facts.

DDT was already famous for protecting human health along with a whole range of agricultural chemicals that protected crops against the depredation of insects, rodents and weeds. The book has rightly been condemned for the deaths—literally millions—that have resulted since the 1972 U.S. ban of DDT by the Environmental Protection Agency. It “was firmly and repeatedly warned by public health officials of the United States, the World Health Organization, and the Pan American Health Organization of disastrous consequences of a DDT ban.”

Even today, the EPA either manufactures or ignores evidence to justify its regulations.

Its inventor, Dr. Paul Muller, received a Nobel Prize in 1948 in recognition of the role DDT played in saving hundreds of thousands of lives of troops fighting the Axis in World War Two and the survivors of the Nazi death camps. It killed the insects that spread Typhus and other diseases. It did so without any evidence of the bogus threat of cancer that Carson advanced.

Nine contributors to “Silent Spring at 50” make a powerful case for the harm Carson’s obsessive fear of what were widely known to be beneficial chemicals. The book is a classic example of bogus science combined with deliberate lies to frighten people. That has always been the modus operendi of the environmental movement.

“Carson would have known of the great public health achievements of DDT and that it was saving lives,” writes Donald R. Roberts and Richard Tren, the authors of one chapter. “Indeed she describes some of the programs in “Silent Spring.” But the bulk of the book is a singular attack on DDT and other insecticides with scarcely any recognition of their actual and potential benefits.”

In the first chapter of “Silent Spring”, titled “A Fable for Tomorrow”, Carson invents a town so poisoned by insecticides that no birds sing there, having all been wiped out. It is pure fiction. Subsequent studies have demonstrated that the die-off she described has never happened. Years of bird counts refute that charge. Indeed, agricultural pesticides had initially been regulated by Congress in 1910 and generations of farmers took care to avoid contaminating their crops for obvious reasons.

The anniversary of the book’s publication is relevant to everyone today, even those born since the DDT ban. The coast-to-coast plague of bedbugs that has occurred in the past decade and continues today could have been eliminated if DDT was still in use. The mainstream media reported the plague, but never mentioned this salient fact, nor the fact that the EPA has just one pesticide registered for use against bedbugs and routinely refused to allow licensed pest control professionals to use it.

Carson kicked off “the precautionary principle” cited by environmental groups and government agencies that, in effect, leaves the public defenseless against the health threats that Mother Nature provides in the form of insects and rodents known to spread disease, or mold-contaminants such as aflatoxin, many times more toxic than the fumigant that was banned to control it.

Malaria, once on the brink of being eliminated, has long since made resurgence since the ban of DDT, although some nations most affected by the disease have received permission to use it.

That is Rachel Carson’s true and lethal legacy.

It is why so much of what the environmental movement advocates, from the United Nations to non-governmental-organizations like Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, the World Wildlife Fund, and dozens of others always seems to end up killing people in the name of saving the Earth.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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Scientific Integrity is an Oxymoron: The Oregon State University Saga Continues

By Rich Kozlovich

Joanne Nova's blog is a must read every week. Today (since she is in Australia today is tomorrow) she published an e-mail that is an important part of a long saga involving Dr. Art Robinson, who is running for Congress, his children, his friends and others, and in this case another scientist who has fallen under the steamroller of the psuedo-pagan religious movement known as Global Warming. 

I published some links about what has occurred to Robinsons children as a result of his run against Rep. DeFazio. I also published an article by my friend Paul Driessen entitled Political Payback - Oregon Style. This isn't isolated.  Scientists have been booted out of their jobs .....or lost their grants....and then were booted out of their jobs for years in many areas over this issue...and it only goes one way.  Religiously support Global Warming or suffer.  Jo makes an important point here. 

"Just post 3 examples of where upstanding scientists believing in man-made global warming were targeted and sacked because they spoke out at a university full of skeptics?"

Please make sure to follow the links listed above in order to establish what clearly appears to be a pattern of behavior by Oregon State University as your read on. I also recommend reading the comments from Jo’s readers in her article. Her readers are debaters of a higher caliber than is usually seen. RK

Gone Feudal: Oregon State Uni (OSU) sack and target skeptics (and their children)

In an extremely worrying development, we can add Nick Drapela’s name to the list of skeptics fired for the heresy of speaking out. This email from Gordon Fulks came around today, and I want to spread the message. I have written before about the scientist of upstanding integrity and action that is Art Robinson – When he ran for Congress, three of his children doing PhD’s were targeted at OSU. The details of Joshua, Bethany and Matthews work are described on the Oregon State Outrage blog. These exemplary students were close to finishing their work towards PhD degrees in nuclear engineering when all three suddenly faced major obstacles and the likelihood of losing all their work to date. (See the Outrage blog for updates).

But the outrageous behaviour continues. Legal action may not be the answer (In Robinson’s case the Uni apparently wants them to sue, so it will be obliged to have “no comment” while OSU would get taxpayer funds to extend the case at length.) What we need is facebook, twitter, letters and emails – a campaign to let the State of Oregon (and especially university donors) know their university has regressed to a feudal religious institute — Jo

Gordon Fulks writes:

Hello Everyone,

In theory at least Oregon State University (OSU) seems to be a bastion of academic freedom, diversity, and tolerance. A wide range of ideas are openly discussed. The most viable rise to the top and the least viable fade away. But it is all a fairy tale, because OSU operates under a politically correct regimen that dictates what is acceptable to say and what is not. Transgressors who dare to be different are eventually weeded out so that the campus maintains its ideological purity.

OSU is not yet as swift or efficient as the Soviet system when Joseph Stalin was trying to quash dissent among biologists who refused to go along with Trofim Lysenko. If warnings to compromise their integrity were not followed, Stalin simply had biologists shot. That quickly thinned the ranks of all biologists and persuaded the remaining ones to comply with Stalin’s wishes. Of course, it also destroyed Soviet biology, because Lysenko was pedaling nonsense. And Russian biology has never recovered.

We learned over the weekend that chemist Nickolas Drapela, PhD has been summarily fired from his position as a “Senior Instructor” in the Department of Chemistry. The department chairman Richard Carter told him that he was fired but would not provide any reason. Subsequent attempts to extract a reason from the OSU administration have been stonewalled. Drapela appears to have been highly competent and well-liked by his students. Some have even taken up the fight to have him reinstated.

What could possibly have provoked the OSU administration to take precipitous action against one of their academics who has been on their staff for ten years, just bought a house in Corvallis, and has four young children (one with severe medical problems)? Dr. Drapela is an outspoken critic of the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, the official religion of the State of Oregon, the Oregon Democratic Party, and Governor John Kitzhaber.

Five years ago, Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor went around quietly saying that he was not a believer. Then Governor Ted Kulongoski and many faculty at OSU including Dr. Jane Lubchenco made life impossible for Taylor, and he retired. (Lubchenco is now head of NOAA in the Obama administration.) Under those currently in charge, OSU climate research has grown to be a huge business, reportedly $90 million per year with no real deliverables beyond solid academic support for climate hysteria. A small army of researchers ponder the effects of Global Warming on all sorts of things from tube worms living along the Oregon Coast to butterflies inland. When the climate refuses to warm (as it has for the last twenty years), they just study ‘warming in reverse!’ Most of us call that “cooling,” but they are very careful not to upset their Obama administration contract monitors with politically incorrect terminology.

Skeptics of Global Warming who oppose the OSU approach and oppose the politicians who make it all possible but do not work for OSU also find themselves attacked. Dr. Art Robinson who is running against Peter DeFazio for an Oregon Congressional seat found three of his children under attack at OSU. All were attempting to obtain advanced degrees in the Nuclear Engineering Department and were threatened with dismissal. Because Robinson fought back, we understand that the OSU administration backed down.

As to the latest victim of political correctness at OSU, Dr. Nickolas Drapela gives us an excellent synopsis of what is going on:

“The fact of the matter is that it is now two weeks since I was fired and no one has had the cajones or the common courtesy to even tell me why. I have spoken with the Dept. Chair (Rich Carter) who fired me, and he refused to tell me why. I spoke to the Dean of Science (Vince Remcho) and he couldn’t tell me why. I spoke to HR who set up a meeting with me, then cancelled it an hour before. Then I went to the Vice President of Academic Affairs (Becky Warner) and she sent me back to Rich Carter, the chemistry chair.

It’s just a sad, sad state of affairs that an institution like OSU would fire a good employee for (ostensibly) no reason and then run around and hide from the person they fired. I had stellar teaching evaluations, I won College of Science awards for teaching, and published textbooks. My class sections were always full and I was well-liked by students (see ratemyprofessors.com). I was doing my job very well. But I guess I didn’t march in step with their philosophies.

There were quite a few student protests over this at OSU (Barometer, Facebook, etc.) but to no avail.

I was given no severance and had no warning this was about to happen. In fact, I was lured into the chair’s office under the guise of a fallacious story before being fired.

As you know, I was probably the most visibly-outspoken critic of the Global Warming doctrine at OSU. I gave several public talks on the topic and did research in the area which I regularly posted on the web. I was also on a few talk radio shows in the area. I think they finally just said, we can’t have this.

Can it be that a university whose motto is “Open minds. Open doors” cannot abide even one faculty member who disagrees with their dogma? I suppose I am too naive, but I’m still reeling from it. Unbelievable.

I should say that they regularly read all my email communications, which is why I am writing from this private email address. That has been going on for quite some time now.

As far as my options at this point, like I said I haven’t even really grasped what has just happened. I don’t know what I’m going to do, or what options I have yet. I’m sure OSU wants their story to be tight and perfectly identical among all administration before coming out with an official reason why I was fired, hence the long wait and refusal to speak to me.

I truly thank you for your concern, and I hope there is some recourse, even just for the sake of exposing what is happening at OSU."

In a separate e-mail Drapela went on to say:

“Thanks so much for your support and your concern. That’s really nice. My students were all really upset about it. They started an email writing campaign to have me re-hired but I guess no one cares what they think.

I find that the people who want to keep things secret all the time are usually the people that have something to hide. It is certainly ok by me for you to disseminate this story. But I’m sure OSU would be horrified.

I’m not sure how I will support my family at this point. We just bought a house in Corvallis. I have four kids, one of whom has a rare, blood disorder and requires regular trips to Doernbecher’s Children’s Hospital for treatment. Now we will be without health insurance.”

We can only speculate as to how the decision to fire Drapela was made. Unlike the decision to force Taylor out (which came from the governor’s office), this decision was likely internal to OSU with the implicit backing of Governor Kitzhaber and NOAA administrator Lubchenco. I would suspect that Dr. Phil Mote (Director of their Climate Change Research Institute) had a hand in the decision, because he has previously been highly intolerant of those who oppose his ideas and could potentially threaten his business empire.

Please join with me in supporting Nick Drapela. Please join with me in supporting objective science, as well as academic freedom, diversity, and tolerance. The issues here go far beyond just Global Warming and strike at the very heart of who we are as scientists and Americans.

Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA

P.S. Please circulate this e-mail far and wide. The world needs to know what is going on here.

“Organic” Food – Are You “Myth-taken?”

For those who have been reading Paradigms and Demographics for some time you know that I will republish articles from the past that are being hit now. This originally appeared on Tuesday, September 15, 2009. Since it has been hit lately I went back and read David’s article. I forgot how good his article really was. I need to go back more often and republish some of the articles that have appeared on this blog. Please enjoy. Rich K.

by David Roll

David received a Ph.D. from the University of Washington in Medicinal Chemistry. He was on the faculty of the University of Utah College of Pharmacy for over 30 years, retired, completed a one year fellowship in the U.S. Senate (2001, yes 9/11 and the anthrax scare) and finally three years as director of dietary supplements at the United States Pharmacopeia.

David says that, "I was fortunate to meet Dr. Borlaug once. At the time I had taken a one-year sabbatical from my academic position (1981-82) and was the Associate Director of ACSH and he came by the offices. He was one of the most unassuming people I have ever met."

He is also the publisher of the blog Droll Bits .

Being trained as an organic chemist I suppose is the reason that I am offended by the term "organic" food because, of course, all food is organic. Nonetheless, over the years the term in the dictionary has come to mean, in addition to its original meaning, "of, relating to, yielding, or involving the use of food produced with the use of feed or fertilizer of plant or animal origin without employment of chemically formulated fertilizers, growth stimulants, antibiotics, or pesticides."

Purportedly, the individual responsible for the term "organic food" was Jerome Rodale who started the myth that "organically" raised food was the key to health rather than that raised using other chemicals. Even though Rodale had no scientific training (originally he was a federal tax auditor and then co-owner of an electrical equipment business), he was very successful in perpetuating his ideas and was the founder of Rodale Press and Prevention magazine. Consider some of the other beliefs of Rodale as documented by Dr. Edward H. Rynearson's article in the July 1974 edition of Nutrition Reviews in an article entitled, "Americans Love Hogwash":

"Borlaug scoffs at the mania for organic food, which he proves with calm logic is unsuited to fight global hunger. (Dung, for instance, is an inefficient source of nitrogen.) And while he encourages energy-conscious people to 'use all the organic you can, especially on high-end crops like vegetables,' he's convinced that paying more for organic is 'a lot of nonsense.' There's 'no evidence the food is any different than that produced by chemical fertilizer.'"

When it comes down to whether or not consumers wish to pay more for organic food, ultimately they should consider whom do they wish to believe, Jerome Rodale or Norman Borlaug.

• He believed that people do not get enough electricity from the atmosphere, owing to the presence of steel girders, and he would sit for 10-20 minutes a day under a machine that gave off short wave radio waves, which he believed beneficially boosted his body's supply of electricity.
• He took 70 food-supplement tablets a day as "extra protection" against pollution and to "restore nutrients lost in the kitchen processing of food."
• He believed that the cure for prostatic disease was to eat pumpkin seeds and stated that if he were to get prostate cancer he would have chiropractic adjustments.
• Reportedly he believed that "wheat is terrible for people, can make them overly aggressive or daffy, and that sugar is worse," and that he would live to 100 "unless I'm run down by a sugar-crazed taxi driver." (Actually at age 72, while taping a talk show with Dick Cavett he died suddenly--of natural causes, no doubt!).
• He believed that milk was bad for people, except for babies and he denounced vegetarianism because he believed that "people need the zest of a good piece of meat."
• When asked why "organic" fertilizer was preferable to "chemical" fertilizer he responded, "We feel that in organically grown food you have things you don't even know exist."

Indeed, the idea that "organic" food has some mystical powers and that it is preferable nutritionally to conventionally grown food is commonly believed. A few studies have shown that the former may have a marginally better nutrition profile, particularly as it relates to minerals. It is doubtful that those small advantages are nutritionally significant, and importantly is the use of so-called "organic" farming economically practical and sustainable particularly in feeding a burgeoning world population?

Consider for a moment the contributions of Dr. Norman Borlaug to agriculture and his view of the organic food movement. Borlaug is one of only five people in history (and the only scientist) to have received the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. The others were Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Elie Wiesel.

It has been estimated that Borlaug's contribution to agriculture though gene manipulation (a no-no to the high priests of organic agriculture) and use of inorganic fertilizer have improved crop yields, resulting in saving the lives of one billion human beings. Consider the following from Jonathan Alter's column in the 7/30/07 issue of Newsweek:

"Borlaug scoffs at the mania for organic food, which he proves with calm logic is unsuited to fight global hunger. (Dung, for instance, is an inefficient source of nitrogen.) And while he encourages energy-conscious people to 'use all the organic you can, especially on high-end crops like vegetables,' he's convinced that paying more for organic is 'a lot of nonsense.' There's 'no evidence the food is any different than that produced by chemical fertilizer.'"

When it comes down to whether or not consumers wish to pay more for organic food, ultimately they should consider whom do they wish to believe, Jerome Rodale or Norman Borlaug.

More LOST than Found.

...

Law fo the Sea Treaty May be Improved But Remains Deeply Flawed.

One of President Ronald Reagan’s finest hours was in 1982 when he killed that year’s version of the Law of the Sea Treaty. With the apt acronym LOST, the treaty would have ceded sovereignty and taxing authority over the oceans throughout the world to the United Nations.

Now, the Law of the Sea Treaty is back, supposedly refurbished so well in a 1994 reworking of the agreement that some say Reagan now would support it….[including] George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s vice president, …George W. Bush, as well as by five Republican secretaries of state: George Shultz and James A. Baker III, who served in that post under Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.

“Flaws in the treaty regarding deep-seabed mining, which prevented President Ronald Reagan from supporting it, were fixed in 1994,” the five secretaries wrote in the Wall Street Journal on May 30. They added that other problems had been dealt with. Some Senate Republicans already have pledged support: Dick Lugar, Lisa Murkowski and Olympia Snowe.... Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese III insisted that Reagan would not sign the treaty today because it still poses “a direct threat to American sovereignty.”... He very publicly refused to sign it [and] dismissed the State Department staff that helped negotiate it.” Tough guy!   In fact, relinquishing even a limited measure of U.S. sovereignty to a worldwide organization could precipitate mischief we can’t begin to imagine.

Jon Ray: Comments to Occam's Butter Knife

By Jon Jay Ray

Jon posted this article, Occam's Butter Knife, which I also posted today under “Stuff You Didn’t See on the News”. He followed up with some comments of his own that I think are worth posting.  You may wish to review "Colonizing the Dark Continent".  RK

I taught in a School of Sociology at a major Australian university for many years and did a lot of research while I was there. The one sociological fact that impressed me most during all that time, however, was something I saw during a trip to California in the '70s. I was staying in Los Angeles and decided to take a day trip down to Tijuana, which was at that time much better known for brass bands than for drugs and crime.

I was impressed by the 8-lane American concrete highway leading all the way to the border but was astounded to emerge from border control onto a dirt track lined with barrels. A first-class American freeway suddenly gave way to a Mexican dirt track. I guess that the Mexicans have improved their side of the border since then but the contrast between the two sides of the border could not have been more graphic at the time and has stood in my mind ever since as proof of the importance of culture and its associated institutions.

And there is no difficulty in seeing why Mexican culture bears much responsibility for the state of Mexican roads. But with the tutelary example of a triumphant American culture visible just over the border, how do we explain the failures of Mexican culture today? Are Mexicans incapable of learning? That claim sounds rather like a racist statement in itself.

To attribute current Mexican culture to something Spaniards did hundreds of years ago rather that to what Mexicans are like today is something only a Leftist could believe. No doubt the conquistadores had a big influence in their time but culture is ever-changing and what it is at any one point in time has to reflect the choices made by people around that time.

Note just a few examples of rather rapid changes of culture within the same society. These days men rarely wear hats. Within living memory men were regarded as improperly dressed if they stepped outside their door at any time of the year without a hat on. I remember going to work with a hat on myself. And in the 19th century, beards were virtually universal on men. And less trivially, what has happened to the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor that so dominated 19th century social thinking? One could go on about the decay of civility, manners, standards etc. The very idea of a static, immutable culture and its associated institutions is a towering absurdity.

And when it comes to differences between cultures, look, for instance, at whether in the given culture there is little general respect for impartial justice. In such a culture you will bribe the judge and the judge will take the bribe. And much flows from that

Furthermore, the claim that the British left behind some sort of malevolent cultures and institutions in Africa is itself malevolent. When the British departed places like Nigeria and Ghana they left behind well-organized countries with good communications and prosperous economies -- plus standards of law, order and justice far higher than anything there today. In short, they left behind excellent foundations for the development of modern, prosperous and civilized societies. That no such development took place is the doing of the inhabitants, not the doing of the evil "colonialists".

How Leftists hate that very word: "colonialist"! It seems to make them shake with rage, regardless of the reality it denotes. They are deeply irrational people. That there has never been in recent centuries a more rabid colonial power than Soviet Russia doesn't count, of course.

Zone of Reality: Regulations

Mugged by Reality!

Ten Thousand Commandments

Welcome to The Other National Debt -- The Cost of Regulation

Uncertainty paralysis
by John Stossel

President Obama would do us all a big favor if he’d ask himself this: “Would I start or expand a business without knowing what regulations or taxes government will impose next year?” If he’d just stop and ask that, he’d have a sense of what’s wrong with the economy. He’d understand why a country that must create 120,000 new jobs each month just to absorb newcomers created only 69,000 last month.

Past recoveries were quicker. Something is different. What could it be?
Let’s remember that the economy — which is to say, us — is already burdened by byzantine bureaucratic impositions. Every week, the feds add another thousand pages of rules and proposals for rules. Local governments add their own. My mayor, in New York City, even proposes micromanaging the size of the drinks restaurants may sell….Every year, Congress makes thousands of changes to tax laws. And no one can guess what will happen in 2013 if the 2001 and 2003 rate cuts expire….Only when politicians butt out, leaving us with simple, predictable rules, can the economy grow for us all.

A check on the regulatory state
by George Will

All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress …
The Constitution
Article I, Section 1

WASHINGTON — Having cleared its throat with the Preamble, the Constitution buckles down to business with those words, which Republican Rep. Geoff Davis of Kentucky takes seriously. He is retiring from Congress, leaving behind excellent legislation that could claw back from the executive branch responsibilities the Founders intended for the government’s first branch. His Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act (REINS) would redress constitutional imbalance and buttress the rule of law by compelling Congress to take responsibility for the substance that executive rulemaking pours into the sometimes almost empty vessels that Congress calls “laws.”

The 165,000 pages of the Code of Federal Regulations contain tens of thousands of rules promulgated by largely unaccountable agencies that churn out more than a thousand new mandates a year. According to the Small Business Administration, regulations cost the economy about $1.75 trillion, almost twice the sum of income tax receipts. Davis says small businesses are spending $10,500 per employee on regulatory compliance. REINS would require Congress to vote on a resolution of approval concerning every “major” ($100 million economic impact) regulation. There are 212 such among the 4,128 regulations currently in the pipeline from unelected executive agencies. If the vote REINS requires did not occur within 70 days, the regulation would die.

The Thompsons fight on from the USA: a business ruined by green-tape and the Australian Carbon Tax

This came in from Joanne this morning and although I am trying to get out of here to go to work....I had to post this first. This is the real impact of the green movement. We really do need to get that! Please follow the below link for the whole story. RK

Finally the update you've been waiting for... Whatever happened to Matt and Janet Thompson?



Matt and Janet are skeptics who ran a Beef Feedlot from Narrogin, Western Australia (2 hours SE of Perth). When they spoke out against climate change policies, onerous license changes were added that drove them to bankruptcy. Readers here and at Watts Up raised over $30,000 dollars as they faced eviction in Sept 2010. (It was the first time skeptics around the world had been asked to help a cause like this, and the response was so overwhelming that Paypal still can't list all the donations we received on Sept 18th, 2010. It breaks their site).

The Thompsons write today with an update: they've decided it's unfeasible to try to run their business under these conditions and with the new carbon tax in Australia, and due to family reasons they've reluctantly left Australia, moved back to the USA with their four children (bad for Australia, but good for Uncle Sam). They've reached a settlement with the bank but fully intend to pursue their legal case against the Department of Environment in West Australia. I'm delighted to say that Matt and Janet's indomitable spirits survived these last two years, which pushed them to the brink and they are looking forward with great hope.

Their story in brief - a story I initially couldn't believe would happen in Australia

This all sounds so unlikely: surely good honest businesses couldn't go broke in a first world country because their owners spoke their minds? I've documented every statement below on this site. No one could run a business under these conditions.

LOST sense!

By Rich Kozlovich

It still amazes me how few know about this. Yesterday I had a great visit with one of the great past leaders of the pest control industry in Ohio, and one of my mentors, who is now retired. He is a real "newsie" too, and yet when I brought LOST up he had a confused look for a moment. He knew about it, but he really wasn't up on the whole thing. Why? Because the media hasn't made an issue of it! Of course the media focused on really important events like Justin Bieber's confrontation with a paparazzi. After all…when you have a really hot item like that why would want to waste your time on some silly international treaty that would turn 70% of the world over to the most corrupt incompetent organization the world has ever known….the United Nations. The other thing that amazes me is the U.S. Navy’s take on this. As I recall when this came up during the Clinton years the Navy was against it. What happened? I begin to believe that the officers who became Admirals were those who were Politically Correct.

Amazing!

Common Sense on LOST………..Gordon Chang, noted recently in his column at World Affairs Journal : “Although Beijing ratified the [LOST] pact in June 1996, it continues to issue maps claiming the entire South China Sea…..It’s no wonder Beijing notified the UN in 2006 that it would not accept international arbitration of its sovereignty claims.”…..Panetta nonetheless asserted that “By moving off the sidelines, by sitting at the table of nations that have acceded to this treaty, we can defend our interests, we can lead the discussions, we will be able to influence those treaty bodies that develop and interpret the Law of the Sea.” That is simply not so if, as is true of the LOST’s various institutions, we would have but one seat among many, and no certainty that we can decisively “influence bodies that develop and interpret the law of the Sea.”

In fact, thanks to the rigged-game nature of those institutions, such bodies can be relied upon to hamstring us – by, for example, applying environmental regulations over which we have no control to our Navy’s anti-submarine warfare exercises and our domestic emissions into inland air and water that migrates to the international oceans……In short, the Obama administration wants Senators to suspend common sense and ignore real and legitimate concerns about the deleterious impact of the Law of the Sea Treaty on our sovereignty, economic interests and potentially even the national security. Will 34 Senators have enough common sense to just say “No”?

O’Reilly Get’s it Right: We Need a New Reality Show!

By Rich Kozlovich

I saw the ‘horrors’ of the ‘attack’ by five foot seven inch one hundred and ten pound Justin Bieber on that poor, innocent, mild mannered cameraman who was just trying to make a living…..over and over again on the news. Let’s get real folks. The world is a mess and that is what is shown over and over again?

I am of the personal opinion that he deserved to be smacked…much like the rest of the paparazzi. They are obnoxious, intrusive, rude, offensive and ….let’s face it….they are over the line. They passed the “need to be smacked” boundary years ago, and in my youth they would have and no one would have cared. Actually…in my youth they wouldn’t have acted in this manner; and that’s the problem. Far too many people feel others must have boundaries while they must have none themselves. Do we get that?

Let’s review. The paparazzi are over the line of good manners and proper behavior, but because he was attempting to make a buck at Bieber’s expense he recognized no boundaries, and society reluctantly agrees. However, when Beiber had the temerity to demand a degree of respect and common decency from this guy….he get’s sued or prosecuted or whatever the end result will be. After all….how dare Bieber not recognize that he has boundaries, after all, he is famous and rich, which has turned into a cottage industry by unscrupulous attorneys and their equally unscrupulous clients! Bill O’Reilly says we need a new reality show called. “Fleecing the Rich and Famous!” I agree, however, that should just be the beginning.

An article appeared on June 2nd, 2012 by Linda Chavez entitled; The hidden horrors of North Korea outlining how the new maniac in charge, “Kim Jong-Eun, has done what few expected when he assumed power after his father’s death last December. Instead of loosening control in the most totalitarian nation in the world, Kim Jong-Eun has actually expanded the number of North Koreans subject to forced labor, torture, starvation and death in the totalitarian nation’s prison camps.”

The world watches in horror at the atrocities committed by Assad, Syria’s ruler, against his citizens because the media runs it all day, every day. Why? Is that the worst human crisis facing the world? No…it isn’t! I would think based of the numbers being brutalized by North Korea alone that North Korea should be featured daily and yet it isn’t! Why? For one thing there would have to be a constant comparison between the capitalistic and successful South Korea and the disasterous failure that is the socialist North. That is not where the media wants to go, especially now.

The list of major stories that have a much larger impact (or will have) on the world’s population is way and above more important than Syria. I know it because I am a “newsie”, and it must automatically be assumed that the media people are “newsies” also. So they must be aware of what is really going on, especially since they have access to more information from more sources than I could ever have. Why aren’t they featuring these other stories more…or for that matter...featuring them at all? Because the media is corrupt and biased.

What we really need is a reality show called, “The Media – Corrupt. Biased and Cowardly!” Or perhaps we could call it, The Media – The Prime Purveyor of Public Ignorance!”, or “The Media- Fallacies Are Our Forte!”

I would love to see a show that features someone who could outline all the logical fallacies uttered by people like Geraldo, Bickel and all of these news people and their guests. If you were to eliminate the misdirection and logical fallacies; their ability to talk over everyone, constantly interrupt, give snide shots that have nothing to do with the subject at hand, change the subject and refuse to answer the questions; these shows would be bereft of content, especially from those on the left.

Although Fox News and O’Reilly feature things that are important, and ignored by the rest o the media, many times I would also put O’Reilly in that category.  Along with a lot of what else appears on Fox News, and they are the best of the media crop. That is what is really disturbing!

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Dr. Jack Wheeler’s Half-Full Report for the Week.

By Rich Kozlovich

I get these regularly and even without the full daily report Wheeler’s insights are interesting. In order to read the full content…which is clearly far more knowledgeable, unusual, insightful than you will see elsewhere ….you must subscribe. There is one article linked below that is a ‘free’ article, and worth the read. I have shortened this a bit so go to his site to see more.

1. The best international news is the impending death of a monster. It's from a surprising source - who knew Dan Rather was still functioning? He's 80 now and has a news show on a small cable channel called HDNet. On Wednesday (5/30), he reported that Hugo Chavez was in "the end stage" of metastatic rhabdomyosarcoma. This is an especially virulent cancer that once it metastasizes (spreads throughout the body) is quickly fatal. Chavez's government has been quite secretive about what type of cancer he has, refusing to disclose any details. If Rather's source is accurate, Chavez may indeed be dead within a month or two. And then there will be blood. Castro will see to that...

2. More enjoyable int'l news: Iran has been Flamed. On Monday (5/28), the discovery of a massive new computer virus dubbed Flame was announced. Like Stuxnet only 100 times bigger (20GB vs. 200KB), it targets computers in Iran - and Palestinian Arab computers in Israel's so-called West Bank. Flame is not just copying massive amounts of Iranian data, it's wiping out entire hard drives.

3. How many gas stations do you pass by on an average day? For most folks it's several. Dozens every week, a couple of hundred or more every month. Every one of them throughout America is loudly displaying a campaign ad against President Zero. Look at the next gas station you drive by and you'll see the campaign ad shouting at you - wordlessly, for the ad consists only of numbers. It's the price per gallon.

4. President Barack Hussein Obama is racing down the trail blazed by Sen. George McGovern, who in 1972 was buried by the largest popular vote landslide in American history. (President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 won a slightly higher percentage of the popular vote than Richard Nixon did in 1972 -- 61.1 to 60.7 -- but LBJ's margin over Sen. Barry Goldwater was smaller, because fewer voted for minor party candidates that year.)  Sen. McGovern was too far to the left, swing voters thought, and not very competent -- an image reinforced by the shambles his supporters made of the Democrat national convention. Swing voters are forming the same opinion about President Obama, who sometimes seems as if he's deliberately trying to dismantle the coalition that elected him in 2008. Here is how he is doing it.  Read more for free... 

5. In a Gallup poll May 23, more disapproved of Vice President Joe Biden (45 percent) than approved (42 percent.) In 12 swing states, Slow Joe was underwater 40-52, intensifying speculation President Barack Hussein Obama may dump him for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton…..But even if Slow Joe continues to commit a gaffe a week, I doubt he’d hurt Mr. Obama much, because people vote on the basis of what they think of the presidential candidates. So its unlikely any of the aforementioned Republicans would gain for Mr. Romney many votes he wouldn’t otherwise have had. There’s one guy who could matter more, thinks former National Security Council staffer Paul Miller. When Gallup last polled on him in April, 2011, Americans rated Gen. David Petraeus favorably, 61 percent to 7 percent. That poll may have been what prompted President Obama to make Gen. Petraeus CIA Director.

6. The latest news from the EU Crisis Front: Southern Europe's debtor states must pledge their gold reserves and national treasure as collateral under a €2.3 trillion stabilization plan gaining momentum in Germany.

The German scheme -- known as the European Redemption Pact -- offers a form of "Eurobonds Lite" that can be squared with the German constitution and breaks the political logjam. It is a highly creative way out of the debt crisis, but is not a soft option for Italy, Spain, Portugal, and other states in trouble. The plan is drafted by the German Council of Economic Experts and inspired by Alexander Hamilton's Sinking Fund in the United States -- created in 1790 to clean up the morass of debts left by the Revolutionary War. Flourishing Virginia was comparable to Germany today. Germany would have a lockhold over the fund, able to enforce discipline. Each state would have to pledge 20% of their debt as collateral. "The assets could be taken from the country's currency and gold reserves. The collateral nominated would only be used in the event that a country does not meet its payment obligations," said the proposal.

This demand could enflame opinion in Italy and Portugal. Both states have kept their bullion, resisting the rush to sell by Britain and others. Italy has 2,451 tons of gold, valued at €98bn in March.

7. Many in the political class, including President Obama and many members of Congress, have an interest in confusing, rather than enlightening, the public. The effort to misinform about the growth in spending and the impact of government spending on job creation reached a new level last week when the president claimed he was the most restrained spender since President Eisenhower and that spending was up only a little more than 1 percent (over what?). A quick review of economic policy for the past 30 years, as can be seen in a glance at the table below, provides evidence that big increases in government spending do not create jobs but, in fact, do the opposite. The correct way to measure the impact of government spending is not to look at the nominal numbers, which include population and economic growth and inflation, but rather as a percentage of GDP (national output).

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