BETTER FRED THAN RED!
OH, YES, OH, YES: BETTER FRED THAN RED!
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.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
HOW DID EVEN SOME CONSERVATIVES FAIL TO GET THE REAL STORY HERE?
Even conservatives make mistakes, and that appears to be the case here, one of a few things with which I disagree with Michelle Malkin. Last December, there was a stink in Seattle after Sea-Tac airport removed Christmas trees from the complex, supposedly because a rabbi protested, but it was really because he'd asked for menorahs to be added along with the trees, and instead of considering his request, they reacted by removing the trees instead. This led to an anti-semitic backlash, which doesn't sound too surprising in an awful leftist bastion like Seattle.
But what really escapes me is how some conservatives failed to get the real story behind the Sea-Tac stink. Mark Steyn found what really went on, but Michelle didn't?!?
Now, I'm not sure what's led to Sea-Tac airport banning any and all holidays this time, but I will say that they're overreacting, and it's a shame. And at the same time, it's also a shame that even some conservatives didn't understand what the real picture was behind the earlier case.
But what really escapes me is how some conservatives failed to get the real story behind the Sea-Tac stink. Mark Steyn found what really went on, but Michelle didn't?!?
Now, I'm not sure what's led to Sea-Tac airport banning any and all holidays this time, but I will say that they're overreacting, and it's a shame. And at the same time, it's also a shame that even some conservatives didn't understand what the real picture was behind the earlier case.
WHY THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH MUST CHOOSE WAR AND TAKE ON THE DEFENSE OF WESTERN CIVILIATION
Why The Christian Church Must Take On The Battle For The Defense Of Western Civilization
(An excerpt from a larger work, by me of all people!)
... "Is this a Christian attitude," or, in other words, does it betray Christian values to reject ecumenicism, or, an approach of agreement, cooperation, and understanding, with an Abrahamic religion?
In short, I think we need not even address that question. Because, before we even get to it, our answer should be clear to us.
The first principle of the Judeo-Christian Christian tradition, and really, the first thing the Bible, itself, discusses, in Genesis, about the relationship of God and man, is that man was created in the Image of God.
This does not mean that we look like God. What it means is that we were created with the attributes of God.
And, what are the attributes of God?
We need only look at that passage in the beginning of Genesis to understand. "In the beginning,
And, what's more, God wants man to have Freedom of choice. He wants man to come to Him of his own accord. When man sinned, God could have unmade the sin, and started over, but instead, God worked with the new reality man had created, and even promised to make something more glorious of it. In other words, when God was confronted with man's sin, and He banished the sinners from the Garden of Eden, He did not make it His next step to take away man's Free Will, but instead, chose for man to retain Free Will, and He chose to remain a partner in man's creative endeavors.
Reading the rest of the Hebrew Bible, and the Gospels, and the Letters, it becomes apparent that God made this decision precisely because He wants man to be Free, otherwise, man would not be free to choose Him.
In other words - and I can't stress enough how important this is -
The first principle of the Bible is that man needs to be Free, and this comes before anything else.
This is not at all a principle of Islam. In Islam, a good Muslim is to learn the Koran by heart, and to follow its rules by rote. He is not to be analytical, because his analysis can never add anything to that which Allah has already provided. The Koran, itself, is the final word of Allah to man. It is not to be amended or added to. It is to be followed only.
Man's creativity is to be impeded. Music must not be made of anything more than chanting and drums. Art must not be representational. It is forbidden for a Muslim to depict the human form in a sculpture, for instance.
Man is to love the paradise Mohammed calls him towards. He is not to love the Earthly realm of matter. In fact, much of the material world is haram (forbidden), to the extent that man is forbidden to even view the form of any female not his own wife.
In Islam, man is not forbidden to be generous to other men, so long as his fellow man is a Muslim. But, there is no reason to be generous to a non-Muslim. In fact, one is not to take a non-Muslim as a friend.
In Islam, compassion is not the central theme. Allah can not be said to be the equivalent of Love, as the Bible tells us Yahweh is. Allah is instead, probably, more easily called a god of justice, as defined by Allah. Or, is that justice defined by Mohammed. We can't be sure, because when it comes right down to it, the only person from whom we have learned of Allah, is the prophet himself. And, we shall never hear another new word about Allah from anyone else.
So, we see, the god of Islam is not anything like the God of the Bible.
We delude ourselves if we think the two can be compared.What's more, we put ourselves in danger, and, we put our very ability to practice our religion in danger, if we accept the idea that God and Allah are the same. Because Allah does not accept divergence of opinion. It's Allah's way, or the highway. No other opinions, or ideas, or beliefs, are allowed. Free Speech, Freedom of Conscience, Democracy, these are all but the baubles and bangles of a decadent Western Civilization, as far as the most learned men of Islam are concerned. They all lead to disobedience, and sloth, and weakness, we are told. And most importantly, what we need to know is they all lead away from Allah.
Therefore, if we are to accept that Allah is the same as the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible, we are accepting that Allah is preeminent, and our God must be subservient. We are accepting, therefore, that we are no longer to be free, rational, and analytical beings. Therefore, we are accepting that we no longer can make our own choices, for Democracy, for Freedom of Conscience, or for our God Himself. If we accept such, we are condemning ourselves to the destruction of Western Civilization, and we are taking away the very duty of man himself, that is to express himself as a being made in the Image of God.
The Christian Church, in general, must come to understand these things. The most important endeavor the Christian Church can undertake, at this point in time, is to understand that the defense of Western Civilization is of utmost importance to the existence of Christianity. Without the protection Western Civilization provides to Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Speech, and Democracy, Christianity itself would go into a dark age. Christians would be forced to worship underground, away from the light of day. Fewer people would hear the gospel preached, and therefore, fewer people would be free to make a choice to follow the God of the Bible.
The Christian Church must understand that Western Civilization and the Bible go hand in hand.
The Christian Church must become warriors for Western Civilization. I am not saying that this means the Church itself must call for violence. No, the Church, at this juncture has the luxury still of keeping its advocacy in the realm of peace. We can still fight our battles in the realm of ideology.
However, if the Christian Church, and the West, allow too many of our cherished Freedoms to slip away, it will become incumbent upono the Church, once again, to go into the business of War. And, that will be a shame upon us, not because it would be wrong to call for war in such a case, but, because we could have won our war without violence, if we had only acted sooner.
Let this be a warning to all Pastors, Priests, Rabbis, and Teachers of the Bible of the God of Abraham.
(An excerpt from a larger work, by me of all people!)
... "Is this a Christian attitude," or, in other words, does it betray Christian values to reject ecumenicism, or, an approach of agreement, cooperation, and understanding, with an Abrahamic religion?
In short, I think we need not even address that question. Because, before we even get to it, our answer should be clear to us.
The first principle of the Judeo-Christian Christian tradition, and really, the first thing the Bible, itself, discusses, in Genesis, about the relationship of God and man, is that man was created in the Image of God.
This does not mean that we look like God. What it means is that we were created with the attributes of God.
And, what are the attributes of God?
We need only look at that passage in the beginning of Genesis to understand. "In the beginning,
1) God created the heavens and the Earth,"Both Judaism and Christianity teach that man, having been made in the Image of his Creator, also inherently possesses these attributes to some extent. Therefore, man is meant to be creative, he is meant to love matter, he is meant to be reasonable and analytical, he is meant to reshape his work, and even, the work of God's hands, using the gifts of reason and analysis, and more than anything, man is meant to be Free, as God, most indubitably, is Himself.
2) He created the beasts of the field,
3) He separated the waters,
4) He created man of dust, and
5) breathed His own life into him, and then,
6) seeing that it was not good for man to be lonely, and moved by compassion, He created, for him, a female companion named Eve.
We can take from this that man God and, thereby man, are, among other things,
1) Creative and magnificent of vision
2) in love with reproduction and the process of life
3) analytical in our creativity, and completely willing to remake, or reshape, what we have already made, even if we have seen that "it is Good."
4) in love with matter itself
5) generous, willing to give of ourselves in our own creative process
6) loving, reasonable, and willing to change our plans, when moved by compassion.There are many other things that can be inferred from the opening passage of Genesis, but this is enough for my argument. The point is, both Judaism and Christianity teach that God is loving, reasonable, and creative.
And, what's more, God wants man to have Freedom of choice. He wants man to come to Him of his own accord. When man sinned, God could have unmade the sin, and started over, but instead, God worked with the new reality man had created, and even promised to make something more glorious of it. In other words, when God was confronted with man's sin, and He banished the sinners from the Garden of Eden, He did not make it His next step to take away man's Free Will, but instead, chose for man to retain Free Will, and He chose to remain a partner in man's creative endeavors.
Reading the rest of the Hebrew Bible, and the Gospels, and the Letters, it becomes apparent that God made this decision precisely because He wants man to be Free, otherwise, man would not be free to choose Him.
In other words - and I can't stress enough how important this is -
The first principle of the Bible is that man needs to be Free, and this comes before anything else.
This is not at all a principle of Islam. In Islam, a good Muslim is to learn the Koran by heart, and to follow its rules by rote. He is not to be analytical, because his analysis can never add anything to that which Allah has already provided. The Koran, itself, is the final word of Allah to man. It is not to be amended or added to. It is to be followed only.
Man's creativity is to be impeded. Music must not be made of anything more than chanting and drums. Art must not be representational. It is forbidden for a Muslim to depict the human form in a sculpture, for instance.
Man is to love the paradise Mohammed calls him towards. He is not to love the Earthly realm of matter. In fact, much of the material world is haram (forbidden), to the extent that man is forbidden to even view the form of any female not his own wife.
In Islam, man is not forbidden to be generous to other men, so long as his fellow man is a Muslim. But, there is no reason to be generous to a non-Muslim. In fact, one is not to take a non-Muslim as a friend.
In Islam, compassion is not the central theme. Allah can not be said to be the equivalent of Love, as the Bible tells us Yahweh is. Allah is instead, probably, more easily called a god of justice, as defined by Allah. Or, is that justice defined by Mohammed. We can't be sure, because when it comes right down to it, the only person from whom we have learned of Allah, is the prophet himself. And, we shall never hear another new word about Allah from anyone else.
So, we see, the god of Islam is not anything like the God of the Bible.
We delude ourselves if we think the two can be compared.What's more, we put ourselves in danger, and, we put our very ability to practice our religion in danger, if we accept the idea that God and Allah are the same. Because Allah does not accept divergence of opinion. It's Allah's way, or the highway. No other opinions, or ideas, or beliefs, are allowed. Free Speech, Freedom of Conscience, Democracy, these are all but the baubles and bangles of a decadent Western Civilization, as far as the most learned men of Islam are concerned. They all lead to disobedience, and sloth, and weakness, we are told. And most importantly, what we need to know is they all lead away from Allah.
Therefore, if we are to accept that Allah is the same as the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible, we are accepting that Allah is preeminent, and our God must be subservient. We are accepting, therefore, that we are no longer to be free, rational, and analytical beings. Therefore, we are accepting that we no longer can make our own choices, for Democracy, for Freedom of Conscience, or for our God Himself. If we accept such, we are condemning ourselves to the destruction of Western Civilization, and we are taking away the very duty of man himself, that is to express himself as a being made in the Image of God.
The Christian Church, in general, must come to understand these things. The most important endeavor the Christian Church can undertake, at this point in time, is to understand that the defense of Western Civilization is of utmost importance to the existence of Christianity. Without the protection Western Civilization provides to Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Speech, and Democracy, Christianity itself would go into a dark age. Christians would be forced to worship underground, away from the light of day. Fewer people would hear the gospel preached, and therefore, fewer people would be free to make a choice to follow the God of the Bible.
The Christian Church must understand that Western Civilization and the Bible go hand in hand.
The Christian Church must become warriors for Western Civilization. I am not saying that this means the Church itself must call for violence. No, the Church, at this juncture has the luxury still of keeping its advocacy in the realm of peace. We can still fight our battles in the realm of ideology.
However, if the Christian Church, and the West, allow too many of our cherished Freedoms to slip away, it will become incumbent upono the Church, once again, to go into the business of War. And, that will be a shame upon us, not because it would be wrong to call for war in such a case, but, because we could have won our war without violence, if we had only acted sooner.
Let this be a warning to all Pastors, Priests, Rabbis, and Teachers of the Bible of the God of Abraham.
AMERICA THE IMPERFECT
Vanderleun has some thoughts about the childish people who expect America to be perfect -- when perfection is arbitrary anyway. Some excerpts:
In the discussion of a previous post, a commenter delivers a vest pocket critique of America seen from abroad. The salient part reads:
By way of example, my day-to-day experience tells me that while the lumbering results of having "way too much food" are more than visible in America, so is the cult of "way too much exercise." They are the opposite ends of the bell-curve. In the middle I see that most Americans are mindful of what they eat because the can afford to be. Making this possible is a system of food production and distribution that delivers such a wide-spectrum of food choice at cheap prices (organic, non-organic, and junk) to every niche of the landscape. Indeed, the system is so advanced and sophisticated that we have achieved a society in which one of the major problems among the poor that remain is obesity....
The impression that Americans are "turning their cities' air into poison gas" is likewise well-meant but ill-informed. It is demonstrably not true. It is not true from a look at the steadily declining levels of emission in a steadily increasing and mobile population over the decades. It is can be seen to be obviously untrue from the simple fact of living in America for six decades -- decades that have seen more deep and lasting social change than at any other time in the history of the country, perhaps the world. I was, as constant readers may know, born in Los Angeles six decades ago. I remember the poison air of the 1950s. I remember the smog alerts, the soot that would settle on the windowsills and grind its way into the clothes, and the black smudge that would be visible within a block of my front yard. I saw it again some three decades later, but not in Los Angeles, but in London.....
As is often the case in the envious world today, we encounter -- in the commenter's plaint and elsewhere at home and abroad -- a mindset in which "the perfect is the enemy of the good." It is a mindset that views anything less than some imagined perfect state as somehow failing and worthy of excoriation. It is a mindset in which, if the real world falls short of the imagined perfection, it is the real world that is ill rather than the mind of the imaginer. It is a mindset which finds nothing is impossible as long as others much do the work and pay the price. It is a mindset forever doomed to disappointment; a doom in which it takes a strange and almost masochistic pleasure.....
The commenter seems to feel that it is there is some implicit global responsibility of America to set a "good" example rather than, as he feels, its current "bad" example. He seems to feel that as America goes, so goes the world; that the Brits drive big cars in Britain not because they make that choice as free people but because 'American mind waves' force them to do so against their will; that the Chinese, if impressed by some future America's return to some eco-idyllic state, will shrug off the desires that the increasing wealth and semi-liberty of their situation affords them and return to the days of the ox-cart, the rickshaw, and famine. In short he places too much power in the hands of America and too little in the hands of the human individuals in the rest of the world. To this way of thinking the example is all, and that only if the example is a "good" example can the world be perfected.....
We don't try to force our example on the world. If we did want to do that we could force it easily enough by becoming a real imperial power, but that would mean building the military to a level that would not make for a good society. (Something discussed extensively in The Federalist Papers and since and always discarded.) Some of course will rise to object that our current war of intervention is proof at last of our imperial ambitions, but this is only because they have little insight and understanding of exactly how gently and carefully we are moving in Iraq; that they do not comprehend just how great a power we hold in reserve and still abjure to use. Iraq is not a war of conquest. It is a war of patty-cake.....
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
In the discussion of a previous post, a commenter delivers a vest pocket critique of America seen from abroad. The salient part reads:
As for the last paragraph - well, personally, I don't give a damn whether Americans kill themselves through gross overeating and under-exercising, filling their food with chemicals for short-term profit or turning their cities' air into poison gas - not to mention handing terrorists billions of dollars to kill Americans (and others) with.
What I do mind is that Americans are setting a bad example for everyone else; as a small example the streets of Britain are filled with grotesquely large 4x4s. I am quite sure the fashion comes from across the pond. As another, the Chinese might well ask why they should restrict their economic growth when America already uses many times more fuel than they do - and they'd be right.
By way of example, my day-to-day experience tells me that while the lumbering results of having "way too much food" are more than visible in America, so is the cult of "way too much exercise." They are the opposite ends of the bell-curve. In the middle I see that most Americans are mindful of what they eat because the can afford to be. Making this possible is a system of food production and distribution that delivers such a wide-spectrum of food choice at cheap prices (organic, non-organic, and junk) to every niche of the landscape. Indeed, the system is so advanced and sophisticated that we have achieved a society in which one of the major problems among the poor that remain is obesity....
The impression that Americans are "turning their cities' air into poison gas" is likewise well-meant but ill-informed. It is demonstrably not true. It is not true from a look at the steadily declining levels of emission in a steadily increasing and mobile population over the decades. It is can be seen to be obviously untrue from the simple fact of living in America for six decades -- decades that have seen more deep and lasting social change than at any other time in the history of the country, perhaps the world. I was, as constant readers may know, born in Los Angeles six decades ago. I remember the poison air of the 1950s. I remember the smog alerts, the soot that would settle on the windowsills and grind its way into the clothes, and the black smudge that would be visible within a block of my front yard. I saw it again some three decades later, but not in Los Angeles, but in London.....
As is often the case in the envious world today, we encounter -- in the commenter's plaint and elsewhere at home and abroad -- a mindset in which "the perfect is the enemy of the good." It is a mindset that views anything less than some imagined perfect state as somehow failing and worthy of excoriation. It is a mindset in which, if the real world falls short of the imagined perfection, it is the real world that is ill rather than the mind of the imaginer. It is a mindset which finds nothing is impossible as long as others much do the work and pay the price. It is a mindset forever doomed to disappointment; a doom in which it takes a strange and almost masochistic pleasure.....
The commenter seems to feel that it is there is some implicit global responsibility of America to set a "good" example rather than, as he feels, its current "bad" example. He seems to feel that as America goes, so goes the world; that the Brits drive big cars in Britain not because they make that choice as free people but because 'American mind waves' force them to do so against their will; that the Chinese, if impressed by some future America's return to some eco-idyllic state, will shrug off the desires that the increasing wealth and semi-liberty of their situation affords them and return to the days of the ox-cart, the rickshaw, and famine. In short he places too much power in the hands of America and too little in the hands of the human individuals in the rest of the world. To this way of thinking the example is all, and that only if the example is a "good" example can the world be perfected.....
We don't try to force our example on the world. If we did want to do that we could force it easily enough by becoming a real imperial power, but that would mean building the military to a level that would not make for a good society. (Something discussed extensively in The Federalist Papers and since and always discarded.) Some of course will rise to object that our current war of intervention is proof at last of our imperial ambitions, but this is only because they have little insight and understanding of exactly how gently and carefully we are moving in Iraq; that they do not comprehend just how great a power we hold in reserve and still abjure to use. Iraq is not a war of conquest. It is a war of patty-cake.....
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
That good ol' public transport the Greenies love (for others; not for themselves)
Quadriplegic left on an Australian government-run train after a breakdown. Nobody gave a stuff. Only his cellphone saved him -- with the assistance of voluntary workers. Despite much notification, at no time did any government worker lift a finger to assist him
A QUADRIPLEGIC left stranded on a train for four hours without essential medication was told by CityRail staff he would be assisted in "two or three days". Wheelchair-bound Mark McCauley suffered the humiliation of eventually being removed by construction workers using a forklift during the first Harbour Bridge train fiasco. Quadriplegic and paraplegic advocates yesterday blasted CityRail for the shameful - and potentially life-threatening - treatment of Mr McCauley, a senior lecturer at the College of Law in St Leonards.
An internal investigation report, revealed by The Daily Telegraph yesterday, found CityRail has absolutely no procedures for the care of disabled passengers in emergencies. All other passengers in the March 14 incident were evacuated three hours earlier, leaving Mr McCauley alone without any advice about when he would be rescued.
"I started to get agitated because no one seemed to know I was stuck on the train and it was getting towards the time when I need my medication," Mr McCauley told The Saturday Daily Telegraph. "I rang CityRail and told the lady I was stuck . . . and at the end of the conversation she said 'That's fine sir, somebody will get back to you in two or three days'. "I said 'Don't bother I'll be dead by then.' It was like she was a robot."
Mr McCauley then called triple-0 and asked police to intervene. They arranged to have another CityRail manager call him back just before 8pm. "She said we can't get you off the train until we restore power - it could be in the early hours of the morning. I said to her 'I'm a quadriplegic do you know what that means?' She said yes but she clearly didn't."
It took construction workers at North Sydney station to volunteer to use a forklift to take Mr McCauley off the train just before 10pm - more than four hours after he boarded for the 15 minute journey to the city.
Mr McCauley said four letters to Premier Morris Iemma and Transport Minister John Watkins went unanswered. CityRail posted him two one-day free rail passes, which he described as a slap in the face.
Reeling from a week of rail shame, a contrite Mr Watkins last night said CityRail's treatment of Mr McCauley was "completely unacceptable". "I'm disappointed we have not responded more formally to him and I will certainly write to him detailing the outcomes in the final report and the steps the Government is taking to prevent it happening again," he said.
The Quadriplegic and Paraplegic Association of NSW last night demanded CityRail develop protocols to rescue people with mobility aids and other disabilities. "What would they do in the event of a terrorist attack?," ParaQuad chief executive Max Bosotti said last night.
Source
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
A QUADRIPLEGIC left stranded on a train for four hours without essential medication was told by CityRail staff he would be assisted in "two or three days". Wheelchair-bound Mark McCauley suffered the humiliation of eventually being removed by construction workers using a forklift during the first Harbour Bridge train fiasco. Quadriplegic and paraplegic advocates yesterday blasted CityRail for the shameful - and potentially life-threatening - treatment of Mr McCauley, a senior lecturer at the College of Law in St Leonards.
An internal investigation report, revealed by The Daily Telegraph yesterday, found CityRail has absolutely no procedures for the care of disabled passengers in emergencies. All other passengers in the March 14 incident were evacuated three hours earlier, leaving Mr McCauley alone without any advice about when he would be rescued.
"I started to get agitated because no one seemed to know I was stuck on the train and it was getting towards the time when I need my medication," Mr McCauley told The Saturday Daily Telegraph. "I rang CityRail and told the lady I was stuck . . . and at the end of the conversation she said 'That's fine sir, somebody will get back to you in two or three days'. "I said 'Don't bother I'll be dead by then.' It was like she was a robot."
Mr McCauley then called triple-0 and asked police to intervene. They arranged to have another CityRail manager call him back just before 8pm. "She said we can't get you off the train until we restore power - it could be in the early hours of the morning. I said to her 'I'm a quadriplegic do you know what that means?' She said yes but she clearly didn't."
It took construction workers at North Sydney station to volunteer to use a forklift to take Mr McCauley off the train just before 10pm - more than four hours after he boarded for the 15 minute journey to the city.
Mr McCauley said four letters to Premier Morris Iemma and Transport Minister John Watkins went unanswered. CityRail posted him two one-day free rail passes, which he described as a slap in the face.
Reeling from a week of rail shame, a contrite Mr Watkins last night said CityRail's treatment of Mr McCauley was "completely unacceptable". "I'm disappointed we have not responded more formally to him and I will certainly write to him detailing the outcomes in the final report and the steps the Government is taking to prevent it happening again," he said.
The Quadriplegic and Paraplegic Association of NSW last night demanded CityRail develop protocols to rescue people with mobility aids and other disabilities. "What would they do in the event of a terrorist attack?," ParaQuad chief executive Max Bosotti said last night.
Source
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
Friday, July 13, 2007
IS MUSHARRAF ABOUT TO POUNCE ON ZAWAHIRI?
DAWN (PAKISTAN):
The army started deploying troops in NWFP’s southern districts, adjoining the Waziristan region, amid reports that an operation to curb militancy and extremism was imminent.HOT AIR THINKS MAYBE MUSHARRAF IS MOVING AGAINST AWAHIRI HIMSELF, BUT PROBABLY NOT.
Sources told Dawn on Thursday that 12,000 troops, backed by artillery units, were moved to Tank and Dera Ismail Khan districts from Okara.
I THINK THAT HE IS.
I THINK SO BECAUSE
(1) ZAWAHIRI IS DIRECTLY THREATENING PAKISTAN,WHY THIS AREA?
AND(2) MUSHARRAF TAKES THIS VERY SERIOUSLY.
AND BECAUSE (3) THE RECENT SPATE OF EXPEDITED MESSAGES FROM ZAWAHIRI LEADS ME TO BELIEVE THAT HE IS HOLED UP IN BALOCHISTAN/WAZIRISTAN AREA.
BECAUSE THE MESSAGES ARE AVERAGING ABOUT 9 DAYS FROM THE NEWS THEY COMMENT ON, AND THESE TRIBAL AREAS ARE A 9 DAY WALK/RIDE TO QUETTA - A CITY PAKISTANI CITY WHICH IS IN BALOCHISTAN AND THE NEAREST BIGGISH CITY TO WHICH I FEEL AQ COULD EASILY SEND A DISC IN ORDER TO RELIABLY DISSEMINATE AQ'S MESSAGE.BTW: ALLAHPUNDIT ALSO THINKS ZAWAHIRI IS NEAR QUETTA.
WE SHALL SOON SEE.
NHS STATS SHOW DIAGNOSIS WAIT TIMES ON BREAST CANCER SUCK
BBC:
DON'T FALL FOR IT!
Breast cancer targets 'failing'IF IT DOESN'T WORK WELL THERE,M THEN WE SHGOULDN;T TRY IT HERE. YET, THIS IS WHAT THE DEMS ALL PROMISE.
An "alarming" number of patients with suspected breast cancer are waiting too long for a diagnosis, doctors warn.
Government targets dictate all suspected breast cancers should be seen by a specialist within two weeks.
But a team at Bristol's Frenchay Hospital discovered an increase in the number of positive diagnoses among women deemed to be non-urgent cases.
Doctors said the target was failing...
DON'T FALL FOR IT!
Fusion: The Russians Are Coming
Zee News reports on a Russian scientist who wants Russia to export fusion power plants.
There is a shorter path. The direction taken by Tri Alpha Energy is one of those paths. The work by Dr. Robert Bussard is another.
A few of us are so convinced that this work has to go forward that we are working on an open source fusion reactor. You can find out more about it at IEC Fusion Technology blog. If you want to join in the fun you can visit or join the
IEC Fusion Newsgroup. We talk about the science, the technology, and funding the project, among other things.
We need to get a move on. The Russians are coming.
Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values
Tokyo, July 13: Russia is eyeing on designing thermonuclear plants for domestic and international market in the next 20 to 25 years, nuclear physicist Yevgeny Velikhov said.America had better get a move on. At this point it looks like ITER will be 50 years from commercialization.
He expressed confidence that Russia will be able to begin commercial production of thermonuclear reactors in 20-25 years.
"Russia's final goal is clear. We should at least get necessary knowledge to design and build thermonuclear plants for Russia's domestic purposes and for export," Velikhov said.
He believes that it is high time "to prepare Russia's science and industry to the next stage of commercial production."
"Our goal depends on ITER not by 100 percent. We should work ourselves as well. We have to prepare the new generation to this as the stage of commercial production will begin in 20-25 years as a minimum," he said.
There is a shorter path. The direction taken by Tri Alpha Energy is one of those paths. The work by Dr. Robert Bussard is another.
A few of us are so convinced that this work has to go forward that we are working on an open source fusion reactor. You can find out more about it at IEC Fusion Technology blog. If you want to join in the fun you can visit or join the
IEC Fusion Newsgroup. We talk about the science, the technology, and funding the project, among other things.
We need to get a move on. The Russians are coming.
Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values
ONE OF GILAD SHALIT'S KIDNAPPERS WAS ARRESTED
One of the scum who kidnapped the soldier has been captured:
One of the Palestinian terror operatives who kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Schalit in a cross-border raid near Kerem Shalom last June has been arrested, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) announced Friday afternoon, lifting a gag order.Has he been cooperative with the authorities since then, and given them any clues to Shalit's whereabouts? So far, there's no way to tell here.
Muhammad Salameh Abed Zufi, 30, was apprehended in Rafah on June 9.
The Shin Bet said that Zufi, who admitted during his interrogation that he had photographed the Kerem Shalom raid, also said he had involved in a 2002 raid on the "Africa" outpost in the same area on the Gaza border. In that raid, an IDF officer and three Beduin trackers were killed.
In addition to the raids on IDF outposts, Zufi was also involved in other attacks that wounded soldiers and launching Kassam rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip.
Keating, Howard and Hitler
Leftists tend to abuse conservatives rather than argue with them and that is so in Australia as elsewhere. Former Leftist Prime Minister Paul Keating is greatly noted for his talent at abuse and his recent comparison of conservative Prime Minister John Howard with Hitler is entirely in keeping with that.
His comparison was, however, a cautious one -- much more qualified and well-informed than the Bush=Hitler mantra that is so common on the American Left. Keating drew a distinction between patriotism (good) and nationalism (snarl) and said that the one thing which Howard and Hitler had in common was nationalism.
The distinction between nationalism and patriotism is an old one -- and the distinction Keating made (nationalism is bad, patriotism is good) dates back at least to the work of Marxist theoretician Theodor Adorno and his co-authors in 1950. Prior to WWII nationalism was good too. There were few more fervent German nationalists than Friedrich Engels (co-author with Karl Marx of Das Kapital).
The debate over what constitutes patriotism and what constitutes nationalism is however an arid one. Keating has his version of it but there are many others. There is an article here that explores some of the other possibilities. The only consistency these days is that if you don't like it you call it nationalism and if you do you call it patriotism.
I myself have had a great deal published in the academic literature on the subject (e.g. here and here and here) but think it is a waste of time to debate what the objective distinction between the two words should be. One has to look at detailed policies rather than use such broad and tendentious generalizations. And I know of none of Hitler's policies that are also policies of John Howard.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
His comparison was, however, a cautious one -- much more qualified and well-informed than the Bush=Hitler mantra that is so common on the American Left. Keating drew a distinction between patriotism (good) and nationalism (snarl) and said that the one thing which Howard and Hitler had in common was nationalism.
The distinction between nationalism and patriotism is an old one -- and the distinction Keating made (nationalism is bad, patriotism is good) dates back at least to the work of Marxist theoretician Theodor Adorno and his co-authors in 1950. Prior to WWII nationalism was good too. There were few more fervent German nationalists than Friedrich Engels (co-author with Karl Marx of Das Kapital).
The debate over what constitutes patriotism and what constitutes nationalism is however an arid one. Keating has his version of it but there are many others. There is an article here that explores some of the other possibilities. The only consistency these days is that if you don't like it you call it nationalism and if you do you call it patriotism.
I myself have had a great deal published in the academic literature on the subject (e.g. here and here and here) but think it is a waste of time to debate what the objective distinction between the two words should be. One has to look at detailed policies rather than use such broad and tendentious generalizations. And I know of none of Hitler's policies that are also policies of John Howard.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
Global warming and the "debunkers" of Durkin
They fail to acknowledge that you cannot detect long term trends with short-term data
Durkin's "Swindle" film has just been shown nationwide on Australian TV and furious Warmists have concentrated their attack on the fact that his graphs of solar effects ended in 1980.
It has been known for some time that solar output has been in decline for the last 20 years or so and this is held to undermine the claim that recent global warming can be explained by variations in output from the sun. Apparently provoked by the Durkin film, Lockwood & Froehlich recently produced a paper ("Recent oppositely-directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature") that drew further attention to recent solar trends as being inconsistent with the Durkin contentions. They examined a whole range of solar measurements and showed that, by most measures, solar output was falling rather than rising in recent years. And that paper has been widely promoted as "debunking" Durkin's contention that variations in solar output are the only good long-term explanation of climate change.
I have now had a preliminary look at the Lockwood paper and note that there is a very large dog in it that did not bark. If solar output does not explain recent temperature variations, what does? With the monomania about CO2 among Warmists, one would have expected a graph of CO2 levels plotted against temperature. There is no such graph. In other words, CO2 levels do not explain recent temperature variations very well either. The fact that CO2 levels have continued to rise in recent years while surface temperatures peaked in 1998 would appear to be the elephant in the bedroom. If solar output levels and terrestrial temperature have diverged in recent years, so too have CO2 levels and terrestrial temperature.
The important point in the matter, however, is one that climate skeptics have been making for years: There are MANY variables that affect terrestrial temperature from time to time -- not just CO2 and not just the sun. And to tease out the effect of any one variable, you have to look at a fairly long data series -- so that fluctuations due to other sources will be smoothed out. It is partly for this reason that most of the plots of climate against temperature extend over many centuries. A period of just 20 years is too short to detect long-term trends. One needs long-term data to detect long-term tends and there are any number of graphs showing a long term relationship between solar output and terrestrial temperature.
Additionally, many effects may be lagged: the influence concerned may take some time to show up. One reason for this is the vast reservoir of heat, CO2 and much else that girdles the earth: The ocean. It takes some time for a surface temperature variation to show up in the amount of heat stored in the ocean. When the recent drop in solar output works its way through all the systems -- such as the ocean -- that it affects we might therefore expect global COOLING. It is COOLING that the solar data suggests as imminent, not warming.
In the circumstances, one is mildly surprised that Warmists mention solar output at all. Surely even a Warmist realizes that the sun affects terrestrial temperature!
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
Durkin's "Swindle" film has just been shown nationwide on Australian TV and furious Warmists have concentrated their attack on the fact that his graphs of solar effects ended in 1980.
It has been known for some time that solar output has been in decline for the last 20 years or so and this is held to undermine the claim that recent global warming can be explained by variations in output from the sun. Apparently provoked by the Durkin film, Lockwood & Froehlich recently produced a paper ("Recent oppositely-directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature") that drew further attention to recent solar trends as being inconsistent with the Durkin contentions. They examined a whole range of solar measurements and showed that, by most measures, solar output was falling rather than rising in recent years. And that paper has been widely promoted as "debunking" Durkin's contention that variations in solar output are the only good long-term explanation of climate change.
I have now had a preliminary look at the Lockwood paper and note that there is a very large dog in it that did not bark. If solar output does not explain recent temperature variations, what does? With the monomania about CO2 among Warmists, one would have expected a graph of CO2 levels plotted against temperature. There is no such graph. In other words, CO2 levels do not explain recent temperature variations very well either. The fact that CO2 levels have continued to rise in recent years while surface temperatures peaked in 1998 would appear to be the elephant in the bedroom. If solar output levels and terrestrial temperature have diverged in recent years, so too have CO2 levels and terrestrial temperature.
The important point in the matter, however, is one that climate skeptics have been making for years: There are MANY variables that affect terrestrial temperature from time to time -- not just CO2 and not just the sun. And to tease out the effect of any one variable, you have to look at a fairly long data series -- so that fluctuations due to other sources will be smoothed out. It is partly for this reason that most of the plots of climate against temperature extend over many centuries. A period of just 20 years is too short to detect long-term trends. One needs long-term data to detect long-term tends and there are any number of graphs showing a long term relationship between solar output and terrestrial temperature.
Additionally, many effects may be lagged: the influence concerned may take some time to show up. One reason for this is the vast reservoir of heat, CO2 and much else that girdles the earth: The ocean. It takes some time for a surface temperature variation to show up in the amount of heat stored in the ocean. When the recent drop in solar output works its way through all the systems -- such as the ocean -- that it affects we might therefore expect global COOLING. It is COOLING that the solar data suggests as imminent, not warming.
In the circumstances, one is mildly surprised that Warmists mention solar output at all. Surely even a Warmist realizes that the sun affects terrestrial temperature!
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
BBC CAUGHT OUT AGAIN
It is to be expected that the far-Leftists at the BBC would be hostile to the monarchy. It is a tribute to the Queen that she has given them no real ammunition
THE BBC has apologised to Queen Elizabeth for wrongly implying that she had stormed out of a photo shoot with American celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. The British broadcaster backtracked on its implication that the monarch had lost her temper when asked to remove her crown.
The story became headline news around the world after a promotional trailer for a BBC documentary A Year with the Queen, due to be shown later this year, was shown to journalists. "In this trailer there is a sequence that implies that the Queen left a sitting prematurely," it said. "This was not the case and the actual sequence of events was misrepresented. "The BBC would like to apologise to both the Queen and Annie Leibowitz for any upset this may have caused."
Source
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
THE BBC has apologised to Queen Elizabeth for wrongly implying that she had stormed out of a photo shoot with American celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. The British broadcaster backtracked on its implication that the monarch had lost her temper when asked to remove her crown.
The story became headline news around the world after a promotional trailer for a BBC documentary A Year with the Queen, due to be shown later this year, was shown to journalists. "In this trailer there is a sequence that implies that the Queen left a sitting prematurely," it said. "This was not the case and the actual sequence of events was misrepresented. "The BBC would like to apologise to both the Queen and Annie Leibowitz for any upset this may have caused."
Source
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
You know, I guess I'm like any other political figure -- everybody wants to be loved, just sometimes the decisions you make and the consequences don't enable you to be loved. And so when it's all said and done, Ed, if you ever come down and visit the old, tired, me down there in Crawford, I will be able to say I looked in the mirror and made decisions based upon principle, not based upon politics. And that's important to me.--President George W. BushBush said the above yesterday in his press conference where he was talking about the successes in Iraq that have already happened as a result of the surge. As Rush said our soldiers are kicking butt over there and deserve our praise. And the quote by Bush just shows why I'm still loyal to him. Agree with him or not he makes his decisions based on principles not on polls. No matter what your views are that philosophy is commendable and inspiring.
The terrorists are in this war to win it. The question is: Are we?--John McCainAll of you know my feelings on John McCain but I'm one of those people who gives praise when it is due. McCain's failings are many but for the most part he "gets" the War on Terror. This quote by McCain deserves our cheer and praise because it is right on the money. I figure even a broken clock is right twice a day!!
Thursday, July 12, 2007
AMERICA VS. THE BRITISH ROYALIST SENSIBILITY - QUEEN STORMS OUT ON LEIBOVITZ
Annie Leibovitz is a photographer, famed for provocative photos of celebrities, who got her start at Rolling Stone in the late-60's. Her work is like a series of semi-surrealist one-liners. In my opinion, there is no real depth to her work. Her basic technique is good enough, so periodically, she has stumbled upon a classic shot. And, I think she is given far too much credit for the occasional great photo.
The Queen is ... Well, we all know who and what the Queen is.
Watch the video here.
There is some contrvoersy over whether the Queen actually "stormed out" of the room in disgust with Leibovitz. However, clearly the Queen was , shall we say, perturbed with Leibovitz.
In a way, I can't say I blame Her Highness. I mean, listen to the way Leibovitz talks to her, so matter of factly, so directly, with no attempt at deference.
It's quite funny.
Honestly, we all know this is why America had to throw the British the hell out of our country.
:)
Look, I love the British people, and in fact, most of my family lives there, but, well, we're just different, that's all.
The Queen is ... Well, we all know who and what the Queen is.
Watch the video here.
There is some contrvoersy over whether the Queen actually "stormed out" of the room in disgust with Leibovitz. However, clearly the Queen was , shall we say, perturbed with Leibovitz.
In a way, I can't say I blame Her Highness. I mean, listen to the way Leibovitz talks to her, so matter of factly, so directly, with no attempt at deference.
It's quite funny.
Honestly, we all know this is why America had to throw the British the hell out of our country.
:)
Look, I love the British people, and in fact, most of my family lives there, but, well, we're just different, that's all.
COLLABORATOR CONVICTED
A traitor has been convicted for aiding a murderer:
The Tel Aviv district Court on Thursday convicted Ashraf Keisi, a 28-year-old Israeli Arab from Baka al-Gharbiya of five counts of murder and dozens of attempted murders for his part in a suicide attack at a Tel Aviv club, the "Stage", in February 2005, which killed five people and injured fifty more.He should be sent to supermax for his crime. He's got as much blood on his hands as the filth he assisted.
Keisi was arrested a day after the attack, admitting in his interrogation that he had driven the bomber. Keisi also admitted to having been in contact with Abu Sa'ada, an Islamic Jihad operative from Tulkarm, and other terrorists, who wished to take advantage of the freedom of movement afforded him by his Israeli identity card.
Keisi was convicted not only of driving the suicide bomber to the club but of helping the terrorists select the target to be attacked. He was also pronounced guilty of assisting an enemy in wartime and supporting a terror organization. Keisi's conviction was based on the confession he gave to the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).
WWW.JIHAD.COM: WSJ RUNS ARTICLE ON CYBER-JIHAD
From the WSJ:
I would recommend reading the whole thing, but I do want to note that the final paragraph is particularly important:
If you are a young Muslim male, even a doctor, with a PC in Egypt, the Gulf
states, Somalia, Morocco or Glasgow, as always with the Web you are marinating your mind in its content, and the content here is homicide on a mass scale. The
answer--technical or political--is not obvious to me. But the one unacceptable
answer is doing nothing.
Last night I interviewed the lovely Pamela on the IBA Radio Show and she made a comment to the effect that doing nothing in the face of evil is the equivalent of crime.
Let's put that into an equation:
Silence In Face Of Evil = Crime
I don't know how long it is going to take Western Civilization to wake up, but the longer it takes the more ugly the results are going to be. The things we will have to do to win this war will sicken us beyond belief.
I am confident we will win, but I am saddened by the impending disaster.
And, I believe the blood is on the hands of the appeasers even more than it is on the slaves of Allah.
Living as we do now afloat the incoming and outgoing tides of media,
perhaps the aborted London and Glasgow car bombings of a fortnight ago are worth another thought before these attempted mass murders drift away on the sea of bad memories. What about those doctors? The apparent complicity of U.K.-resident Muslim physicians in the attempted murder of innocent British civilians had many in the West asking why.
The short answer is that these trained M.D.s somehow convinced
themselves that these British people didn't deserve to live--that it would be
morally good to kill them. That's insane. Why would they think that?
The best answer I have seen in a long time is found in a new study of
Islamic media propaganda by a research team from Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty. "Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War of Images and
Ideas" by Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo (with Radio Free Iraq
correspondents, two of whom were abducted and murdered this year) is an
astounding compilation of the high-tech methods being used by the insurgency in
Iraq to propagate the ideology of the Islamic jihadist movement.
This is the blogosphere for killers. There is no more unchallenged
verity in our times than that the World Wide Web, the Internet, is a boon to
mankind. But as with nuclear or biological warfare, the Web is a dual-use
technology. Technically adept Muslims, using out-of-the-box PC software and
hardware, are outputting an electronic torrent of slick Web sites, discussion
forums, videos, e-magazines and long-form movies, all with one purpose--to
incite Muslims to join the jihad against the enemies of Islam in Baghdad,
London, Glasgow or New York. Forget those Iraqi attack videos on YouTube; this is a sophisticated, globally distributed propaganda operation.
I would recommend reading the whole thing, but I do want to note that the final paragraph is particularly important:
If you are a young Muslim male, even a doctor, with a PC in Egypt, the Gulf
states, Somalia, Morocco or Glasgow, as always with the Web you are marinating your mind in its content, and the content here is homicide on a mass scale. The
answer--technical or political--is not obvious to me. But the one unacceptable
answer is doing nothing.
Last night I interviewed the lovely Pamela on the IBA Radio Show and she made a comment to the effect that doing nothing in the face of evil is the equivalent of crime.
Let's put that into an equation:
Silence In Face Of Evil = Crime
I don't know how long it is going to take Western Civilization to wake up, but the longer it takes the more ugly the results are going to be. The things we will have to do to win this war will sicken us beyond belief.
I am confident we will win, but I am saddened by the impending disaster.
And, I believe the blood is on the hands of the appeasers even more than it is on the slaves of Allah.
The Term "Rape" must not be Used in a Rape Trial!
We read:
Go figure!
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
"An alleged victim in a Lincoln sexual assault case asked the Nebraska Supreme Court on Tuesday to overturn a judge's ban on terms like "sexual assault" and "rape" at trial.
Pamir Safi, 31, is accused of sexually assaulting former University of Nebraska-Lincoln student Tory Bowen three years ago. Jury selection in his trial began Monday.
Judge Jeffre Cheuvront has barred any references to sexual assault over concern about inflammatory statements that might prejudice the jury. On Monday, Bowen and her attorney informed the judge that they would not sign the order agreeing not to use banned terms during courtroom testimony.
Source
Go figure!
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
Old Testament figure named on 2600-year-old Babylonian tablet
The excerpt below is from one of many reports that have found the Bible to be good history
The British Museum yesterday hailed a discovery within a clay tablet in its collection as a breakthrough for biblical archeology - proof of the accuracy of the Old Testament. The cuneiform inscription in a tablet dating from 595BC has been deciphered for the first time - revealing a reference to an official at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, that proves the historical existence of a figure mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah. It is rare evidence in a non-biblical source of a real person, other than kings, featured in the Bible.
The tablet names a Babylonian officer called Nebo-Sarsekim who, according to Jeremiah 39 was present in 587BC when Nebuchadnezzar "marched against Jerusalem with his whole army and laid siege to it". The cuneiform inscription records how Nebo-Sarsekim lavished a gift of gold on the Temple of Esangila in the fabled city of Babylon, where, at least in folk tradition, Nebuchadnezzar is credited with building the Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
British Museum staff are excited by the discovery. Irving Finkel, assistant keeper in the Department of the Middle East, said: "A mundane commercial transaction takes its place as a primary witness to one of the turning points in Old Testament history. "This is a tablet that deserves to be famous." The discovery was made by Michael Jursa, associate professor at the University of Vienna, on a research trip to the museum. "It's very exciting and very surprising," he said. "Finding something like this tablet, where we see a person mentioned in the Bible making an everyday payment to the temple in Babylon and quoting the exact date, is quite extraordinary."
Source
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
The British Museum yesterday hailed a discovery within a clay tablet in its collection as a breakthrough for biblical archeology - proof of the accuracy of the Old Testament. The cuneiform inscription in a tablet dating from 595BC has been deciphered for the first time - revealing a reference to an official at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, that proves the historical existence of a figure mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah. It is rare evidence in a non-biblical source of a real person, other than kings, featured in the Bible.
The tablet names a Babylonian officer called Nebo-Sarsekim who, according to Jeremiah 39 was present in 587BC when Nebuchadnezzar "marched against Jerusalem with his whole army and laid siege to it". The cuneiform inscription records how Nebo-Sarsekim lavished a gift of gold on the Temple of Esangila in the fabled city of Babylon, where, at least in folk tradition, Nebuchadnezzar is credited with building the Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
British Museum staff are excited by the discovery. Irving Finkel, assistant keeper in the Department of the Middle East, said: "A mundane commercial transaction takes its place as a primary witness to one of the turning points in Old Testament history. "This is a tablet that deserves to be famous." The discovery was made by Michael Jursa, associate professor at the University of Vienna, on a research trip to the museum. "It's very exciting and very surprising," he said. "Finding something like this tablet, where we see a person mentioned in the Bible making an everyday payment to the temple in Babylon and quoting the exact date, is quite extraordinary."
Source
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
CINDY SHEEHAN 'OUTS' ON HER DREAM
Resurrected moonbattery queen, Cindy Sheehan has made a Freudian slip. What she really wanted to come across as was a sweet, rosy-cheeked, caring, All-American Mama-next-door but instead she's just exposed herself as a totalitarian, Leftist, brook-no-dissent Marxist. Fancying herself in the shoes of Martin Luther King Jnr, no doubt, she spoke out her vision for the future:
"I have a dream of the detention centers that George [Bush] has built and filled being instead filled with Orange Clad neo-cons and neo-connettes."
You want us in detention centers, Cindy? Hmm, that's interesting in a sick, twisted Jeckyll and Hyde kind of way. Oh well, out of the closet I guess.
HAT TIP: Moonbattery
Cross-posted here
HATRED OF US IS NOT BECAUSE OF MISUNDERSTANDING
Avi posted the video of this lecture yesterday. The staggering importance of the study - for military and diplomatic strategy - really can't be overestimated. It's not just an FYI about Islamist manipulation of the media. It's also a staggering condemnation of US diplomacy surrounding the War on Terror, driven as it has been by this delusional State Department belief in marketing ourselves to the Muslim world. As if the problem is that they misunderstand us. Never considered: the Muslim world understands us only too well, and they just don't like what we are. Because if that was ever considered, then we'd have to start confronting the possibility that this war is going to last a long time, and it's going to involve more than diplomatic niceties. Problem: the Muslim world understands us only too well, and they just don't like what we are:
[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]
The popularity of online Iraqi Sunni insurgent media, the authors contend, reflects a genuine demand for their message in the Arab world. A response, no matter how lavishly funded and cleverly produced, will not eliminate this demand. The authors argue that efforts to counter insurgent media should not focus on producing better propaganda than the insurgents, or trying to eliminate the demand for the insurgent message, but rather on exploiting the vulnerabilities of the insurgent media network.It's not about our failure to explain ourselves. They already know that we let our women drive cars and our people worship freely. Explaining that to them again isn't going to make them less hostil - perhaps very much the opposite.
[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]
FORMER ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE OFFICIAL: IRANIAN FACILIITIES BEING HARDENED "AROUND THE CLOCK", TIME RUNNING OUT
No reason to take him seriously. He's probably a "neoconservative". And - along with all the leftist sophisticates who are so found of nudge-wink smirking when they say the word - by "neoconservative" we mean "Jewish". At the very least he's the former head of Military Intelligence's Research Division,, it's not like Israel has a robust intelligence network in the Middle East:
[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]
Predicting that sanctions will ultimately fail to stop Teheran's nuclear program, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser... told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that time to launch an effective military strike against Iran's nuclear installations was running out... Kuperwasser, who stepped down from his post last year, Iran is "very close" to the point that it will cross the technological threshold... "The program's vulnerability to a military operation is diminishing as time passes," Kuperwasser said, "and they are very close to the point that they will be able to enrich uranium at an industrial level." Iran... was working on two parallel tracks - one at Natanz to enrich uranium and the plutogenic track being worked on at the Arak heavy water facility... "The Iranians are working around the clock on improving military capabilities and they are also moving centrifuges to underground facilities," he said.Click through for the full and gory details of how new Russian arms are being used to protect the new tunnels that will be used to house the new nuclear facilities. Good thing that the left has assured us that sanctions can be given more time:
As long as Russia was not aligned with the United States, Kuperwasser said sanctions would not work on their own to stop Iran. "For significant sanctions to be effective the world needs to at the same time threaten the use of military force," he said.Well that sucks.
[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]
UN REPORT ON SECURITY FENCE PREDICTABLE IN EVERY WAY
Here's a little riddle for you. Read this carefully and then figure out whether the UN report wants the fence moved to the east behind the Green Line or to the west into the West Bank. Seriously take a crack at it:
One almost begins to suspect that the UN's conclusions were reached before any of the contradictory arguments - and we use that word loosely - were invented. Even the empty catchphrases - almost macro-like in the regularity with which they show up in condemnations of Israel - seem like an afterthought.
[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]
The United Nations on Monday released a report... three years to the day after the International Court of Justice... ruled against the fence. According to the court, all construction of the fence beyond the pre-1967 border was illegal... "Three years have passed [and] Israel has not complied with the ICJ opinion and the barrier construction continues," said the report... "Completion of the barrier around the Ma'aleh Adumim bloc will separate east Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, restricting access to workplaces, health, education and to places of worship," according to the report.Now the gut-check is obviously "they want it moved east" - gives the Palestinians more land, makes the Israeli heartland more vulnerable, etc etc. But that thing about workplaces and health - tons of Palestinians along the Green Line work as laborers in Israel, and it's no secret where they go when they need real health care. So that would suggest moving the fence west, so that more of Israel is accessible to more Palestinians (and Israel ends up more vulnerable anyway - the options that the UN presents are always super - through they never suggest the muddy status quo of tough security plus humanitarianism for some reason).
One almost begins to suspect that the UN's conclusions were reached before any of the contradictory arguments - and we use that word loosely - were invented. Even the empty catchphrases - almost macro-like in the regularity with which they show up in condemnations of Israel - seem like an afterthought.
[Read an extended version of this post at Mere Rhetoric]
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
UK'S NHS : HEALTHCARE :: USSR'S VOLGA : AUTOMOBILES
TIMES: Almost 25,000 hospital patients were the victims of reported medical errors last year, leading to death and serious injury in some cases.
The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), which revealed the figures, has issued new guidelines on patient wristbands after more than 2,900 errors were attributed to cases of mistaken identity.
BUT THAT'S WHAT YOU GET WHEN THE GOVERNMENT RUNS THINGS.
AND DON'T TELL ME, "BUT IT'S FREE!" IT AIN'T FREE; THEY PAY HUGE TAXES - AND STILL THEY DON;T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO MAKE IT WORK WELL.
MARKETS NEED COMPETITION TO MAKE THINGS BETTER. IF THIS WEREN'T TRUE, THEN THE USSR WOULD HAVE MADE THE BEST CARS IN THE WORLD.
EVERY SINGLE DEM CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY WANT SOME SORT OF UNIVERSAL, GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM.
DON'T FALL FOR IT.
BOEHNER GETS IT RIGHT: CALLS DOVISH GOP SENATORS "WIMPS"
THE HILL HAS THE STORY.
(VIA MEMEORANDUM.)
BOEHNER IS OK; HE HAS NEVER EVER STUCK IN A SINGLE EARMARK EITHER.
BOEHNER IS A GOOD MAN.
(VIA MEMEORANDUM.)
BOEHNER IS OK; HE HAS NEVER EVER STUCK IN A SINGLE EARMARK EITHER.
BOEHNER IS A GOOD MAN.
A VOTE FOR WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ IS A VOTE FOR AL QAEDA
WE STOPPED THAT PIECE OF CRAP IMMIGRATION BILL; WE CAN STOP THIS.
CALL YOUR CONGRESSMEN.
PUT FEAR IN THEIR HEARTS.
MORE HERE AND HERE:
CALL YOUR CONGRESSMEN.
PUT FEAR IN THEIR HEARTS.
MORE HERE AND HERE:
Contact the key GOP senators up for re-election in 2008 who have been reported to be wavering in recent weeks (though it isn't necessarily so given the MSM's agenda journalism):
Senator Lamar Alexander, Tenn: (202) 224-4944. E-mail link here.
Senator Norm Coleman, MN: (202) 224-564. E-mail link here.
Senator Pete Domenici, NM: (202) 224-6621. E-mail link here.
Senator Gordon Smith, OR: (202) 224-3753. E-mail link here.
Senator John Sununu, NH: (202) 224-2841. E-Mail link here.
Senator John Warner, VA: (202) 224-2023. E-mail link here.
There are three Democratic senators from red states who should also hear from the pro-victory voter:
Senator Max Baucus, MT: (202) 224-2651. E-mail here.
Senator Mary Landrieu, LA: (202) 224-5824. E-mail here.
Senator Mark Pryor: (202) 224-2353. E-mail here.
AN AFRICAN REACTS TO GORE'S "LIVE EARTH"
AFRICAN KOFI BENTIL, VIA TIM BLAIR:
Few people in Africa will get to see Al Gore and his troupe of rock-star ecologists strutting their stuff during the series of Live Earth concerts this weekend—because most have neither television nor electricity.1ST: AGW IS BS. 2ND:THE REMEDIES FOR AGW WON'T ACHIEVE THEIR STATED GOALS. 3RD, THEY WILL RETARD ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICA - WHICH IS THE ONLY WAY TO IMPROVE THE LIVES OF AFRICANS.
That’s just as well, because they would be aghast at Live Earth’s bizarre message. In Africa, we have much more serious things to worry about than climate change.
THE ECO-NUTSIES DON'T CARE BECAUSE THEY ARE ANTI-HUMANITARIANS. (MORE PROOF THEY ARE ANTI-HUMANITARIANS HERE: THEY THINK THE CURE FOR AGW IS IF PEOPLE HAVE FEWER KIDS.)
I THINK THEY REAL CURE FOR ALL THE ILLS OF THE WORLD WOULD BE IF LEFTIES HAD NO KIDS - AND IF THEY STOPPED PROPAGANDIZING EVERYONE ELSE'S!
MUSHARRAF DOES THE RIGHT THING: 106 KILLED IN MOSQUE ASSAULT
YAHOO/AP:
If the IDF had done this to the terrorists holed up in the Church in Bethlehem, it would ave also been right - and been condemned by the Muslim world, the Left and the UN.
The present battle between the Lebanese military and the AQ terrorists in that "refugee camp" also proves that Lebanon can also "gets away with" doing the right thing.
WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARD!?
WHY ARE THE USA AND ISRAEL HELD TO A HIGHER STANDARD THAN THE PAKISTANI, AND LEBANESE MILITARIES? Doing so is anti-American and anti-Semitic.
We are in the beginning stages of a global war - one that our enemy wants to make into an existential global war. We should be as ruthless as necessary. It's entirely in keeping with American values and the actions of previous GREAT American war-time presidents: FDR and Truman would have been more like Musharraf than Bush.
AND ANOTHER THING: I think this proves ONCE AGAIN what I have blogged over-and-over: that Musharraf is a good ally. Most hawkish bloggers have complained about him and his Waziristan deal. I think it was okay and that he's the best we can hope for over there. THIS UNAMBIGUOUS ASSAULT ON THE RED MOSQUE PROVES IT.
President Pervez Musharraf's government said Wednesday that militants accounted for most of the 106 people killed in eight days of fighting around the Red Mosque, calling it a signal that Islamic extremism won't be tolerated in Pakistan.If the US military had done this to Sadr in 2003 it would have ALSO been right - and condemned by the Muslim world, the Left and the UN.
Hours later, Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader released a video to join in the militant outcry against Musharraf, calling on Pakistanis to join in a holy war to avenge the army assault. Ayman al-Zawahri told Pakistanis their president "rubbed your honor in the dirt."
Authorities said the siege of the mosque compound, which included separate religious schools for girls and boys, resulted in the deaths of 10 soldiers, one police ranger and several civilians killed in the crossfire of the initial street battles that erupted July 3.
Seventy-three bodies — believed to be those of the mosque's die-hard defenders — were found by Pakistani troops clearing the sprawling complex of mines, booby traps and other weaponry after the final 35-hour fight. Among the dead was the militants' leader, pro-Taliban cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said commandos searching the mosque found no corpses of women and children, although seven or eight of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition, apparently by the militants' gasoline bombs.
If the IDF had done this to the terrorists holed up in the Church in Bethlehem, it would ave also been right - and been condemned by the Muslim world, the Left and the UN.
The present battle between the Lebanese military and the AQ terrorists in that "refugee camp" also proves that Lebanon can also "gets away with" doing the right thing.
WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARD!?
WHY ARE THE USA AND ISRAEL HELD TO A HIGHER STANDARD THAN THE PAKISTANI, AND LEBANESE MILITARIES? Doing so is anti-American and anti-Semitic.
We are in the beginning stages of a global war - one that our enemy wants to make into an existential global war. We should be as ruthless as necessary. It's entirely in keeping with American values and the actions of previous GREAT American war-time presidents: FDR and Truman would have been more like Musharraf than Bush.
AND ANOTHER THING: I think this proves ONCE AGAIN what I have blogged over-and-over: that Musharraf is a good ally. Most hawkish bloggers have complained about him and his Waziristan deal. I think it was okay and that he's the best we can hope for over there. THIS UNAMBIGUOUS ASSAULT ON THE RED MOSQUE PROVES IT.
THE SWIFT-BOATING OF RUDY GIULIANI?
IT COULD HURT HIM.
IT'S SWIFT-BOATING IF IT'S TRUE AND BRINGS HIM DOWN.
WE SHALL SOON SEE...
RADICAL ISLAM'S EXPLOITATION OF THE INTERNET
One Jerusalem's editors attended a briefing by Daniel Kimmage, author of the study of Iraqi Insurgent Media: the War of Images and Ideas, which discussed how Sunni terrorists are exploiting the internet to spread their evil. Here's a video of the discussion below:
The subject is about a week old now and the MSM has shown no interest in covering it.
For Kimmage's entire report on the insurgents, here's the PDF file.
The subject is about a week old now and the MSM has shown no interest in covering it.
For Kimmage's entire report on the insurgents, here's the PDF file.
DID HAIM RAMON ARRANGE FOR HIS VICTIM TO BE STALKED?
Haim Ramon, the former Labor MK and now Kadima minister who'd originally been convicted of sexual harrassment, then was let off on a misdemeanor, may have had a private investigator harass his victim, though it was his former brother-in-law who did the hiring:
Police at the national headquarters said Tuesday evening that due to a petition made by complainant "H," the plaintiff in Vice Premier Haim Ramon's recent sexual harassment trial, police met with officials from the State Attorney's Office to discuss suspicions that H had been harassed following the trial. H's legal counsel had addressed their concerns to representatives of the State Attorney's Office, which reviewed the allegations and passed the information on to the police.At this moment, they're not trying to bring Ramon into this. But that doesn't mean he couldn't have some kind of involvement in it. If anything, it certainly does signal that another scandal is on the horizon for Ehud Olmert's government.
On Tuesday, Police Intelligence and Investigation Division head Cmdr. Yochanan Danino met with State Attorney Eran Shendar to discuss the matter. Parallel to the meeting, police confirmed the now overt investigation.
In the course of the probe, detectives from the national fraud squad carried out searches in the offices of private detective agency Weizman Ya'ar, as well as in lead suspects' houses.
Detectives said that from the investigation material gathered thus far, they believe that private investigators had been hired, possibly by Ramon's ex-brother-in-law to gather evidence that would damage the credibility of H.
The investigation uncovered suspicions that the detective agency had sent a female undercover investigator to befriend H and create the false impression that they would give her a job. Representatives of the agency are believed to have questioned former acquaintances of H, and to have recorded conversations in which H was a participant.
Ramon's former brother-in-law was questioned by police late Tuesday.
The suspects from the detective agency were all released on bail following their arrest and questioning. Police officers at national headquarters said they expected that the investigation would be concluded in the coming days and that the entire body of information on the case would then be handed over to the State Attorney's Office, where it would be decided whether or not to file indictments.
Some Amusing Leftist Hysteria over the Recent SCOTUS ban on School Racism
SCOTUS recently ruled that race cannot be used as a critierion for school admissions -- just as an earler incarnation of SCOTUS had ruled in 1954 when helping to end the Jim Crow era. But a black writer shows deep incomprehension of that. A few excerpts below:
"Diversity is illegal"? What a brain-dead interpretation of the verdict. Apparently the writer cannot tell the difference between diversity and forced diversity. And the point made by Justice Thomas that greater contact between the races often leads to LESS racial harmony is well attested in the academic literature. The fact that Thomas referred to "race mixing" (where social scientists such as myself would use the term "interracial contact") was admirable for its plain speech but apparently the writer thinks the only mixing that there is takes place in bed. I suspect that tells us more about the writer than anything else.
Some people might think that my mocking comments above on the addled effusions of a black writer are "insensitive" and show a lack of understanding of legitimate black grievance. I think however that I am simply exposing him to the same level of mockery that I direct at white Leftists. I am, in short, refusing to have different rules for different races. It seems to me that I am REFUSING to be racist and it is those who have lower standards for blacks who are being racist and paternalistic.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
"The ruling is a resounding victory for the White Citizens' Council, and the racist governors who once blocked the schoolhouse door. The spirit of Jim Crow lives on in the hearts and minds of this Supreme Court's regressive, segregationist majority, over 50 years after Brown. "Diversity is illegal" is the new standard, it would seem, and we must do everything in our power to resist this.
Meanwhile, siding with the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas concluded that school districts have no interest in remedying segregation: ".... Simply putting students together under the same roof does not necessarily mean that the students will learn together or even interact. Furthermore, it is unclear whether increased interracial contact improves racial attitudes and relations.... Some studies have even found that a deterioration in racial attitudes seems to result from racial mixing in schools."
Did he say "racial mixing"?
Source
"Diversity is illegal"? What a brain-dead interpretation of the verdict. Apparently the writer cannot tell the difference between diversity and forced diversity. And the point made by Justice Thomas that greater contact between the races often leads to LESS racial harmony is well attested in the academic literature. The fact that Thomas referred to "race mixing" (where social scientists such as myself would use the term "interracial contact") was admirable for its plain speech but apparently the writer thinks the only mixing that there is takes place in bed. I suspect that tells us more about the writer than anything else.
Some people might think that my mocking comments above on the addled effusions of a black writer are "insensitive" and show a lack of understanding of legitimate black grievance. I think however that I am simply exposing him to the same level of mockery that I direct at white Leftists. I am, in short, refusing to have different rules for different races. It seems to me that I am REFUSING to be racist and it is those who have lower standards for blacks who are being racist and paternalistic.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
Two preliminary comments on the Greenie news
A recent scientific report about the correlation between global warming and solar activity has got a lot of press. It takes a very short recent time-period and shows no correlation over that period between solar output and temperature. I have not been able to access a copy of the report as yet so I cannot really comment but I wonder about their data sources. It is true that solar output has peaked in recent years but it is also true that temperature stopped rising in 1998. That seems a pretty good correlation to me! I also understand that CO2 levels don't correlate very well with temperature over that period either.
Chief Australian Greenie, Prof. Ian Lowe has "debunked" the Durkin film but makes some strange claims in the course of it. For instance, he says: "It claims medieval times were much warmer than today, but the science shows only some regions were briefly warmer and average global temperatures were lower". I have no idea what "the science" is that he refers to. The Mann "hockeystick" was held to represent "the science" of the history of global temperature until recently but it has now been shown to be essentially a hoax and the IPCC no longer mentions it. Lowe also says: "It displays, several times, a graph showing that average global temperature declined dramatically between 1940 and 1976 and claims this debunks the science. Our hemisphere actually warmed during that period." Lowe's use of hemisphere differences is as amusing as it is unwise for him. He fails to mention that there has been NO temperature increase in the Southern hemisphere since satellite temperature monitoring began about 25 years ago. If there has been any warming in that period, it has certainly not been global.
But I am a mere social scientist so will leave it to the physical scientists to do a real critique of the two above articles. Lowe's vague and unreferenced "ex cathedra" generalizations may be rather hard to get to grips with, however.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
Chief Australian Greenie, Prof. Ian Lowe has "debunked" the Durkin film but makes some strange claims in the course of it. For instance, he says: "It claims medieval times were much warmer than today, but the science shows only some regions were briefly warmer and average global temperatures were lower". I have no idea what "the science" is that he refers to. The Mann "hockeystick" was held to represent "the science" of the history of global temperature until recently but it has now been shown to be essentially a hoax and the IPCC no longer mentions it. Lowe also says: "It displays, several times, a graph showing that average global temperature declined dramatically between 1940 and 1976 and claims this debunks the science. Our hemisphere actually warmed during that period." Lowe's use of hemisphere differences is as amusing as it is unwise for him. He fails to mention that there has been NO temperature increase in the Southern hemisphere since satellite temperature monitoring began about 25 years ago. If there has been any warming in that period, it has certainly not been global.
But I am a mere social scientist so will leave it to the physical scientists to do a real critique of the two above articles. Lowe's vague and unreferenced "ex cathedra" generalizations may be rather hard to get to grips with, however.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
DEMOCRATS AND DEBATES
I love this, Democrats are afraid to have a debate hosted by Fox News (the cable network with by far the highest ratings) but they are catering to Gay Activists by participating in the first "Gay Presidential Debate". What would happen if Republicans refused to be in a debate on CNN but participated in an "Evangelical Christian Debate"? Can you fathom how loud and long liberals and the Drive By Media would howl?
Just food for thought!!
Geometry
I have had to get in rather deeper into geometry than is my usual for the past 30 or so years (since my dome building daze - I built 3 or 4 and even lived in Bucky's Dome in Carbondale - he was no longer a resident alas) because of my design work on the Bussard Fusion Reactor which is ongoing at the IEC Fusion Technology blog and on the IEC Fusion Newsgroup.
There is a plan for the design of the second demonstration reactor to change from a cubical arrangement of magnets to an arrangement that forms a dodecahedron. Which got me doing some research on the matter of edge lengths vs radius and other such questions in order to work out the geometry.
In doing my research I came across an extraordinary book on the platonic solids. It explains how the cube is related to the dodecahedron. Through the magic of computers this is the clearest explanation of the connection I have yet come across. In other words - pretty pictures.
Another thing that makes this interesting is that it is an e-book. I recently blogged about a friend of mine (Sgt. Mom) in Plan B From Outer Space who is going a similar route although in her case an actual book will be delivered. I wonder how the ISBN system will cope?
Book selling and buying is going to face an earthquake from this direction. Or to mix the metaphors, this train is just starting to get up some steam.
Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values
There is a plan for the design of the second demonstration reactor to change from a cubical arrangement of magnets to an arrangement that forms a dodecahedron. Which got me doing some research on the matter of edge lengths vs radius and other such questions in order to work out the geometry.
In doing my research I came across an extraordinary book on the platonic solids. It explains how the cube is related to the dodecahedron. Through the magic of computers this is the clearest explanation of the connection I have yet come across. In other words - pretty pictures.
Another thing that makes this interesting is that it is an e-book. I recently blogged about a friend of mine (Sgt. Mom) in Plan B From Outer Space who is going a similar route although in her case an actual book will be delivered. I wonder how the ISBN system will cope?
Book selling and buying is going to face an earthquake from this direction. Or to mix the metaphors, this train is just starting to get up some steam.
Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The "postmodernist" view of Israel
Post below excerpted from Democracy Project. See the original for links
Avineri calls it "nothing new under the sun."
Avineri points out that such thinking is, in effect, nihilist and anti-historical, and even lacks the gleam of visionary utopian or idealistic patina that masked other authoritarian movements. Their sour grapes over their ideological gods that failed has fermented into a bitter wine being poured into new bottles of deluded, violence inducing, drunkeness.
Much the same can be said about the Post-Americans who can only berate and bring down U.S. institutions and uniqueness, opposed to defense, and only offering visions of recycling carbon as a future mission while accepting tyrannies even when their reach is into our heartland.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
Avineri calls it "nothing new under the sun."
The arguments called "post-Zionist" have various aspects - not only political but also cultural. They view Zionism as a colonial phenomenon, not as a national movement that is contending with another, Palestinian, national movement over its claim to the same territory. Some of those who are called "post-Zionists" go even further in their argument that the very existence of a Jewish people is a "narrative" that was invented in the 19th century, and that the Jews are at base a religious community. The attitude of Zionism, which has most of its roots in Europe, toward Jews from the Muslim countries is also perceived in the context of colonial exploitation..
They do not see Zionism and the State of Israel as a reality that has come to pass, but rather as something that is not legitimate from the outset and that must be eliminated down to its very foundations.
Avineri points out that such thinking is, in effect, nihilist and anti-historical, and even lacks the gleam of visionary utopian or idealistic patina that masked other authoritarian movements. Their sour grapes over their ideological gods that failed has fermented into a bitter wine being poured into new bottles of deluded, violence inducing, drunkeness.
There is something pathetic in that 20 years ago they believed in a new, just world that was to emerge from Moscow or Cuba, and the only thing that is left to them of that lofty vision today is anti-Zionism. Not the brotherhood of nations, not the liberation of the proletariat, not universal social justice - all of this has collapsed in a tragic way; the only thing that remains is the hatred of Zionism.
Much the same can be said about the Post-Americans who can only berate and bring down U.S. institutions and uniqueness, opposed to defense, and only offering visions of recycling carbon as a future mission while accepting tyrannies even when their reach is into our heartland.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
Democrats Trying all Angles to Impose Censorship
A "study" sounds innocuous but it is of course intended as a launching pad for more regulation:
If I said, for instance, that homosexuality is a sexual perversion (a view that was enshrined in law until fairly recently) Reps. Dingell and Markey would no doubt classify that as "bigotry or hatred, creating a climate of fear and inciting individuals to commit hate crimes." So it is a direct attack on free speech.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
"The heads of the House committee and subcommittee overseeing communications issues, respectively, have asked the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) to study the use of "telecommunications to commit hate crimes."
While NTIA, which is the Bush administration's telecommunications policy advisory arm, already produced a study on the topic under the first president Bush back in 1992, Reps. John Dingell and Ed Markey urged it to update the study given the rise in the Internet since them. But, according to a release from the commitee issued Monday, they also said they are also "particularly" interested in studying "uses by broadcast facilites licensed on behalf of the public by the FCC, and whether such uses convey messages of bigotry or hatred, creating a climate of fear and inciting individuals to commit hate crimes."
Source
If I said, for instance, that homosexuality is a sexual perversion (a view that was enshrined in law until fairly recently) Reps. Dingell and Markey would no doubt classify that as "bigotry or hatred, creating a climate of fear and inciting individuals to commit hate crimes." So it is a direct attack on free speech.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
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