Political Angst In America

Name:
Location: Pantego, Texas, United States

Friday, September 29, 2006

Here is a piece on the "Religion of Peace" by a German Prof. that everyone should read. It is important to know the enemy. It seems to me that most people don't realize that Islam is a political system masquerading as a religion. I copied this from Michelle Malkin's blog.

And here is a translation of German Professor Egon Flaig's piece (thanks to reader David by way of Diotima - if there is a link for this, please send):

Islam wants to conquer the world by Egon Flaig

"For we want the flag of Islam to fly over those lands again, who were lucky enough, to be ruled by Islam for a time, and hear the call of the muezzin praise God. Then the light of Islam died out and they returned to disbelief. Andalusia, Sicily, the Balkans, Southern Italy and the Greek islands are all Islamic colonies which have to return to Islam's lap. The Mediterranean and the Red Sea have to become internal seas of Islam, as they used to be".
These are not the words of Al Qaeda, they were taken from the programme formulated by the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan Al Banna, in a speech. The Brotherhood today has millions of adherents and spread out far beyond Egypt. Its intellectuals are working in Europe and the United States; they count as "moderates" and are treated accordingly by the media. Re-conquest of "lost" territory according to plan is part of the agenda of states, that is political communities, fighting about territorial power. How can it be part of a religion's programme? Is Islam a religion like any other?

Since the beginning of the classical period between the ninth and the eleventh century Islamic jurists have divided the world into two parts, namely the "House of Islam" and the "House of War". This dichotomy is independent of where Muslims live in large numbers, or even form the majority, but depends on where Islam rules supreme - by applying Shariah - or where it does not rule. So, this dichotomy is not religious in nature, but political. Between these two parts of the world naturally exists a state of war, until the House of War is no more and Islam rules the world (Sura 8, 39 and 9, 41). Thus, according to classical teaching, for the Muslim community there is a duty to wage war against the disbelievers, until those either convert, or submit. This war is called jihad.

While Jesus' missionary call meant to convert all peoples, but to leave their political order untouched, Islam's aim is to submit all non-muslims politically, but to leave their religion untouched, if it is a religion of the book. God's general call to jihad is based on surah 9, 29. It is true though, that minute factions of islam did not accept this interpretation. The Shiites accept it, but demand that a true imam must be leading the Muslim community (and has been waiting for such a one for more than 13 centuries), so that for the time being they only feel bound to defensive jihad, in the case of attacks on the Muslim community.

On the other hand, the other factions, e.g. the so-called Kharijites, have radicalised the content of Sura 9.29: for them, jihad is an individual duty of each able-bodied muslim, which counts as a sixth pillar next to the other five cardinal duties. In the consequence of such teachings: when everyone has to either take part in the collective war against the unbelievers, or, should the Muslim community be too weak for the time being, has to wage war alone or in small groups, then assassinations and terror attacks are right. What the Kharijites demand for offensive jihad, most proponents of orthodox Sunnah-teachings demand for defensive jihad: when Islam is being attacked, or islamic territory is being invaded by infidels, jihad becomes an individual duty, e.g. a fatwa of the Grand Mufti of Cairo's Al-Azhar university - against Israel - leaves no doubt about that. Any enemy power that acts according to the Hague rules of warfare and strictly distinguishes combatants and non-combatants will be in great difficulty. The state of war lasts so long, until the House of War is destroyed, and the world is conquered. This is why Majid Khadduri calls Islam a "divine nomocracy on imperialist foundations". Peace treaties, which Islamic rulers closed with non-Islamic rulers, were only considered as cease-fires; this is why as a rule, they were only closed for no more than ten years. Two schools of jurisprudence permit no more than three to four years of peace. The short deadlines made it possible for the militarily superior Muslims to constantly blackmail their adversaries; this way throughout the centuries huge amounts of money and humans went to the Muslim side. When the paradigm of power shifted, Muslim rulers had to change their practice.
Thus in 1535 Suleiman the Magnificent made a peace with the French king which was to last for the lifetime of the Sultan - a break with tradition. Christian theologians tried to define, in the face of a plurality of states, what could be deemed a "just war" and what could not be deemed such. To wage war just in the interest of faith for the most part was not considered just. For Muslim scholars on the other hand, the "house of islam" is a political unit, which does not permit internal war, therefore only war for the sugjugation of infidels was considered legitimate and even a duty, as the famous fourtheenth-century scholare Ibn Chaldun categorically states: "In Islam the jihad is prescribed by law, because it has a universal calling and is supposed to convert all of humanity to Islam, be it of their own free will, or by force".

The rules of engagement for jihad are flexible. According to Khadduri, anything is possible, from mercy to mass enslavement to mass killing, just like with Greeks and Romans. This is a fundamental difference between the holy war of islam and of Old Testament Judaism, which prescribed the killing of all males outside of Israel, and the killing of every living thing within Israel (Deuteronomy 20, 10-20). We usually are outraged at what the Crusaders did in Jerusalem in 1099. Yet, the Crusaders acted in accordance with the ius bellum of the times, Muslim conquerors did the same all the time and everywhere: 698 they hit Carthage, in 838 Syracuse; the notorious vesir of the Cordoban Caliphate, Al Mansur, led 25 wars in 27 years against the Christian realms of northern Spain, enslaving, destroying, laying waste. They hit Zamora (981), Coimbra (987), Leon, Barcelona twice (985 and 1008), then Santiago de Compostela (997).

The worst destruction was wreaked by the jihadis on Byzantine Anatolia, which was then still full of cities; the massacre of Amorium (838) has remained a symbol for a long time; the urban culture of Anatolia never recovered from it.

The Seljuk Alp Arslan had entire Armenian cities massacred, the worst being the capital Ani in 1064. Bat Ye'or's evaluation therefore is more than justified: "Its lack of measure, its regularity and the systematic character of the destructions, which Islamic theologians had decreed to be law, make the difference between jihad and other wars of conquest".Certainly, mass enslavement remained the favourite aim of the wars. That was the way in which, as early as the eight century, the biggest slave-holder society developed that world history has ever known; it demanded a permanent influx of new slaves, transformed the African continent into the biggest supplier of slaves, a destiny which Europe narrowly avoided.

The incredible speed, in which in 90 years an Arabian empire spanning from the south of France to India developed, with no single conqueror guiding the expansion, is unique. The world's most succesful imperialism was admired by no less than Hegel: "Never has enthusiasm as such done bigger deeds". If "enthusiasm" could do such a thing - what was its source? The answer is simple: martyrdom. Something happening in 963 in Constantinople may illustrate this: the emperor Nikephoros Phokas had just swept the Muslim invaders from Crete; now, he was planning a big war, to liberate eastern Anatolia and northern Syria from muslim rule. A council should help him: he pleaded with the bishops, to elevate soldiers dying in the war to the status of martyrs. Paradise would then have been assured for those soldiers. The patriarch stood up against the emperor: no church council could be empowered to anticipate God's decision, only God could decide on eternal salvation.

A scene of historical significance. The emperor knew what was at stake. Again and again, the Byzantians had to witness the Muslim troops fighting with a ferocious courage that the Christians could not emulate. Fallen Muslims were considered martyrs of the faith and marched straight to paradise. The concept of a martyr is fundamentally different in the two religions. Christian martyrs imitate the passion of Jesus, passively submit to torture and death; Muslim martyrs are active fighters.

Decisive for the warriors' acceptance of death was the firm promise of eternal salvation for those who die for the faith (surah 4, 74-76). Muslims should withstand a tenfold force (surah 8, 66-67); retreat was judged to be acceptable by later scholars if the enemy was at least double as strong, as Khadduri describes. As the decisive factor in any war is the fighting human being and his readiness to sacrifice himself, being on a par technically with the Arabs and Seljuks - in the long run, they had to succumb, if their morale was not of the same kind. Higher readiness to die is an enormous advantage in a fight- foolhardy operations can be waged and dashing manoeuvers to surprise and confuse the enemy; in that way, victory can be forced, that is technically and materially almost impossible, and battles are won, that would be lost under the usual circumstances.

Nikephoros knew about the military consequences of surah 4, 74-76; he was the first who tried to correct the conceptual military disadvantage of the Christian religion. But the bishops of the Eastern Church found themselves incapable of manipulating their theology in a way to create warlike martyrdom. This was it. The Byzantine emperors had to wage their heavy defensive wars against the permanent Saracen and Seljuk aggression without the help of religion, where they needed that help most.

Only the Western Church changed the theological-political situation: when Pope Urban II called the first crusade in 1095, he promised the Christian warriors forgiveness for their sins: fallen crusaders avoided divine judgement and were put on a par with martyrs in that respect, although they were denied that name.

The Pope as head of a monarchic church did just that, what the Council of Eastern bishops had not been able to do: he dispensed salvation. The papal church now could have the kind of "holy war" islam had been waging for centuries. What is the difference between Crusade and jihad? A Crusade could only be called by the Pope, and thus remained a rare occurence - compared to the countless, neverending and ubiquitarian jihads of the islamic world.

And the goals of the Crusades remain precisely defined; in November 1095, Urban II defined reason and aim of the crusade: "it is obvious, we must give help to our brothers in the east as soon as possible. The Turks and Arabs have attacked them and have invaded the realm of Romania (Constantinople) and by invading the lands of these Christians ever more deeply, they won seven battles, killed or captured a huge number of the Christians. If you don't oppose them now, the faithful servants of God in the Orient will not withstand this storm much longer". The first Crusades were meant to either help Christians in need, or to liberate the holy places in Palestine or to liberate Christians that had been subjugated by Muslims. On the other hand, the Muslim scholars always kept firm to their final goal, to conquer the "house of war" and subjugate all infidels. Urban II was right. Had Constantinople fallen in 1100, the enormous military power of the Turk armies would have plagued Europe four hundred years earlier. Then the manifold European culture probably would never have been: no free urban constitutions, no constitutional debates, no cathedrals, no renaissance, no scientific boom, because in the Islamic world, free - Greek! - thinking was dying just at this time. Jacob Burckhardt's evaluation - "A stroke of luck, that Europe as a whole could ward off Islam" - means, we owe about as much to the Crusades, as to the Greeks' victory against the Persians.

But, have the Crusades not been abused? Certainly. Crusades "derailed" and were "abused", like the one that led to the conquest of Christian Constantinople in 1204. But that happened much more often with jihads. When slaves became scarce, emirs did not merely wage wars against non-Muslim peoples, who had to be enslaved anyway, but more and more often against Islamized peoples, under the pretext, that they were no true Muslims. That happened mainly in Africa and against black Africans, e.g. when first in 1468 Songhay and then the Moroccans in 1552 invaded Mali, or when in the 18th century religious reformers waged their jihad against Muslimized Hausa cities, which led to the creation of the Sokoto-caliphate - containing the third largest number of slaves after Brazil and the American south. Africa to this day suffers from the consequences of this permanent jihad with its genocides and mass-enslavements
Well, and what was the political order that the Muslims waged their holy wars for with such vehemence and success? For Shariah. A political order, which for one strictly separates masters from the subjugated and secondly takes political and social order away from human influence for the most part. Let's talk about the first aspect: According to the Shariah, the Muslims are masters, the followers of other "book religions" - Christians, Jews, Parsees, Buddhists, are subjugated, Dhimmi. These were not religious minorities, but huge majorities, especially in Syria, Anatolia or the Christians of North-Africa.
The subjugated were not allowed to carry weapons, they were unarmed, thus not 'real men'. Christians and Jews had to wear special colours or pieces of clothing (this discrimination was the origin of the "Judenstern") so as to be visibly "dhimmi"; they were not allowed to ride on horseback, only on mules, to remind them of their subjugation; they paid a special tribute (jizyah), that they had to pay personally, while being given a slap on the head. They had to let themselves be beaten by any Muslim, without being allowed to defend themselves; if a dhimmi retaliated, his hand would be cut off, or he would be executed. A dhimmi's witness did not count against a Muslim, who only had to pay half the fine for any crime committed against a dhimmi, and could never ever get executed for any such crime. On the other side, the most cruel methods of execution were reserved for the dhimmi.
Even the discrimination against the Jews, installed by the Western Church in the 4th Lateran Council in 1215, four hundred years after Islam, and which seems so barbarian to us, did not intend and did not lead to such a degree of humiliation and demeaning of people. A special horror was brought by the Turkish rule: from 1360 up to a fifth of Christian children were abducted into slavery. They were forcefully converted. The number of slaves through four centuries must have been millions; hundreds of thousands of choice boys among those were raised to be fanatical Muslims and elite fighters, the notorious Janissaries: a politic meant to systematically increase the Muslim population and slowly exterminate Christians. It was successful. "Dhimmitude" put non-muslims in a state of radical "otherness". To call people in this state "second class citizens" is a euphemism.
In the same way national socialism divided humans into master-race and subhumans on racial grounds, so Shariah did it on religious grounds. As the first world-religion, Islam created an apartheid, where Christian or Parsee majorities were colonised and slowly Islamized. Islamic tolerance meant: tolerate the subjugated as humiliated and demeaned. All this is well known via studies about "dhimmitude". But who wants to hear about the millions of victims?Islam religiously "cleansed" huge territories: the second Caliph made the Hijaz, Arabia except Yemen "judenrein" and "christenrein"; the alternative was either to convert, or to be forced into emigration. Except for some Old Testament cases no religion ever before had done that. In the same way the Almohadis and Almoravids "cleansed" Spain after the breakdown of the Caliphate in 1031: tens of thousands of Jews and Christians had to either convert or flee to the Christian north of Spain, or the Levant. Certainly, English and French kings and the kings of Spain later on did the same - they applied the Muslim recipe in doing it. And the pogroms? Since the Caliph Al-Mutawakkil (847-861) waves of persecution again and again hit the Orient and North Africa, where Jews and Christians were forcibly converted, kicked out or massacred. The destruction of churches went on and on right until the century before last. Slowly, the rosy picture of Muslim Spain created by European anti-imperialism in the 19th century loses its fake colours. A scrupulous study of documents shows a different picture below that. In 889 in Elvira and in 891 in Seville, there were massive pogroms against Christians. In Moroccan Fez in 1033, 6000 Jews were massacred. 1058 Christian Antioch was forcefully Muslimized with torture and threats of death.
The first large pogrom against Jews on European soil happened in 1066 in Muslim Granada, 1500 Jewish families were killed. In 1135 the Jewish quarter of Cordoba was burnt down, it might be good, not to know the number of people massacred then. In 1159 all the Christians in Tunis had to chose between conversion or death. At this time, the vital Christianity of North Africa was completely wiped out. The pogroms in Christian lands are nothing to be proud of in European history, but their scope lags behind the ones in the Muslim world. We urgently need a comparative study of religious oppression.
Let's talk about integration of the Jews? Nowhere under the rule of Islam, not even in the Spanish Caliphate, were Jews citizens of their own cities, they always remained subjugated. In some German cities - Worms, Augsburg and others - during the high Middle Ages the Jews were citizens, albeit of special legal satus. They had the right to carry arms and were better off than poorer Christian people. Right until the 14th century, when their situation got worse, they were far better integrated than Jews in Muslim Spain could ever hope to be. Who thinks highly of political integration cannot but prefer Augsburg to Cordoba. All this has been well known in academic circles for fifteen years. But who wants to hear it?
To ignore the past means to re-live it. He who keeps on spreading the fairytale of muslim tolerance, stands in the way of those Muslim intellectuals, who seriously work towards a reformation of islam, which started out so promisingly in the 19th century. He steals away their chance to overcome a past, which threatens to become a horrible presence. If the reformers could achieve a radical de-politicization of islam, the muslims could become real citizens of their states. That would leave the highly spiritual religion, which fascinated not only Goethe. Hegel called Islam the "religion of sublime". It could become that.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Here is an article that expresses a view that I've had for some time now.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5897

The moderate Muslims, assuming there actually are any, need to wake up and realize what will happen if their buddies conduct a major attack on the US after Democrats are in power. They should realize that the Donkeys will do anything to maintain power, and the Republican minority in the Congress will not act to restrain a response to a major attack as the Democrats are now doing. I hope that George Bush's attempt to spread democracy in the middle East succeeds because there will be a major conflict of civilizations if it doesn't. Muslims should realize that Democrats like Senators Kennedy and Kerry mean it when they say that Muslims don't deserve democracy. I fear that we will eventually see a major conflict that is deadlier than WWII because the Muslims are serious and mean what they say, and when they force a response after Democrats are in power, it will be vicious.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Wal Mart has said they are going to start selling 291 generic drugs for $4 for a 30 day supply. I wonder if any of the ones I'm currently paying $20 for through my insurance plan are included. I wonder if there is really anything to this Wal Mart plan, or if it is just a publicity stunt. I also wonder how CVS and Walgreen will respond. Will they meet or beat Wal Mart's price? The drugstores have a larger markup on generic drugs than on namebrands. Given that, Wal Mart has a lot of clout, and may be able to operate on lower margin than the other drugstores. Could this be an example of how free enterprise can do more than any government effort to reduce medical costs?

The brouhaha over the leak of the April 2006 NIE report is interesting for several reasons. It appears that the leaked info was "cherry-picked" from the report to show the Bush administration in the worst light. It is obvious that there are people in the intelligence agencies that are anti-Bush, and are trying to help Democrats in the upcoming elections. I think it is very important for us to identify those people and their motivation; are they just partisan Democrats, or are they traitors? That is an important question.

Then there is the matter of the credibility of the intelligence agencies. Why should we trust their judgement anyway? They don't seem to be very good at their job. At least they weren't in the past. The NSA is great, but the HUMINT seems to be grossly lacking. Much of this is due to the work of the Chuch Commission back when Carter was President, and it deteriorated further under Clinton, who wouldn't allow the employment of unsavory characters (that is, the type of people who steal secrets and take bribes, etc.)

Modern technology has made it possible for people in third world countries to elect to have male babies by aborting the females. In China and India there are about 15% more little boys than little girls. I look for those societies to have severe unrest in the future. Young men without wives tend toward misadventure. We see this now in Muslim nations where polagamy removes a lot of young women from the marriage market, leaving many young males with little or no prospects for marriage. Many of them opt for martyrdom and the promise of 72 virgins. Something similar may happen in India and China. I expect chaos in those societies.

This week I read in the Fort Worth Star Telegram that so far this year 1500 people have been killed in Mexico by drug cartels; several police chiefs have been beheaded. This sounds almost as bad as what is happening in Iraq. Does this mean that Mexico is having a civil war? If we use the criteria Democrats apply to Iraq then Mexico is in a civil war.

I wonder why anyone should apologize for equating Islam with violence. Islam has always got converts by threats of death, from the seventh century until a few weeks ago when two TV reporters were "converted." Muslims think anyone who is not a Muslim owes them a tax. And they regularly pronounce death sentences on those who criticize them. I know of no other religion that does that.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

The Islamic reaction to the Pope's recent comments about the violent nature of Islam is interesting. The Muslims don't seem to see the irony in their actions: that if anyone suggests that they seem to be a bit inclined to violence they react by burning churches and killing people. They call for the death of anyone who tells the truth about them. It is interesting that they react to the Pope's comments with "Death to America" chants.

The President of Pakistan tells us that the West must ban criticism of Islam, or face the consequences, which will include violent attacks. If we were to limit our freedom of speech in the manner the Muslims desire, we would in effect be surrendering to Shar'ia law. I am disappointed that politicians in the West have not reacted forcefully to firmly announce that we will not give in to the Muslim demands. It is particularly disappointing that so-called Liberals in the West seem to be willing to submit to Shar'ia. That is hard to understand since Muslims and Liberals (including socialists and communists) would not seem to have much in common in terms of fundamental beliefs. One would assume that Liberals would not find much common ground with a group that treats women as slaves, condemns and executes rape victims as adulterers, and executes homosexuals.

But, they do have some common ground;

1) Both Muslims and Liberals regard George Bush as Satan, or the devil,

2) B0th detest capitalism,

3) Both have a goal of eliminating personal accountability and responsibility. (The Muslims want to leave everyting to Allah and the Liberals want to leave everything to the government, which is their God.)

4) Both probably subscibe to the idea that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." (The Liberals should beware because the Muslims will turn on them when it is convenient.)

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Here is an interesting comment about the movie showing the assassination of President Bush.

"Death of a President," which stirred controversy in the days ahead of the festival, took home the Fipresci prize, which is chosen by international critics. The film, a fictional documentary showing the assassination of President Bush, was noted by the jury "for the audacity with which it distorts reality to reveal a larger truth."

The last sentence defines the over-arching philosophy of Liberals. It is OK to lie to make everyone accept their version of the truth. That was the appraoch in Oliver Stone's movies, in Fahrenheit 911, and in fake Texas National Guard Memo's. Liberals are big on "the end justifies the means" and "error has no rights."

Monday, September 18, 2006

We should have expected this.

Monday, September 18, 2006

This Just In...

Posted by Dean Barnett 11:13 AM

From the unhinged leftists at the Daily Kos: “Bush Caused Spinach E. Coli. Expect More of this!!!”

In their worldview, Bush truly is to blame for everything.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

I wasn't suprised to hear that Reggie Bush was paid while he played football for USC. I have heard a lot of rumors about how payers are payed. The "bigtime" schools can get away with it. I remember when the University of Houston was sanctioned because a quarterback was given a car. His Mother said she couldn't undestand what the big deal was: no one said anything when her other son got a car at Oklahoma. (The quarterback left Houston and played for Oklahoma. I suspect he kept the car.)

Sweetness and Light did a poll on what should be done to Reggie Bush and USC. The results follow the red state-blue state map of the US.

http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/espns-bush-reggie-poll-shows-two-different-americas

The Pope quoted some 14th century emperor made about Islam being a violent religion, and members of "the religion of peace" naturally began to riot and burn churches, and kill Christians. Curiously, the churches being attacked are not necessarily Roman Catholic. And they denounce President Bush and the America as well as the Pope. I think the 14th century emperor was on to something. The "religion of peace" is not actually peaceful.

Muslims seem to be easy to offend. It seems to me that we are reaching the point where we need to say to them that we do not accept their religion, and we will not bow to their demands. If they do not like the way we live they can ignore us, as we sowould like to ignore them. But, if they persist in attacking us, we will take action. I hear estimates that only 10% of Muslims are radical and violent while the other 90% are moderate. It appears to me that this estimate is wrong, and that it is more likelly that 90% of them are radical, and maybe 10% are moderate. The ones who are moderate appear to be afraid to speak out; and for good reason, since the radicals will kill them for speaking out.

It is curious to me that Muslim leaders can call for the destruction of Israel and there is not much reaction. But, when someone criticizes Islam, there are riots and violence.

I'm a Baptist, and I suspect that the Pope doesn't agree with the Baptist religion. But, should he criticize Baptists we would not see rioting and death ensue.

Muslims think they are right and everyone else is in error, and they have an obligation to kill or subjugate us. It seems doubtful to me that any worthwhile dialog is possible with such people. We need to accept that our world view and theirs are incompatible. We are willing to leave them alone, but they are not willing to leave us alone. They have a failed civilization, and an enormous inferiority complex. We are going to have to make a decision as to whether we are going to surrender to them, somehow change their world view, or defeat them. President Bush is trying to change them; Democrats don't seem to accept that they are a threat. I am not certain that Bush's approach will work, but it seems worth trying. I fear that the Democrats will do nothing until a war of civilizations, from which few survive, is unavoidable. Is this the outcome socialists and other so-called liberals want?

Friday, September 15, 2006

Muslims want the Pope to apologize for his remarks about Islam being spread by the sword. I wonder when Muslims are going to apologize for killing two hundred thousand black Christians in Darfur, one million Christians in Indonesia, plus a lot of Buddists, etc. It is clear that Islam is spread by the sword; why should the Pope apologize for speaking the truth?

I don't understand why the donkeys and the half-donkeys (Senators McCain, Warner, and Graham) want to stop interrogation of terrorist captives. They say they are concerned about the treatment of our soldiers who may be captured in a future war, but this is a silly argument since none of our adversaries abides by the Geneva Convention. They didn't even sign it. They physically torture and decapitate those they capture. Jack Bauer has the right approach to terrorists.

Article 3 of the Geneva Convention seems to me to be an example of political correctness run amok. Under this article torture is in the eye of the beholder much like sexual harrassment laws. For example, Muslims are insulted by being interrogated by women.

Islam, the religion of peace? Here is an interesting quote I picked up from Cliff May's column today:

Back in 1942 Khomeini wrote: "[T]hose who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. … Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors!"

Now Muslims are mad at the Pope for quoting someone from the 14th century who found the Muslims to be warlike. Khomeini said pretty much the same thing the Pope said. It seems to me that Muslims make no secret of their desire to conquer the world; they think it is their duty to Allah.

It seems to me that Islam is incompatible with the Constitution of the United States. The Supreme Court would be forced to reject Sharia law even if a majority of the people voted it in. Thus Islamists must logically be considered to be in favor of the overthrow of the US government. We are currently allowing 50,000 Muslims per year to immigrate to the US. This seems foolish to me. I think Howard of Australia has the right idea. He says if the Muslims want to live under Sharia they should not come to Australia.

We need to reject political correctness because it makes us vulnerable to infiltration by those who want to destroy us. Our embrace of political correctness allows Muslims play the press in America like a violin. The idea that the culture of Islam is as good as our culture is ridiclous. It may be expediant to say that we are not at war with Islam, but just with the Jihadists, but we shouldn't deceive ourselves because Islam is at war with everyone whether we admit it or not.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

The NSA wire-tapping legislation being discussed in Congress is interesting. The Democrats appear to want to make it illegal for the military to eavesdrop on foreign individuals in foreign countries without a warrant. I think that such legislation would clearly be unconstitutional. One blog I read, I forgot if it was A. J. Strata, Tom Maguire, or Mac Ranger, suggested that under this law the military would have had to go to a judge to get a warrant in WWII when we intercepted German messages in the Enigma code, or Japanese messages in their code that we had broken. I suppose it would have been illegal to steal the Enigma machine. And, I suppose the New York Times would have revealed the Ultra Secret since Americans have a right to know the nefarious things their government is doing. The Democrats have clearly gone 'round the bend; Bush has driven them mad. If the current batch of Democrats had been running the country during WWII we would have lost the war.

Here is an article on global warming. I hear a lot of people say that all climatologists agree with the Al Gore position. I think that is not true.

William Kininmonth: Don't be Gored into going along

Global warming militants don't know what they're talking about

September 12, 2006

CLIMATE change is again making headlines as the world becomes mesmerised in the public relations glare of Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth. For critics and reviewers alike, the movie is further proof in their minds that we are heading for a climate catastrophe. But what's missing from the debate is sober, rational analysis of some scientific facts.

Climate change attracts attention because weather and climate extremes account for 70 per cent of natural disasters. Also, the historical evidence is that climate goes through gyrations that are beneficial or destructive for civilisations.

The periods of the Roman Empire, medieval Europe and the past 200 years were all of remarkable warmth. The Dark Ages of the first millennium and the Little Ice Age of the second were characterised by cold, by advanced mountain glaciers and by social turmoil.

For the past 10,000 years, the Earth has been near peak warmth in the climatic roller-coaster that has characterised the past million years. Yet only 20,000 years ago, great ice sheets covered much of North America and Europe; permanent glaciers were also present over southeastern Australia and Tasmania. The sea level was 130m lower than today and land bridges connected New Guinea and Tasmania with the Australian mainland. The Great Barrier Reef was but limestone cliffs bordering the Coral Sea.
The former US vice-president and his fellow travellers would have us believe that the actions of our civilisation are leading to dangerous climate change, as if climate is not inherently dangerous. There are many inconvenient truths about climate that are being ignored in the scare campaign that is being waged with relentless determination by sections of the community.

Start with carbon dioxide. As a greenhouse gas, it is a spent force for climate change; its present concentration is slightly less than 400 parts per million. Calculations show that 66 per cent of the greenhouse effect of CO2 is caused by the first 50ppm. With each doubling of concentration, (from 50 to 100, then to 200 and 400ppm), the incremental advance of the greenhouse effect is reduced.

Even for a further doubling to 800ppm, as projected by 2100 in the case of unabated fossil fuel usage, the increase in the greenhouse effect will only be 10 per cent of the present component attributable to CO2. Overall, CO2 is a relatively minor contributor to the greenhouse effect, which is dominated by the varying water vapour and clouds of the atmosphere.
Increasing the CO2 concentration will have little additional effect.
Evaporation of water vapour will constrain the Earth's temperature and prevent a runaway greenhouse effect. Back radiation from the atmosphere because of greenhouse gases (water vapour, CO2 and so on), clouds and aerosols raises surface temperatures. But surface temperatures are also constrained by evaporation of water from plants, moist soil and the oceans. The tropical oceans generally do not exceed 30C and it is only over the arid inland that daytime temperatures exceed 40C. Any increase in back radiation because of increased CO2 will largely be offset by additional evaporation that will constrain the rise of surface temperature.
The oceans are the flywheels of the climate system. The warm tropical oceans are but a thin lens about 100m in thickness that overlay the cold abyss, extending to depths averaging about 5km. We are familiar with El Nino events, when changed upwelling modifies the entrainment of cold sub-surface water into the warm surface layer of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. As US climatologist Michael Glantz has noted, the changed surface temperature patterns modify the atmospheric circulation and spawn natural disasters such as floods, droughts and storms across the globe.
Global warming is constrained by the need to warm the ocean in advance. The polar ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are fundamentally stable. Ice cores recovered from there confirm that the ice sheets have survived previous interglacials and have likely existed for more than one million years. The surface elevation of the ice sheets is more than 3km above sea level across much of their extensive plateaus and temperatures remain below minus 10C during the brief summer. It is only at the lower elevations of the coastal margins that temperatures rise above freezing for a few months and the strong solar radiation causes ice-melt.
Collapse of the polar ice sheets and a sea level rise of several metres is an unlikely scenario.

There are predictions, based on computer models, that Australia's rainfall will decrease as CO2 concentrations rise. According to published Bureau of Meteorology data, Australia (except for the southwest corner) was wetter during the second half of the 20th century than during the first. Against the prediction, as CO2 concentrations increased, there was an increase in continent-wide rainfall. These trends are likely to be no more than coincidence in the cycles of climate variability.

The Earth's climate system is extremely complex and we have only limited knowledge of many of its aspects. International collaboration is slowly unravelling some of the secrets and providing the basis for preparation and adaptation to change.

Scientists' continuing inability to predict with confidence a season in advance should be cause for hesitation when projections of decades to centuries are made. Computer models are not reality and alarmist predictions have no sound basis.

William Kininmonth, a former head of the National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation, is author of Climate Change: A Natural Hazard (Multi-Science Publishing Co, 2004).

This business of having criminal trials for the terrorists that are now in custody in Cuba seems ridiculous to me. We are in a war, and it should not be necessary to have criminal trials for those we capture. After the war we can either let them go, or give them a trial. To those who say that this would not be fair since the war may last for many years, I say the Jihadis should have thought of that before they became terrorists.

This business of having criminal trials for the terrorists that are now in custody in Cuba seems ridiculous to me. We are in a war, and it should not be necessary to have criminal trials for those we capture. After the war we can either let them go, or give them a trial. To those who say that this would not be fair since the war may last for many years, I say the Jihadis should have thought of that before they became terrorists.

Democrat's seem to have gone crazy over the ABC movie about the runup to the 911 attack. I didn't watch the movie, but I gather that it was as critical of Republicans as it was Democrats. In hindsight, it would have been good for Clinton to have taken care of bin Laden. We can all see that now. But, it have been heavily criticized if it had been done. Part of what has happened is explained by the philosophical differences in Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats favor turning some of our national sovereignty to a world government such as the UN. Thus terrorist acivities should be treated as criminal activites, so the government can only react to what is done. Evidence is reguired before the terrorists are arrested. Republicans view the terrorists more in terms of war. In war you take preemptive action against the enemy. Evidence such as would be used in a criminal trial is not an issue. The current Democrat leaders (Pelosi, Reid, Kennedy, Kerry, Gore and Dean) can only envision a war as something that must be fought against a nation state. Since the Jihadis are not a nation state, they must be treated as criminals. Fortunately, the Republicans don't see it that way. Hopefully the Republicans will remain in power until some wiser Democrat leaders emerge.

Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are accusing the President of "cherry-picking" intelligence to support going into Iraq. Based on my memory of events, and what I read, it appears to me the President's critics are themselves guilty of "cherry-picking" data. A fair evaluation of what was available still supports the decsion that Bush made. The critics are a classic case of "Monday morning quarterbacking."

It is odd to me that Democrats think that the war in Iraq is not part of the war on terror. The radical Muslims seem to be eager to get us out of Iraq. I need to hear some explanation from Democrats about how it would help us if we suddenly left Iraq. Leaving would embolden our enemies, and would discourage our friends. Part of our problem now is that we have left our friends holding the bag too many times. That seems obvious to me. It discourages me that Democrats seem more interested in defeating President Bush than in defeating our foreign enemies. Surely the Democrats realize that they are aiding the enemy with many of their attacks on Bush.

I read a lot of places that a high percentage of people in the US believe that President Bush was somehow responsible for the 911 attacks. I saw one fellow on TV who was identified as some sort of college prof who said he was certain that Bush did it, but he didn't know how it was done. There are always a lot of conpiracy theorists after an event like 911. I've read that perhaps 15-20% of Americans don't believe that men have gone to the moon. A few years ago many people thought an errant missile from a US Navy ship brought down a commercial airliner. There are still many who don't believe that Oswald shot President Kennedy. I saw one fellow on TV who thught hundreds of people were involved in the Kennedy assasination. That is one of the flaws in most conspiracy theories. As the event is investigated in a rational manner more and more people have to be involved to support the theory. But experience shows that it is difficult to keep a secret, and the more people that are involved, the more difficult it is to keep something secret.

I read a lot of places that a high percentage of people in the US believe that President Bush was somehow responsible for the 911 attacks. I saw one fellow on TV who was identified as some sort of college prof who said he was certain that Bush did it, but he didn't know how it was done. There are always a lot of conpiracy theorists after an event like 911. I've read that perhaps 15-20% of Americans don't believe that men have gone to the moon. A few years ago many people thought an errant missile from a US Navy ship brought down a commercial airliner. There are still many who don't believe that Oswald shot President Kennedy. I saw one fellow on TV who thught hundreds of people were involved in the Kennedy assasination. That is one of the flaws in most conspiracy theories. As the event is investigated in a rational manner more and more people have to be involved to support the theory. But experience shows that it is difficult to keep a secret, and the more people that are involved, the more difficult it is to keep something secret.

Here is an interesting article about the misfortune of lots of people who have won lotteries:

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveMoney/8lotteryWinnersWhoLostTheirMillions.aspx?page=2

I haven't been buying lottery tickets, but I have thought about what a winner should do. The first thing is to not have a picture taken holding the big check. Don't let anyone know you won. Remain anonymous. The next thing is, don't buy anything for six months or so. The next thing is, live off the interest, not the principal. I think people over-estimate the value of $1 million. It takes about $4 million these days to be able to safely live off the income from your money, especially considering the impact of taxes and inflation. A person with $4 million can live comfortably, but not like a rich person. The rich people today have incomes of $4 million per year.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Today's news is that a potential "elephant" with up to 15 billion barrels of oil has been found in the gulf of Mexico. It is very deep - in about 7000 feet of water, and then more than 10,000 feet below the ocean floor. I've been hearing about this oilfield in conversation with oil guys for six or seven years; they knew it was there, but it is hard to lift, and therefore expensive. A lot of capital investment is required, but with oil at nearly $70 per barrel it was now worth the risk. The informal discussions predicted far more than 15 billion barrels; maybe as much as 100 billion barrels in the Gulf of Mexico. Our former President Carter, who seems to think that America is the root of all the problems in the world, gave the Western half of the Gulf to Mexico for no good reason. There is probably a lot of oil in the region given to Mexico, but it won't be exploited any time soon because of Mexico's anti-American policies, and their backward economy that won't support them exploiting it themselves.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Alternative energy supply development is not likely to occur until demand is great enough that the oil producers cannot increase production sufficiently to make the alternative supplies uneconomical. The Arabs did that during the 70's. They drove the price of oil down and put all of the alternative producers out of business before they got started. I think our government should put a floor on the price of oil at a high enough level for alternative supplies to be economically feasible. They could do this as a tax on imported oil. We could fairly quickly, in five years or so, produce enough fuel to virtually eliminate the need to import oil from unfriendly countries. We could even consider having a lower tax on imports from Canada and Mexico. I've suggested this in letters to some Senators, but the ones who've replied didn't like the idea. I suspect that the major oil companies wouldn't like this idea, nor would the oil tanker business. Nor would anyone else with a huge investment in the current system. From a strategic viewpoint it would make sense for the US to develop alternative sources to eliminate the need to import oil from unfriendly nations, including the Arab states. Normally I'm not in favor of the government being involved in business activities unles, as in this case, national security is involved.

Back in the 1970's there was an oil shock when Arabs decided to show us how much power they had by restricting the oil supply. The company I worked for had us do a study to see if we should get into "renewable enegry." The result of the study was summarized as a case of Good News/ Bad News. The good news is that there is plenty of energy. The bad news is, it is expensive. I think that is still the situation. I have read that there are about 2 trillion barrels of oil available with current technology. That is enough to last the world about 100 years at current rates of consumption. But if sources such as oil sands and shale oil are considered there is much more.

Then there is coal. It is possible to convert coal into liquid fuel using existing technology. The Germans did it during World War II. A ton of coal can be converted into about four barrels of oil. The total estimated coal reserve in the US is about four trillion tons. If half of that were converted to oil, that would be about eight trillion barrels of oil. The US uses about 20 million barrels of oil per day, so would represent about a 1000-year supply at current consumption rates. Environmentists won't like hearing this news. It is said that the coal-to-oil conversion is clean, but older people probably remember when the St. Louis Cardinals' nickname was the "Gashouse Gang." This was because the Cardinals had little power, but won because they were all-out players who got their uniforms dirty by sliding into bases and diving after hit balls. The dirty suits reminded people of how the workers in the gashouse looked. Back in the early 20th century there was not much natural gas, and gas to heat homes was piped from a "gashouse" where coal was turned into methane.

The current congressional electioneering reminds me of a story about the legendary TCU football coach Dutch Meyers. TCU was playing Mississippi and one of the TCU linemen, Billy Jack, was being badly outplayed by his opponent. Coach Meyer called Bobby Joe from the bench and said, "That guy from Mississippi is whuppin' ole Billy Jack, can you stop that guy?" Bobby Joe says "Coach, I'll do my best." Coach Meyers says, "Sit back down Bobby Joe, Billy Jack is doing his best."

And that is the situation we have this year. The Democrats don't say what they will do to defeat Jihadis or improve the economy, but say they will do better than the Republicans. But the Republicans are doing their best. Actually the Republicans have a bigger challenge than Billy Jack did, because Bobby Joe wasn't actively aiding the guy from Mississippi. The Democrats try to prevent the Republicans from passing legislation that would increase our supply of oil while complaining about the price of gasoline, and their public statements about the war with Jihadis are making our allies in Iraq and other places nervous. while encouraging our enemies.

Actually, it is the pragmatic Democrats who are vague about their plans. The more liberal Democrats are clear about what they would do. They would retreat from Iraq and then ignore the Jihadis, and are certain that raising taxes will improve the economy.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Here is an interesting article about the supposed "consensus" on global warming. The refusal of the supporters of the global warming theory to even debate the science of the issue causes me to have doubts. The real issue is whether or not the draconian policy measures advocated by Al Gore and his friends are wise, not whether or not the temperature of the atmosphere has gone up 1 F over the last 100 years.

What climate consensus?

Peter C Glover

We see the headlines almost daily. “Global warming: passing the tipping point” (The Independent, February 11, 2006), “Climate change a bigger security threat than terrorism” (The Guardian, June 12, 2006) and “Sea rise could be catastrophic” (BBC News, March 23, 2006). Anyone familiar with the flow of media reports might easily conclude from all the media hype that man-made global warming or climate change is established science-fact. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Which begs the question: why, in the face of the highly speculative and selective nature of climate science, do media reports assume there is a consensual view – and collude with it in articulating a wholesale return of conjecture?

For those of us who have taken the trouble to study the issue and the media coverage of it, the shrillness of the mainstream media’s approach appears to owe more to scaremongering than to good investigative reporting– on an issue that could waste billions if the climate dissenters are correct. The fuss over global warming and climate-change revolves around one basic fact: that the world has undergone a one-degree warming of the ambient atmosphere over recent decades. And there is no doubt that a number of key scientists subscribe to the basic premise that global warming is primarily due to man’s activities and that, unless man cleans up his act, will continue on an upward-linear warming trajectory for the next 100 years.

These include Sir David King, chief adviser to the UK Government, Dr James Hansen, director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Science, and Dr Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Centre. No one questions that the media’s reporting of these scientists is perfectly valid. But there are many other eminent scientists who we are rarely hearing from. As Richard S Lindzen and Alfred P Sloan, professor of atmospheric science at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, asked in the The Wall Street Journal in April of this year: “How can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?”

Lindzen believes: “The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus the political stakes for policy makers provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts the money into science –whether for AIDS, or space, or climate – where there is nothing really alarming?” And he detects “a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libelled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis… what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man’s responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred”. Lindzen has also drawn attention to what he sees as “the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articlessubmitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest”.

Questioning the wisdom

He is not alone in doubting the scientific veracity of global warming claims. Dr Robert E Davis, associate professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, takes up the running: “In reality, we have a tragically short record of good [climate] observations.” In an article entitled,“Climate Cycle or Climate Psychic?” in TCS Daily, the online journal in which experts examine a wide range of contemporary issues, on May 12, 2006, Davis points to the variable and cyclical nature of climate change throughout history and questions the perceived wisdom that man-made greenhouse gases are proven to be the chief cause of climate change. “With the phenomenal accuracy afforded by hindsight, we know that, sometime around 1977-78, our planet underwent an abrupt shift from one climatic state (generally cold) to another (warm)… Of course, this climatic shift was retrospectively blamed on increasing greenhouse gases, because such dramatic and abrupt shifts just couldn’t be natural. Presumably nature, left to her own devices, does not cotton to wild mood swings. But is global warming really to blame? Not likely, based on some new analyses by University of California at Los Angeles geographers.” Davis goes on to set out the recent analysis from the university for which I do not have space here, but which can be seen via TCSDaily.com. Davis alludes to new research confirming that warming and cooling are naturally cyclical. Further that the findings are borne out by the global cooling cycle experienced between 1940 and 1975. During this period – and this is a major stumbling block for the future catastrophe theorists – the ambient global temperature actually fell while carbon emissions kept rising. Davis concludes: “The biggest problem with all of these somewhat cyclicalshifts is that no one knows for sure that a shift has actually taken place until many years after the event, when its too late to be useful. So be wary of global warming psychics warning us of unprecedented climate shifts. In most cases,they are only unprecedented because of the short life span of most scientists. Remember one of the absolutely fundamental and too-often unstated tenets of science – there’s little point in studying anything that doesn’t vary during a scientist’s lifetime.”

Dr Robert Balling, director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona University, deals specifically with one of the key problems – the variability and critical effect of clouds that makes accurate prediction just about impossible, leaving researchers “scratching [their] heads over climate change” (TCS Daily, April 5, 2006). Balling quotes Dr James Herbert, responsible for getting the whole global warming ball rolling in the 1980s, asadmitting: “The forces that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define climate changes.”

Dr Roy Spencer, principal research scientist at Huntsville, University of Alabama, observes of media coverage: “An intense global warming propaganda campaign by the media is currently under way” (“Global warming hysteria has arrived”, TCS Daily, April 4, 2006). He asserts that“government heavily funds a marching army of climate scientists whose funding depends upon man-made global warming remaining a threat. That is not to suggest that there is a conspiracy going on. It is merely to point out that climate scientists aren’t always unbiased keepers of the truth. The arena of global warming overflows with more strongly held opinions than it does unbiased or scientific truths”. (“Global warming, science or policy?”, TCSDaily, January 13, 2006). Spencer concludes: “Scientists who don’t believe in predictions of climate catastrophe need to rise above their fears of losing funding and speak out. Otherwise, this growing storm of global warming could do some real damage.”

As a recent House of Lords report noted, the mainstream media do have a history of, and predilection towards, reporting alarmist stories. On March14, 2005 a BBC news bulletin announced that violent crime was “spiralling”.Not according to the police and British Crime Survey figures, however. In fact, as the police and the survey pointed out, crime had declined steadily since 1998. In January 2003 the BBC, warning of a potential smallpox epidemic, broadcast: “Smallpox kills about 30 per cent of those infected.” The result? Lots of vaccine sold; no epidemic. Numerous other similar media scare stories could be cited. Prospective media epidemics related to killer flu viruses, killer bees, SARs and MMR jabs, mad cow disease, the return of TBand of course bird flu. None of which materialised. Whenever a research scientist warns of a potential “global catastrophe” (and presumably receives a grant to combat the threat) it seems that quite a few reporters, editors,broadcasters and publications are only too willing to oblige with appropriateheadlines.

Pandora’s Box of scare stories

On March 1, 2006 the BBC announced: “Bird flu could kill your cat” – on the basis of a single cat turning up its paws in Germany. The very same day the BBC ran the headline: “Cancer chemicals found in drinks cans.” The Food Standards Agency quickly put this scare story into perspective, pointing out: “The levels found are of no concern.” Even so, the public climate had received yet another media-induced dose of fear. But nothing seems to appeal quite as much as the Pandora’s Box of scare stories that climate change affords. Perhaps because their obvious “irrefutability” – we’ll all be dead by the time they do or do not happen – lends dramatic appeal.We’ve all probably heard or read that the Gulf Stream may be in danger of “expiring”. But most of us will not have heard the report debunked by,among others, Professor Carl Wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute. In a letter to Nature, Wunsch wrote: “The occurrence of a climate state without the Gulf Stream any time soon – within tens of millions of years – has a probability of little more than zero. The only way to produce an ocean circulation without a gulf stream is either to turn off the wind system, or to stop the Earth’s rotation, or both.” In short the original reports posited an entirely phoney climate scenario.

We have been told that the Greenland ice-cap, the whole of Antarctica and various glaciers are melting away, threatening catastrophic rising sea levels. The only problem with this scenario is that, as many other climatologists report, such assertions are wholly selective. While the ice is receding in some places, it is reported as advancing in others. And we were recently warned that polar bears were in danger of “facing extinction”. This report was however immediately rubbished by Dr Mitch Taylor, a polar bear biologist from the Eskimo nation Nunavut, an area four times as big as France. He wrote in the Toronto Star: “They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present. This complexity is why so many people find the truth less entertaining than a good story. It is silly to predict the demise of polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria.”

A few months ago 60 scientists wrote an open letter to new CanadianPrime Minister Stephen Harper. They called on him to “re-visit the science on global warming and review the policies inherited from his left-wing predecessor”. Referring to Kyoto as “pointless” – now proven to be a correct analysis based on the failure of almost every signatory nation to meets its ludicrously ambitious targets – the letter questioned both the climate science and the public billions about to be “wasted” on it. The letter received no coverage at all in the UK however until co-signatory Emeritus Professor Phillip Stott pursued the media “omission” with national broadcasters and editors, largely, as he notes on his website, without success. Can we imagine a letter from 60 pro climate-change scientists being ignored?

In July, Professor Lindzen again took up his pen in The Wall Street Journal, this time to respond to the further media hype created by former presidential candidate Al Gore’s “disaster” movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Gore’s film claims that we are headed for “a planetary emergency” made up of melting ice-sheets, huge increases in sea levels, more and stronger hurricanes, and invasions of tropical disease. Lindzen however reminded WSJ readers of the scientific fact that the Arctic was actually “warm or warmer in 1940”, before the last cyclical cooling period, after which a warming cycle took over again.He also noted that the latest scientific research suggests that, on average, the Greenland ice cap is actually growing, that mosquitoes, necessary for“tropical invasion”, “don’t require tropical warmth”, and that we have not been able to “attribute any particular hurricane to global warming”.

Most significantly, he approaches the whole issue with a humility rare in today’s scientific research community, referring to “the primitive state of weather and climate science”. The effect of this, he suggests, is that “science just does not know” as “the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing”. Lindzen sums up the climate case thus: “Most of the climate community has agreed since 1988 that global mean temperatures have increased on the order of one degree Fahrenheit over the past century, having risen significantly from about 1919 to 1940, decreased between 1940 and the early 1970s, increased again until the 90s, and remained essentially flat since1998.” As “we do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change, this task… [of prediction]… is currently impossible”, he points out.

Infamous summary

“Nevertheless there has been a persistent effort to suggest otherwise, and with surprising impact.” He also reminds us how the known climate science was “accurately presented” in the 1996 text of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report, in which scientists had made it clear they could not say with any certainty what role man played in climate change. By the time the panel’s administrators re-drafted the now infamous “summary for policy makers”, however, it read: “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” As Lindzen says: “This sufficed as the smoking gun for Kyoto.”
What we, as journalists, personally believe about the science of climatology and its associated predictions for global cataclysm is hardly the point. What clearly is the point, however, is that we ought not to be propagating media myths based on a “consensus” science view on globalwarming and climate change. Dissident climate scientists are not the only ones who cannot get the dissident science view into the mainstream. I have had the same difficulty convincing some editors and producers of the need to question the basic assumptions and wild predictions for the climate in 100 years time – surprising, really, when you consider the irony that climatologists (or meteorologists, as we otherwise know them) can’t predict what the “climate” will be in two weeks’ time with any degree of accuracy.

Peter C Glover is a freelance journalist and writer on media and cultural issues with a leading British current affairs blog (according to Technorati rankings) atwww.wiresfromthebunker.com

Friday, September 01, 2006

Here is an interesting article by Melanie Phillips. The perfidy of the media is obvious in England. I assume tha she includes the US press in her condemnation. If not, she should. Here the focus is more on trashing President Bush.

THE WAY A CIVILIZATION DIES

Melanie Phillip's sobering analysis:

Certain conclusions are now inescapable. First, hatred of Israel and the irrationality associated with that hatred have now reached unprecedented proportions within Britain and the west. Second, with a few honourable exceptions the mainstream media are no longer to be believed in anything they transmit, either in words or pictures, about the Middle East. It is only the blogosphere which is now performing the most elementary disciplines of journalism: to aspire to objectivity, to separate facts from prejudices, to apply basic checks to claims being made by partisans to a conflict, and to be particularly wary of those with a proven track record of lying. Third, the mainstream media must now be regarded as active accessories to the war being waged against the free world and therefore as a fifth column in that world – an enemy within. Fourth, the impact of the lies and distortions transmitted by the mainstream media in inflaming the already pathological hatred of the west within the Arab and Muslim world is incalculable. Fifth, the mainstream media’s vilification, demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel, based on outright fabrications and malevolent distortions, is imperilling the very existence of the country that is the front line of defence of the free world. Sixth, that vilification is also imperilling the safety and well-being of Jewish communities around the world, subject now to the double victimisation of attack by Islamists and attack by non-Muslims for belonging to a Jewish people that refuses to submit passively to a second attempt at genocidal slaughter and instead fights to defend itself.To date, as far as I can determine, not one mainstream editor or proprietor has acknowledged this corruption of the western media. The scale of this corruption now threatens to have a lethal impact on the course of human history. Hatred now drives not just the jihadists but their western dupes, too. Truth and freedom are indivisible. The deconstruction of the former inevitably presages the destruction of the latter. This is the way a civilisation dies.