Displaying posts published in

2016

And We Sang, ‘We Won’t Get Fooled Again’ By Frank Salvato

There is always an inherent danger in embracing a populist candidate for any office. Inclined to grandiose rhetoric and unfulfillable promises, populist candidates feed off the fears, hopes and frustrations of the general population. Calculating populist politicians can weave rhetoric that touches generally on topics and caters to the room that they are addressing, usually without saying anything that can pin their ears back at a later date. The danger in being mesmerized by the populist political creature is that, in the end, you find yourself among the many, stampeding over the lemming-cliff’s edge, wondering how this could have happened.

By definition, Populism is:

“…a doctrine that appeals to the interests and conceptions (such as hopes and fears) of the general population, especially when contrasting any new collective consciousness push against the prevailing status quo interests of any predominant political sector.”

Antony Carr The Irreplaceable Bob Carter

More than a man of science, the man whose testimony helped persuade a British court that Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” is a fusion of error, lies and propaganda was that genuinely rare specimen, a good-natured crusader with the gift for leading the benighted into the light
Bob Carter’s passing is a great loss to those on the side of the angels — and to the noble cause pure, non-politicised science — in the debate on climate change. In contrast to the rent-seekers and opportunists aboard the global warming gravy train, he was a real scientist dedicated to truth. In his tribute, former radio host and one-time global warming believer Michael Smith highlighted his approach:

I’d made the error of asking Bob for his opinion after my perfect opening monologue. Bob said, “I don’t have an opinion. I am a scientist. I don’t deal in opinion. I deal in facts. Observable, proven facts. I deal with the scientific method, making observations, doing experiments and arriving at conclusions. Your starting point seems to be an unproven hypothesis based on computer projections. Do you have any facts to back up your claims about global warming?

Carter’s book, Climate: the Counter Consensus, which came out in 2011, demonstrated this approach, as did his many presentations on climate issues over the years. Days before the mainstream media got around to reporting his passing, the internet was alive with tributes from around the world.
Bob Carter: Lysenkoism and Climate Science

Here are just a few that I found most striking. The first is from the great slayer of Michael Mann’s fabricated hockey stick graph, Steve McIntyre, who wrote:

He was one of the few people in this field that I regarded as a friend. He was only a few years older than me and we got along well personally.

I will not attempt to comment on his work as that is covered elsewhere, but do wish to mention something personal. In 2003, when I was unknown to anyone other than my friends and family, I had been posting comments on climate reconstructions at a chatline. Bob emailed me out of the blue with encouragement, saying that I was looking at the data differently than anyone else and that I should definitely follow it through. Without his specific encouragement, it is not for sure that I ever would have bothered trying to write up what became McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) or anything else.

Turkey: Christian Refugees Live in Fear by Uzay Bulut

In the eyes of many devout Muslims, tolerance seems to be a one-way street.

“The relation between Islam and the rest of the world is marked by asymmetry. Muslims may and do enjoy all kinds of freedoms and privileges in the lands of the Kuffar [infidels]; however non-Muslims are not granted the same rights and privileges when they live in countries governed by Muslim governments… In our globalized world, this state of affairs should not continue.” — Jacob Thomas.

The West, coming as it does from the Judeo-Christian culture of love and compassion, would seem to have a moral responsibility to help first the Christians, the most beleaguered and most benign of immigrants.

Around 45,000 Armenian and Assyrian Christians (also known as Syriac and Chaldean) who fled Syria and Iraq and have settled in small Anatolian cities in Turkey, are forced to hide their religious identity, according to the Hurriyet daily newspaper.

Since the Islamic State (ISIS) invaded Iraqi and Syrian cities, Christians and Yazidis have become the group’s main target, facing another possible genocide at the hands of Muslims.

Sweden: The Downfall of Wallström? by Ingrid Carlqvist

The National Anti-Corruption Unit has decided to open a preliminary investigation into the circumstances surrounding an apartment that Foreign Minister Margot Wallström obtained through the biggest labor union in Sweden, Kommunal. The prosecutor told Swedish public radio that, “it concerns suspicions on bribe-giving and bribe-taking.”

Member of Parliament Caroline Szyber said that the committee should investigate whether Wallström opened herself up to a situation where she could easily be influenced by signing the apartment contract.

Margot Wallström has shown no remorse; whether her proud and unapologetic attitude will once more save her career remains to be seen.

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is in trouble again. This time it has nothing to do with her hostile statements towards Israel. Rather, it concerns the apartment she rents in central Stockholm — an arrangement that could lead to charges of bribery and standing trial. The National Anti-Corruption Unit has decided to open a preliminary investigation into the circumstances surrounding an apartment she obtained through the biggest labor union in Sweden, Kommunal.

The story exploded in Swedish media on January 13 when the daily, Aftonbladet, revealed that Kommunal’s management had speculated with hundreds of millions of kronor of union members’ money on a prominent conference hall and a restaurant operation. So far this business venture has cost Kommunal over 320 million kronor ($35 million) in losses.

The labor union owns a luxury restaurant, Metropol Palais, in central Stockholm, and the exclusive conference facility, Marholmen, in the Stockholm archipelago. Although these facilities are bleeding money, Kommunal has continued to pump funds into them. By running Metropol and Marholmen as general partnerships (“handelsbolag”) instead of limited companies, the union avoided public transparency into the accounts.

ISIS Advises Kids How to Tell Parents They’re Running Off to Jihad By Bridget Johnson

A British jihadist well-known for writing missives about rude Arabs and bossy Chechens in the Islamic State warns would-be jihadis that it’s “catastrophic” to let on one’s intentions too early out of love for one’s parents.

Omar Hussain, a 27-year-old former grocery store security guard from southern England, goes by Abu Sa’eed Al-Britani since running off to join ISIS. He frequently writes PR, including an appeal for doctors to come to the Islamic State, and also answers Q&A.

One segment from his “Message of a Mujahid” video has been circulating anew on social media this month: how to tell one’s family that you’ve run off to jihad.

It comes as ISIS recruitment efforts are trying to bulk up numbers in the Islamic State, including fighters, civil servants, jihadi wives and kids trained as ISIS “cubs.”

“One thing which every Muhājir will eventually face will be informing one’s parents about one’s hijrah,” Hussain said. “Depending on how close you are with your parents will affect how hard this will be, both for you and for them. Generally speaking the father-daughter relationship is the strongest bond as every father sees his daughter as his little angel, so sisters need to pay heed to how to go about in informing their parents of their whereabouts.”

The Preposterous Nonsense Known as Homoeopathy By Theodore Dalrymple ****

The preposterous nonsense known as homoeopathy has long exasperated doctors: but at whom, exactly, is their exasperation directed? At the homoeopaths themselves, or at the credulous and foolish public that persists in its patronage of such quackery on quite a large scale? According to a recent commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine, about 2 percent of Americans patronized homoeopaths last year.

The absurdity of homoeopathic theory – that diseases are cured by substances that produce similar symptoms to themselves, that those substances are more powerful the more dilute they became and so forth — was recognized by doctors very early on. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a famous polemic against it, as did Sir James Young Simpson, the discoverer of the anaesthetic properties of chloroform. But homoeopathy had one great advantage over its orthodox rival at the time of its development, the beginning of the nineteenth century, namely that at least it did no harm. This was an immense advantage, for the remedies used by orthodox medicine of the time were often worse than the diseases for whose cure they were employed.

The article in the Journal draws attention to the anomaly, as it sees it, of the lack of regulatory oversight of homoeopathic remedies sold over the counter. But one may ask why there should be such oversight of products that are sometimes so dilute that the chances are they do not contain a single molecule of the allegedly therapeutic substance. What harm can be done by such substances?

What’s the Holdup with Biometric Tracking for Visas? By Bill Straub

WASHINGTON – Lawmakers are becoming increasingly frustrated over the federal government’s failure to implement a biometric exit tracking system to determine whether foreign nationals entering the country on a visa have departed on schedule.

The percentage of those remaining in the United States beyond the expiration of their visas remains relatively small. The Department of Homeland Security issued a report this week showing that of the nation’s nearly 45 million non-immigrant visitors in fiscal year 2015, only 1.17 percent, or 527,127 individuals, overstayed their visas.

So 98.83 percent of those holding visas left the U. S. on time and abided by the terms of their admission, according to DHS. But some members of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, which conducted a hearing on the issue this week, maintain the current system doesn’t go far enough in assuring compliance.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the subcommittee chairman and a strong critic of the Obama administration’s immigration policies, asserted that that the figures released by DHS prove that visa expiration dates under the current system “have become optional.”

“The administration does not believe that violating the terms of your visa should result in deportation,” Sessions said. “What we are witnessing is tantamount to an open border. Millions are free to come on temporary visas and no one is required to leave.”

Ted Cruz Sacrificed His ‘Constitutional Principles’ Within a Week on the Iran Nuke Deal By Andrew G. Bostom

On April 14, 2015, a much ballyhooed “compromise”—but in fact a constitutional capitulation—regarding S.615, the “Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015,” was unanimously agreed upon within the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Independent Politico.com and Washington Post assessments of critical aspects of the lauded compromise brokered by Republican Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker and Democrat Ben Cardin confirmed my worst fears about what had actually transpired.

Politico observed:

Though it gives Congress an avenue to reject the lifting of legislative sanctions that will be a key part of any deal with Iran, it explicitly states that Congress does not have to approve the diplomatic deal struck by Iran, the United States and other world powers… nor does it treat an Iran agreement like a treaty

This claim was substantiated on p. 32 of the updated bill, under a section titled “EFFECT OF CONGRESSIONAL ACTION WITH RESPECT TO NUCLEAR AGREEMENTS WITH IRAN,” which states in lines 16-19,

16‘‘(C) this section does not require a vote by

17 Congress for the agreement to commence;

18 ‘‘(D) this section provides for congressional

19 review,

Furthermore, as Karen DeYoung and Mike DeBonis added in their Washington Post report:

Obama retains the right to veto any action to scuttle an Iran pact. To override, a veto would require a two-thirds majority of both House and Senate.

Racial bean counting at the Oscars By Thomas Lifson

A reader sent me some interesting data on the actual track record of blacks in the Best Actor category of the Academy Awards. He writes:

The black population in the US is about 13%.

So, apparently according to Spike Lee et al, blacks must be given 13% of awards.

In the last nine years black actors won once which was 11% of the Best Actor awards.

In the last eleven years black actors won twice which was 18% of the Best Actor awards.

In the last fourteen years black actors won three times which was 21% of the Best Actor awards.

2013 – 20% of the nominees were black
2012 – 20%
2009 – 20%
2006 – 20%
2004 – 20%
2001 – 20%
1999 – 20%

In the last four years there have been 20 nominees for Best Actor. Two were black. Ten percent.

Crybaby-Chic hits Oscar By Marion DS Dreyfus

That a growing number of non-Caucasians are protesting the current crop of Oscar nominees for the coveted acting statuette has hit the broadcast and print media.

Two whole years without a black nom? Omigosh.

How many Hispanic nominees are there? How many Asians? How many Baha’i? How many disabled?

What is evident, dependably endorsed by the loud wailing of the captain of charlatanry, Al Sharpton, is that in the face of campus protests over “microaggressions” making students “feel unsafe,” and in view of efforts to remove iconic statuary or flags from various southern venues and universities owing to rediscovered historical factoids of inconvenient realities, actors are picking up on the victimhood cavalcade. Recalling their pampered childhoods, or not, these role-model icons, so beloved in the crybaby era, are joining the fray.

Spike Lee, a director of middling specialty films that do not break the bank in audience appeal, along with Will Smith’s spiky wife, Jada Pinkett, have now been amalgamated with other complaint-mongers to post a scary warning: They will boycott the Oscars.

Shudder, gasp.

First, who cares? If they did not perform up to standard, they did not merit inclusion in the Oscar-nom club, which is a fiercely fought battle annually.