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Syrian Forces, Helped by Russian Airstrikes, Seize Rebel Stronghold Advances in northwestern Lataika province put Assad regime in striking distance of region under opposition control By Raja Abdulrahim

Posted By on January 25th, 2016

BEIRUT—Syrian regime forces backed by Russian airstrikes seized control of a rebel stronghold on Sunday, the latest in a series of gains in northwestern Latakia province aided by Moscow’s intervention in the conflict.

The advances in the heartland of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority put the regime within striking distance of neighboring Idlib, the only province almost entirely under rebel control. Just a few months ago, rebel fighters were advancing through the Idlib countryside toward Latakia and looked poised to deal more blows to the regime. But the Russian intervention in late September has given the regime’s military the upper hand there.

These gains have given the regime a stronger hand ahead of peace talks that had been set for this week in Geneva, if they go ahead as planned.

“All of the regime and Russian plan and all of the operations that the Russian officers are overseeing are with the goal of advancing before the talks,” said Fadi Ahmad, a spokesman with the U.S.-backed First Coastal Division, a faction of the Free Syrian Army rebel group, which has received training from the Central Intelligence Agency and American antitank missiles.

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Obama vs. Manatees Evading the Endangered Species Act to impose new climate rules.

Posted By on January 25th, 2016

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service this month proposed a new rule to crack down on predator control in Alaska, claiming it wants to better protect wildlife on national refuges. If only the Obama Administration cared as much about the protected critters that are getting in the way of its climate-change agenda.

President Obama’s Clean Power Plan imposes new rules to force the closure of coal-fired power plants in the name of climate change. Among those most likely to be shut down are the Big Bend Power Station and the Crystal River Plant in Florida. Problem is, both plants have been designated as primary warm-water refuges for manatees—listed as endangered in the 1960s and now considered “threatened.”

One threat to manatees is a plunge in water temperature, which causes lesions, gastrointestinal disorders, infections and death. The Fish & Wildlife Service, which runs a manatee recovery plan, estimates that two-thirds of manatees rely on coal plants that discharge heated water. Many plants are required to have Manatee Protection Plans, which are embedded in their federal Clean Water Act permits.

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The Climate Snow Job A blizzard! The hottest year ever! More signs that global warming and its extreme effects are beyond debate, right? Not even close. By Patrick J. Michaels

Posted By on January 25th, 2016

An East Coast blizzard howling, global temperatures peaking, the desert Southwest flooding, drought-stricken California drying up—surely there’s a common thread tying together this “extreme” weather. There is. But it has little to do with what recent headlines have been saying about the hottest year ever. It is called business as usual.

Surface temperatures are indeed increasing slightly: They’ve been going up, in fits and starts, for more than 150 years, or since a miserably cold and pestilential period known as the Little Ice Age. Before carbon dioxide from economic activity could have warmed us up, temperatures rose three-quarters of a degree Fahrenheit between 1910 and World War II. They then cooled down a bit, only to warm again from the mid-1970s to the late ’90s, about the same amount as earlier in the century.

Whether temperatures have warmed much since then depends on what you look at. Until last June, most scientists acknowledged that warming reached a peak in the late 1990s, and since then had plateaued in a “hiatus.” There are about 60 different explanations for this in the refereed literature.

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Saudi-Iran Relations By Rachel Ehrenfeld

Posted By on January 25th, 2016

Secretary Kerry’s Sunday visit to Riyadh to diffuse the tension between the Saudis and Iran tried reassuring the Saudis that “Nothing has changed because we worked to eliminate a nuclear weapon with a country in the region.” But that has done little to lessen the Saudi Kingdom’s anxiety regarding Iran’s new status in the region and their resentment of the Obama administration for strengthening their sworn enemy, Iran.

On the same day, Saudi foreign minister Adel Al-Jubeir told reporters that Iran has to stop its hostilities against the Arabs. It should “change its 35 years old policies meddling in their Arab neighbors’ internal affairs, sowing sectarian strife and backing terrorism as confirmed by numerous strong evidence.” Only then “the path will be open to building better relations with its neighbors,”

Some watchers of the growing tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia predict further escalation. But most are venturing to predict no open war,
According to the ICIT, Iran’s encouragement of “Shi’ite separatism and its relentless subversive activities in neighbouring countries contributed to the worsening of its relations with the Sunni Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, which also seeks regional hegemony. Ever present are the age-old Sunni-Shi’ite religious rift, the ethnic-cultural conflict (Arab vs. Persian). But the nuclear agreement between Iran and the West and the lifting of the sanctions on Iran, are making the Gulf States more fearful of Iran’s growing power. In addition, the significant changes in the Saudi leadership resulted in transforming Saudi Arabian regional policy from passive to active, and clearly anti-Iranian.

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

Posted By on January 25th, 2016

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.”

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Antony Carr The Irreplaceable Bob Carter

Posted By on January 24th, 2016

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.

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Turkey: Christian Refugees Live in Fear by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on January 24th, 2016

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.

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Sweden: The Downfall of Wallström? by Ingrid Carlqvist

Posted By on January 24th, 2016

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.

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

Posted By on January 24th, 2016

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.”

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

Posted By on January 24th, 2016

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?