DEDICATED TO EXPOSING DISINFORMATION AND PROPAGANDA AND TO PROMOTING UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS - WITH SHARP ANALYSIS AND BLUNT COMMENTARY. NO ADS. NO TIP-JAR. JUST THE TRUTH.
"Government scientists ..refuse to publicly release their temperature adjustment algorithms or software": the default interpretation of that is that they are crooks.It seems like a lot of people are coming to that conclusion.
Newsweek portrays James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, as untainted by corporate bribery.
Hansen was once profiled on CBS' "60 Minutes" as the "world's leading researcher on global warming." Not mentioned by Newsweek was that Hansen had acted as a consultant to Al Gore's slide-show presentations on global warming, that he had endorsed John Kerry for president, and had received a $250,000 grant from the foundation headed by Teresa Heinz Kerry.
NEW YORK — A New York City principal who came under fire for controversial comments about an "intifada" T-shirt that seemed to condone terrorism has resigned.Wrong. Intifada means something like uprising, and breaking the law. Almontaser's defense was taqqiya.
On Friday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg accepted the resignation of Debbie Almontaser, principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, an English-Arabic school set to open next month in Brooklyn, N.Y.
"I became convinced yesterday that this week's headlines were endangering the viability of Khalil Gibran International Academy, even though I apologized," Almontaser said in an e-mail to FOX News.
The principal had come under fire for comments she made to The New York Post about an "Intifada NYC" T-shirt that is sold by an activist group which shares an office with the Yemeni-American association that Almontaser represents.
The day before she condemned the T-shirt message's connection to Palestinian terrorism, Almontaser told the Post that "intifada" meant "shaking off" and the shirts represented women "shaking off" oppression.
The comments infuriated the city's United Federation of Teachers president, Randi Weingarten, who called the message "war-mongering."As far as the school is concerned, some good news may be that they haven't gotten the turnout they were hoping for. If not, good. Their flopping is well deserved.
“That’s something that ought to be denounced, not be explained away,” she told the paper.
At virtually the same time NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies was correcting historical climate data with the assistance of Climate Audit's Steve McIntyre, a British mathematician discovered serious flaws in papers used and cited by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its most recent Assessment Report.The errors are so glaring that one might conclude fraud was involved. Such a conclusion would be premature.
Douglas J. Keenan, a former Morgan Stanley arbitrageur and current independent mathematical researcher, identified "fabrications" in such studies that suggest a "marked lack of integrity in some important work on global warming that is relied upon by the IPCC" and that "the insignificance of urbanization effects on temperature measurements has not been established as reliably as the IPCC assessment report assumes."
"Tom McKenna is a longtime Stuart businessman who speaks only English. He says that's why he's being kicked out of the storefront on South Dixie Highway where he has run Seacoast Water Care for seven years. "I don't know how else to put it," said McKenna, 51. I'm not sure I do either.
On July 5 - the day after Independence Day - McKenna received a letter from landlord Ivan Munroe telling him to consider another location. Munroe said in his letter he wants to have "quality tenants serving the Spanish need in the area." "I guess I don't serve the 'Spanish need,' whatever that means," McKenna said. "I have plenty of Spanish-speaking workers come in here to buy water for their landscaping crews," he said. "And people in the neighborhood use the vending machines out front to fill their water bottles for their homes." .....
Munroe is a private business owner, and he can do anything he wants with his property including fulfill his "vision." But there's a double standard, and I don't think Munroe is a villain as much as he's the symptom of a bigger societal ill: Try telling a minority business owner to leave so you can bring in a quality tenant to serve the need of the English-speaking population.
You'd have activists organizing protests so quickly it'd make the annual snowbird migration seem slow. McKenna said it's going to cost between $10,000 and $15,000 to move - assuming he can even find another storefront in 30 days. And he knows he's going to lose some of the customers he's served for seven years.
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CUBA IS A TYRANNICAL TOTALITARIAN STATE WITH REAL POLITICAL PRISONERS.A well-known Cuban dissident has been freed from jail after serving nearly 15 years for revealing state security secrets, a human rights group has said.
Francisco Chaviano, a former teacher, was sentenced in 1995 and was released on parole on Friday.
The independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation said that he was Cuba's longest-serving political prisoner.
The Cuban government has not commented on Mr Chaviano's release. Mr Chaviano had been one of Cuba's leading dissidents and human rights activists in the early 1990s.
In the past Amnesty International has described his military trial as falling short of international standards.
The number of political prisoners in Cuba has fallen by about 20% since Raul Castro, brother of President Fidel Castro, was named as acting president just over a year ago, according to the Human Rights commission. But its spokesman, Elizardo Sanchez, said that there were still more than 200 such prisoners living in what he described as sub-human and degrading conditions.
The Cuban authorities denied that they were political prisoners, describing them as "counter-revolutionary mercenaries" on the payroll of the United States.
Also on Friday, another former political prisoner, Martha Beatriz Roque, held a news conference to denounce prison conditions. At the residence of the top US diplomat in Havana, she was joined by relatives of a number of dissidents currently in jail. The families complained of a lack of medical care, overcrowding and intimidation and said common criminals were treated better than political prisoners.
Chinanews, Guiyang, Aug 10 –China plans to survey every inch of the soil on the moon during the Chang'e project, said Ouyang Ziyuan, China's chief scientist for the moon exploration project.So why would China be spending money on moon exploration. Do they have something practical in mind? Yes they do.
“There are altogether 15 tons of helium-3 on earth, while on the moon, the total amount of Helium-3 can reach 1-5 million tons. Helium-3 is considered as a long-term, stable, safe, clean and cheap material for human beings to get nuclear energy through controllable nuclear fusion experiments. If we human beings can finally use such energy material to generate electricity, then China might need 10 tons of helium-3 every year and in the world, about 100 tons of helium-3 will be needed every year. This means that the helium-3 reserves on the moon can serve human society for at least 10,000 years,” he said.It turns out that if this alternate fusion scheme works, out we will not have to go to the moon for fuel. We can leave the He3 on the moon for use in space travel. On earth we can use Boron 11 and hydrogen. Hydrogen is abundant. There is enough Boron 11 for around 100,000 years. More than enough time to figure out what is next. Plus we need not get into resource wars over goodies in space. At least not for a while.
... a paper written by the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide & Global Change, and published Monday by the Science and Public Policy Institute stated that not only have temperatures been declining in Greenland in recent years, but also glaciers have actually expanded a bit (emphasis added):RTWT. THE WHOLE LINK FILLED THING.
The Greenland ice sheet would appear to have experienced no net loss of mass over the last decade for which data are available. Quite to the contrary, in fact, it was likely host to a net accumulation of ice, which Zwally et al. found to be producing a 0.03 ± 0.01 mm/year decline in sea-level.
... a British mathematician discovered serious flaws in papers used and cited by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its most recent Assessment Report.RTWT. THE WHOLE LINKED FILLED THING.
Douglas J. Keenan, a former Morgan Stanley arbitrageur and current independent mathematical researcher, identified "fabrications" in such studies that suggest a "marked lack of integrity in some important work on global warming that is relied upon by the IPCC" and that "the insignificance of urbanization effects on temperature measurements has not been established as reliably as the IPCC assessment report assumes."
There's more to life than war, taxes and politics - and a lot of it's more fun, too!
That's why every WEEKEND, here at THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, we post some of the cultural things we're into, things we think you might also find entertaining, enriching, and stimulating.
After all, the arts - ALL ARTS, not just fine arts - are a big part of what our liberty is for, and what we're fighting to defend!
"The banned method involves partially delivering a live fetus, then intentionally causing its death. Even before it was banned, the procedure was exceedingly rare, accounting for a fraction of 1 percent of all abortions.RELIAPUNDIT: The difference between murdering a baby inside the womb and murdering a partially delivered BABY is a difference without a MORAL distinction.
Instead, doctors typically cause the fetus's death surgically while it is still inside the womb and then remove it."
Greene said that in the experienced hands of hospital staff, the injections add no risk and are "trivially simple," compared with other obstetrical procedures. The main downside, he said, is that "it is yet another procedure that the patient has to endure."The only patient the doctor cares about is the so-called "mother"; not for a second is the fetus even considered a HUMAN BEING. How....clever... and immoral.
They decided that whether to have an injection should be up to the patient; some are comforted by the idea that the fetus has died before it is removed.RELIAPUNDIT: The same LIBERALS who decry death penalty EXECUTIONS done with potassium chloride - executions done to convicted MURDERERS only after exhaustive - seemingly unlimited appeals) - these same libs think THIS PROCEDURE is just fine AGAINST A DEFENSELESS BABY.
From a lawyer:LIKE I SAID: THIS IS INCREDIBLY HYPOCRITICAL OF THE LEFT.
Subject: Potassium Chloride??
Wowsa. I have done some litigation in the area of lethal injection, and potassium chloride is typically the third drug used in the "three drug cocktail" most states use when they execution someone. It is a painful, painful drug that stops the heart. To mitigate that pain for prisoners, states give them sodium thiopental, which is a short-acting barbituate, then pancuronium bromide, which acts as a paralyzing agent, THEN they give the potassium chloride. It would be extremely painful for a prisoner to have an injection of potassium chloride alone. It stuns me that that's what they're using to kill these babies in utero.
Persons with more medical knowledge than I will hopefully write in and confirm this, but this is my understanding, based on the litigation I've done and the doctors I've spoken with.
PERHAPS MIKE BLOOMBERG SHOULD HAVE WORRIED ABOUT THIS PROBLEM, instead of spending his time on trans-fats:This is not just a convenience issue, but a safety issue.In a Crisis, Subway Riders Get Little Guidance
Compared with commuters in many of the world’s leading cities, subway riders in New York live in something of an information vacuum once they enter the system’s 468 stations. For decades, riders have regarded their creaking and antiquated subway network as a minor miracle, tolerating frequent delays, cramped stations and malfunctioning public-address systems.
But the storm this week, highlighting yet again deficiencies in how the authority gets information out, seemed to push riders past the limits of their patience.posted at 10:22 AM by Glenn Reynolds
Erosion on the floor of the English Channel is revealing the remains of a busy Stone Age settlement, from a time when Europe and Britain were still linked by land, a team of archaeologists says.
The site, just off the Isle of Wight, dates back 8,000 years, not long before melting glaciers filled in the Channel and likely drove the settlement's last occupants north to higher ground.
The Security Council unanimously approved a resolution Friday expanding the United Nations' role in Iraq in a move aimed at reconciling the country's rival groups, winning support from neighboring countries and tackling Iraq's humanitarian crisis.THE UN FLED WHEN THEY WERE BOMBED DURING THE BEGINNING OF THE LIBERATION.
The resolution authorizes the U.N., at the request of the Iraqi government, to promote political talks among the country's ethnic and religious groups and a regional dialogue on issues including border security, energy and refugees.
The United States and Britain, who have the largest military forces in Iraq and cosponsored the resolution, believe the U.N. should play a greater part there because the world body is viewed by many as a more neutral party that can facilitate talks among feuding parties.
Except for a new concrete wall built recently, UN officials at the headquarters refused the sort of heavy security that the US military has put up around some sensitive civilian sites - because the UN "did not want a large American presence outside", said Salim Lone, the UN spokesman in the Iraqi capital.THEN, THEY CUT & RUN LIKE COWARDS/DEMOCRATS, (TAKE YOUR PICK).
The Supreme Court said Friday it would not prevent the U.S. from transferring an Algerian army veteran from Guantanamo Bay to his home country.BOTTOM-LINE:
Ahmed Bel Bacha, who has been held at Guantanamo for five years, has argued he would be tortured if turned over to Algerian officials. One of at least two dozen detainees who have expressed fear of abuse if sent home...
John Walker Lindh broke the law. But 'the American Taliban' wasn't a terrorist, and he deserves clemency.What?!? Excuse me? Seperating between just about anything he actually did and the descriptions that fit the crimes is unforgivably obscene. He should be sent to chair, pure and simple. This is propaganda and denial of the worst kind.
(IsraelNN.com) Testimony by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before the National Fraud Investigation Unit in the next few days is expected to clinch a decision by State Prosecutor Eran Shendar as to whether to issue an indictment in the Bank Leumi privatization affair.I'm going to keep an eye out for further developments on this.
Investigators will grill the prime minister about his involvement in the sale of the government shares in the bank during his reign as acting Finance Minister. The tender was issued by Olmert in November 2005, during the term of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Olmert is suspected of using his position to help two business associates compete in the bidding for the bank shares. One of the two, Australian business tycoon Frank Lowy, was set to become a controlling shareholder in Bank Leumi after it was privatized.
[...]
State Prosecutor Eran Shendar is right now deciding whether or not to proceed with the investigation of the Prime Minister, or even to indict him. Olmert's future months therefore depend heavily on the lengthy testimony he is expected to give in the next few days.
I know the DOS attack on ClimateAudit.org was real, as I helped them try to troubleshoot the problem, and the attack continues even now.BTW Climate Audit is back up.
Praise God.PARIS: Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, who sought to bring Jews and Catholics together in life, is continuing the mission in death.
In a funeral infused with symbolism, Jews will stand Friday in front of the sculpted saints of Notre Dame cathedral and recite one of Judaism's most sacred prayers — moments before an archbishop reads psalms for the Jew who converted to Catholicism, became a towering figure in the church and was even touted as a possible candidate for the papacy.
Lustiger's own faith remained complex up until his death Sunday at age 80 in a Paris hospice. He never rejected his Jewish identity, and worked to heal wounds between France's Jews and Catholics.
The longtime archbishop of Paris, whose mother died at Auschwitz and who was a confidant of late Pope John Paul II, asked that his funeral include both faiths.
"This was his wish, to share the remembrance this way," Arno Lustiger, a cousin who is a German historian and Auschwitz survivor, told The Associated Press.
Arno Lustiger, 83, will lead the reading of the kaddish mourning prayer, in Hebrew, in front of Notre Dame on Friday morning.
"For me, it was never for an instant a question of denying my Jewish identity. On the contrary," he said in Le Choix de Dieu (The Choice of God), conversations published in 1987.MAY HE REST IN PEACE.
A confidante of the late Pope John Paul II, Lustiger represented the pontiff at January 2005 ceremonies for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where his mother died.
"I don't want to return because it is a place of death and destruction," said Lustiger, who had visited the camp before. "If I am going, it is because the pope asked me."
Lustiger never publicly addressed the tragedy of his mother Gisele. But during France's National Day of Remembrance to commemorate the deportation and death of French Jews during World War II, Lustiger, taking part in the reading of names in 1999, came to his mother's.
"Gisele Lustiger," he intoned, then added, "ma maman" (my mama), before continuing, Catholic World News reported.
NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding.Graphs. More HERE.
The warmest year on record is now 1934.
1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place.
1921 takes third.
In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.
Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's plans to bolster Fatah may experience a grave setback in light of Hamas and Fatah's renewal of secret talks aimed at repairing relations. Olmert has been attempting to bolster Fatah's position and isolate Hamas, a militant group whose primary goal is to destroy Israel.But it's really because Abbas doesn't want any "progress", that's all. He says the Hamas takeover of the Gaza strip is "destructive", but that does not prove that he's against their existence at all.
"The talks are being held at a low-level," a Fatah official told the Jerusalem Post. "It's premature to talk about a breakthrough, but at least we are talking again."
Olmert said on Tuesday that he does not have information about the talks, according to sources in the prime minister's office. However during his meeting with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Monday, Olmert said that the renewal of Fatah-Hamas talks could have harsh "diplomatic ramifications," underscoring his opposition to a united Palestinian government. Abbas vowed not to renew contact with the militant group.
A Hamas-Fatah reuinification could undermine all diplomatic progress achieved so far between Olmert and Abbas.
The Saudi billionaire is determined to destroy the voice of any writer in the U.K. or the U.S. who opposes or exposes Islam and he's succeeded again and again. He's determined to destroy this writer too. But Dr. Ehrenfeld is fighting like a rat in a drain."...Bin Mahfouz sued Ehrenfeld for libel in Britain. In the High Court, bin Mahfouz’ attorneys informed Justice David Eady that former CIA director R. James Woolsey had written the foreword for Funding Evil. “Say no more,” declared Eady. “I award you a judgment by default, and if you want, an injunction, too.”The idiotic and traitorous dhimmitude of the high level British judge had no authority over Ehrenfeld however. As an American citizen, she went to American courts and claimed her constitutional rights. The American courts backed her up so she defied the judgement of Eady and Bin Mahfouz was foiled.
Justice Eady then ordered Ehrenfeld to apologize, retract, pay bin Mahfouz $225,913.37 in damages and destroy copies of her book."
Lincoln was elected with half the vote in half the nation (which INCLUDED the south), or 25%.Bush has more time before his second term is up, and there is ample time for things to continue as they are - to such a degree as to push him well over 50% again.
And six months before the election of 1864, he was less popular than that - maybe as low as 20%! In fact, he thought he was going to lose. Only a succession of war victories boosted his popularity. With just six months to go before re-election.
Adults aged 19 to 29 are the biggest group of the newly uninsured, according to an independent research group's report released on WednesdayAVERAGE MONTHLY HEALTHCARE INSURANCE PAYMENTS FOR THIS DEMOGRAPHIC IS $95 - OR LESS.
That age group made up 30 percent of the 45 million Americans without health insurance in 2005, according to the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund.
Young adults, many who are just entering the workforce and can't afford the high cost of individual insurance, are the big drivers of an increase in uninsured adults, the report said.
"They are at a vulnerable place in the labor market," said study author Sara Collins, an assistant vice president at the fund.
U.S. employers, especially smaller businesses, are increasingly opting not to offer health insurance, leaving workers to fend for themselves in the health insurance market.
"If you don't get coverage through your employer, you're left to the individual market, and it's a very difficult market to negotiate," Collins said.
Health insurance officials often cite their efforts to market to uninsured young adults. Insurers describe this demographic as the "young invincibles," saying this group adopts an attitude that their youth protects them and therefore they do not need insurance.
Two fossils found in Kenya have shaken the human family tree, possibly rearranging major branches thought to be in a straight ancestral line to Homo sapiens.The SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS had for decades been that Homo erectus and Homo habilus evolved one after the other. Now, that SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS has to be throw out.
Scientists who dated and analyzed the specimens — a 1.44 million-year-old Homo habilis and a 1.55 million-year-old Homo erectus — said their findings challenged the conventional view that these species evolved one after the other. Instead, they apparently lived side by side in eastern Africa for almost half a million years.
If this interpretation is correct, the early evolution of the genus Homo is left even more shrouded in mystery than before. It means that both habilis and erectus must have originated from a common ancestor between two million and three million years ago, a time when fossil hunters had drawn a virtual blank.
Although the findings do not change the relationship of Homo erectus as a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, scientists said, the surprisingly diminutive erectus skull implies that this species was not as humanlike as once thought.
Other paleontologists and experts in human evolution said the discovery strongly suggested that the early transition from more apelike to more humanlike ancestors was still poorly understood.
"As you may recall, I twice discussed the questionably anti-Semitic behavior of Pace administrators in mistreating the campus student Jewish organization, while kowtowing to demands of the student Muslim groups.
In the columns, I make it clear that the campus administration took radically different approaches to anti-Semitic behavior and anti-Muslim behavior. When a Menorah was desecrated on campus and a swastika was drawn on a Holocaust memorial event poster, the University's president David A. Caputo labeled the events as "bias incidents." When a paperback Koran was tossed in a toilet - resulting in minimal water damage - Caputo labeled the incident as a "hate crime" that outraged him.
To realize the great lengths to which the University mistreated both these incidents, I highly recommend you read my column from January of this year. The treatment of both incidents gives the following news greater context.
Now, police have discovered who was responsible for the Koran-toilet incident: Stanislav Shmulevich, a Russian Jewish immigrant who was a student at Pace while anti-Semitic vandalism was occurring and going unpunished. He is being charged with felony hate crimes that could land him in jail for up to four years - just for putting a book in a toilet....
Now, back to the paperback Koran and its unfortunate swim in a toilet bowl. Is this really a hate crime? No one was physically hurt. The damage to the Koran was minimal. The Koran in question was a paperback copy - not a priceless religious document. There was no personal target of the demonstration - the target was a paperback book. This was a constitutionally protected act of free speech, regardless of what New York's hate crime bill states, the same way dropping a crucifix in a jar of urine was protected speech.
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