The Devils Dictionary of "Climate Science"

I found this post from February which was still in draft form and not posted.

I lifted it from the comments section of a blog posted by a Mr. David Lancaster, PA,

DEVIL'S DICTIONARY of "Climate Science"

PEER REVIEW: The act of banding together a group of like-minded academics with a funding conflict of interest, for the purpose of squeezing out any research voices that threaten the multi-million dollar government grant gravy train.

SETTLED SCIENCE: Betrayal of the scientific method for politics or money or both.

DENIER: Anyone who suspects the truth.

CLIMATE CHANGE: What has been happening for billions of years, but should now be flogged to produce "panic for profit".

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE: Leftist Nutcase Prize, unrelated to "Peace" in any meaningful way.

DATA, EVIDENCE: Unnecessary details. If anyone asks for this, see "DENIER" above.

CLIMATE SCIENTIST: A person skilled in spouting obscure, scientific-sounding jargon that has the effect of deflecting requests for "DATA" by "DENIERS." Also skilled at affecting an aura of "Smartest Person in the Room" to buffalo gullible legislators and journalists.

David, Lancaster, PA, 15/2/2010 17:00

The despicable tactic of the left: Playing the Race Card

I am disgusted with the cries of racism leveled against critics of Obama; I just read the same vile opinions from Tarek Fatah on his Facebook page. Here's what he wrote:

Tarek Fatah: ... the attacks on Obama from the Republican Right are little more than hatred based on their contempt for his race. Racism is not chemistry or physics that I need to prove via a scientific experiment. People of colour know when racism ...is at play; immigrants and their children know when they are the target and we are also aware when denial sets in. When I see the faces of Republicans sitting in the Senate and the House scowling in sullen silence, there is hate and contempt written on their faces. For these men, a black president MUST fail, no matter what, and my fear is they will succeed.

Apparently Mr. Fatah has the ability to see into people's hearts and know their motives. Their hatred for Obama's disastrous policies, which are dividing the country, is not their real motive - according to Mr. Fatah, their real; motive is hatred because of the colour of Obama's skin.

What drivel comes from the workings of the left-wing mind. According to Mr. Fatah "people of colour know." They don't have to prove it or show it or offer any evidence to level one of the worst labels you can throw at someone; he just  "knows" because he is a person of colour. Well Mr. Fatah that IS racist.

Mr. Fatah I was very pleased when a man of African ancestry was voted to be President, but I hate his policies and his utter ineptitude. Am I racist?  The facts don't count I suppose, I am a person of colour too - white with a tanned face.

It was Democrats in the South who opposed integration and were the founders and members of the KKK, not Republicans who were for integration. But facts don't count to a leftist-liberal.

Here's Anita MonCrief, an African American lady, who blew the whistle on the corruption within ACORN, and who has launched a website EmergingCorruption.com.

Emerging Corruption is a political news website that provides to the public information and investigations into ACORN and other center-left enterprises. The news website will investigate and expose historically corrupt special interest organizations and will feature information and investigations into organizational tactics, programs, campaigns, staff & initiatives including fund raising and finances.  

I am Filing FEC Charges Against the Obama Administration

Some Obama supporters have leveled the very nasty phrase at African Americans who criticise Obama: they've been called "Uncle Toms" - what can I say about this type of racist left-wing tactic? Vile! Despicable! Contemptible!

How will Mr. Fatah respond to an African American lady who criticise Obama and the corrupt organization ACORN, which actively campaigned to put him in power while funded with Federal money to assist in elections?

Gurth Whitaker, Calgary AB

Climategate Prof admits Vital Data has gone missing

While in N. America there's been scant reporting on the MMGW (Man-Made Global Warming) scandal, which is ostentatiously called AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming); over in the UK the press is having a field-day, and it's not just the conservative papers like the Telegraph and Daily Mail, but also the lib-left Guardian and Times.

It's across the political spectrum, yesterday it was the Daily Mail who had a big story with their coverage of the BBC interview with Professor Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia (UEA) Climate Research Unit (CRU) Hadley, which was at the centre of the Climategate affair surrounding the leaked emails documenting cover-ups and dirty tricks.

Look at the Mail's stunning headline:

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing

Gone missing, indeed!

Professor Jones admitted the lack of organisation in the system had contributed to his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Let's focus on the science (or lack of it) surrounding the 'hockey-stick graph.' Professor Jones statements are fascinating because when considered carefully they reveal further deep cracks in the rotten foundation of global-warming theories.

Background to the infamous hockey-stick graph.

The poor science surrounding the so-called 'hockey-stick graph' was discussed on Lux et Veritas in Climategate - It Had to Happen. The graph was constructed to show that the earth's temperatures have been relatively stable for about a thousand years and then show a very rapid upward trend coinciding with the growth of the industrial revolution from about the mid 1800s. This graph is supposed to show that global temperatures are rising with recently rising levels of carbon-dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. The graph is bogus.

In fact it was well accepted that temperatures in the northern hemisphere were not flat at shown in the hockey-stick graph. First there was a very pronounced warm period known as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), followed by the Little Ice Age (LIA).

Graph from the the IPCC’s 1990 report 

Note; the graph was omitted from subsequent reports clearly showing the MWP and LIA in the northern hemisphere 

The UN body the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) published a graph in their 1990 report clearly showing the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA) for the Northern Hemisphere.

Now look again at the hockey-stick graph which was boldly displayed multiple times in full colour in the IPCC's Third Assessment Report published in 2001, and we see that this is alsofor the Northern Hemisphere.

 The hockey stick graph [3] as shown in the 2001 IPCC report. 

The colored lines are the reconstructed temperatures, and the gray shaded region represents estimated error bars.

Note the error bars on the hockey-stick graph shown in light-grey; these bars can be thought of as a measure of the uncertainty of the data. The magnitude of these error bars for the entire MWP and at least half of the LIA, are greater than the total increase in temperature from about 1869 to the present day. From the error bars displayed graph itself, how much confidence can we have in it to show global warming, never mind prove it?

the UK Mail states continues...

Skeptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.

But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.

Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

Fatal flaws in MMGW theories

In this debate, and remember this is a debate, because the science is most certainly not settled, we have to keep it clearly in focus that it is the responsibility of the proponents of a new theory to prove their case. Man-made global-warming (MMGW) is a new theory and must be proven. In contrast the skeptics do not have to prove anything; they only have to show the flaws and errors in the MMGW science.

This is a key part of the argument: it's not necessary to disprove MMGW, only to show the flaws in the science. In this case Professor Jones statements show the lack of coherence of the MMGW theories:

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions. (my emphasis)

and then...

‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

Definition of Paleoclimatologyfrom Wikipedia:

Paleoclimatology (also Palaeoclimatology) is the study of climate change taken on the scale of the entire history of Earth. It uses records from ice sheets, tree rings, sediment, corals, shells and rocks to determine the past state of the climate system on Earth.

Note Wiki (which is severely biased in favour of MMGW) refers to it as the "study of climate change" however it is supposed to be about estimating temperatures through palaeoclimatic data. We need the data to show that climate change is actually occurring. We know already that the world's climate is always changing.

To convert palaeoclimatic data into a temperature series requires the data to be calibrated, or simply converted to a temperature scale (such as Celsius). This process is not easy because it is the temperatures themselves that we are seeking, and therefore the process depends on underlying assumptions and therefore can be speculative. Conflicting papers on the conclusions exist in the literature.

Summarise what we know

Let's summarise a few things we know about the history of this debate between proponents of MMGW (Man-Made Global Warming), in the light of Professor Jones recent statements:

1. MMGW scientists (Mann, CRU professors and others) used the hockey-stick graph to try and show that global warming occured only when CO2 concentrations from the industrial period started to rapidly increase  
2. The MWP and LIA are not shown on the hockey-stick graph as presented by the IPCC, which is for the Northern Hemisphere
3. A Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and a Little Ice Age did occur in the Northern Hemisphere
4. Climate skeptics cannot use doubts about the hockey-stick graph against global-warming proponents because the hockey-stick graph is only valid for the Northern Hemisphere and not for the whole globe
5. Very few palaeoclimatic records for the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere exist
6. The MWP and LIA may have occurred over the whole globe but is is hard to prove or disprove (because of the lack of data)

These six points show the contradictory nature of the global-warming argument.

MMGW advocates say the hockey-stick shows global-warming, then they say the skeptics can't use flaws in the hockey stick against MMGW because it only applies to the northern hemisphere, then they claim that science shows that MMGW is a scientific fact, then they say the data doesn't exist for the whole globe.

Conclusions we can apply to the MMGW debate:

1. The hockey-stick as shown by the IPCC numerous times cannot be used by proponents of global-warming theories to support their arguments because the hockey-stick graph only applies to the northern hemisphere and does not apply to the whole globe.
2. The lack of palaeoclimatic records for the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere casts doubts on the viability global-warming theories. If the data does not exist for the whole globe then proponents of global-warming theories cannot assert that the science is proven.

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary, AB

Climategate - the Infamy of the Lamestreet Media

Where is all the professional journalism on climategate? You would think that the mainstream media (from now on to be referred to as the lamestreet media) would be all over this.

The media hacks who have been cheerleaders for global warming propaganda and IPCC disinformation should be livid that they fell for this story; livid that they where duped.

They should also be livid at themselves for their lack of professionalism in not researching into the scam.

There has been ample resources on the Internet exposing the shaky science, but the vast majority of the lamestreet media has been behaving like groupies at a rock concert waving their panties on the air.

Following my report on the CBC earlier today, I did a quick Google search on some major news outlets today (Nov 30).

The Washington Post
The Washington Post only had 3 pages (one of them was just a duplicated reference) of these 3 pages, 1 was a blog entry asking why no climategate coverage, that left 2:

• Juliet Eilperin - made lame excuses and generally supported the phony global-warming science in her piece In the trenches on climate change, hostility among foes  

• Howard Kurtz - one letter on climategate near the end of a very long roundup Media Backtalk; Mr. Kurtz does not give justice to the letter and is somewhat dismissive. The entry is dated Monday, November 30, 2009 and yet Kurtz can only cite 2 entries at the Washington Post, here's the letter, from a gentleman in Kalamazoo:
  

from Kalamazoo, Mich: Mr. Kurtz,
It has been suggested that one way media show their bias is to diminish the importance of stories that don't fit the script, perhaps by burying them, or to ignore the stories altogether. Against that backdrop I find the coverage of the climate e-mails story (called in some quarters "climategate") quite revealing. These thousands of e-mails came from the English academy which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.

Putting aside the question of whether global warming is real or not, or if it is, whether it is caused primarily by man or not, the e-mails appear to reveal a profound corruption of the scientific process. Of course, the very validity of scientific inquiry is based on the assumption that scientific processes are followed, and here it is beyond question that they were not.

And yet, at the same time the Obama administration stands ready to commit the country to billions of dollars in expenditures to "fight" global warming, the media largely appear to be dodging this story. Why?

Of course, it is possible that the science is valid. But if it were, why the need to suppress contrary views? Why the effort to ostracize scientific journals which published differing opinions?

The Post has penned several editorials which gloss over the issue. Can anyone in your shop not see what a failure this is on the Post's part? No sense of inquiry, no sense of healthy skepticism. Instead, just a complete buy-in to what may be bogus science.

Howard Kurtz:

I see two news stories about the e-mails in The Washington Post, as well as editorial and opinion pieces. So we have hardly ignored it. There was criticism of a NYT reporter who blogged that he wouldn't report the content of the e-mails because they had been obtained by hackers. This doesn't prove by a long shot that climate change is "bogus science," but it's a huge embarrassment to the scientists involved.

No Mr Kurtz, the Washington Post did not completely ignore it - but this is a huge story, but you can only cite 2 entries.

2 news stories is not much since the story broke at least 10 days earlier (there are reports as early as Nov 20, perhaps even earlier).

this is a huge story, but the Washington Post can only cite 2 news entries.

Hadley CRU was the premier source for climate data in the global warming world, with a huge budget to  research global temperature changes, it is up to the global warming theorists to prove the case, which they have not done to date. But when some of the principle scientists for the theories are caught lying and falsifying the data there should be some alarm bells going off in the media; the journalistic antennae of the reporters should be tingling with this massive story - but apparently they are not - not even mildly stimulated it seems.

...  it is up to the global warming theorists to prove their case, which they have not done to date

I think the point of the gentleman from Kalamazoo, Mich is proven by the reply of Mr. Kurtz - Q.E.D. (quod erat demonstrandum - "which was to be demonstrated").

Returning to Juliet Eilperin's piece thee ae a number of links to other climate stories at the end of her piece, but these were generally moderately or very favourable to global warming theories. From an article titled Hackers steal electronic data from top climate research center we see this reference: 

In one e-mail from 1999, the center's director, Phil Jones, alludes to one of Mann's articles in the journal Nature and writes, "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Mann said the "trick" Jones referred to was placing a chart of proxy temperature records, which ended in 1980, next to a line showing the temperature record collected by instruments from that time onward. "It's hardly anything you would call a trick," Mann said, adding that both charts were differentiated and clearly marked.

Ms. Eilperin gives Professor Mann the benefit of the doubt by publishing his explanation concerning the word "trick";  very commendable to give all sides of the story, but she fails to note that the word "trick" in the context of "hide" a trend in temperatures clearly shows intent to falsify the results so they looked btter from a global-warming point of view. Where was Ms. Eilperin's journalistic antennae?  

 But, as shown here on Lux et Veritas in the post: Climategate - It Had to Happen, Professor Mann's hockey stick graph was debunked by a paper in 2003 by Canadians Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. But the lamestreet media chose not to investigate but stick with Al Gore and Davis Suzuki.

As I said, there has been ample reason for suspicion of global warming theories, many reports from well-respected scientists, but the lamestream media chose to ignore them.

AMMENDMENT
I just found this piece which is a gold-star for the Washington Post - oh sorry it is the the Washington Times - ok Washington Post - no gold star for you - gold star  goes to ... The Washington Times.

Washington Times - The global-cooling cover-up


Gurth Whitaker
Calgary, Alberta

Climategate - Won't Go Away So Report it CBC

Are the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and the French Language arm RDI (Radio Canada) reporting Climategate?


What would your guess be? Would your answer be:

"Of course this is a huge story and this is a publicly funded media corporation committed to objective reporting - so of course they will report it"

Or would your answer be:

"I doubt it the CBC has been a devoted cheer-leader for the man-made global warming fraud for years, true to their liberal-leftist biases."

A Google search of "climategate" on the CBC site revealed three entries - that means there are only three pages on the whole CBC website with the word climategate.

One entry is buried in their technology section, and two entries from the CBC blog. Hmm that's very odd - the CBC does not have a front-line news story on this, so the only reporting is by way of their blog; at least we can be thankful that the CBC has a vestige of decency and did not suppress these two entries.

I like this comment post by a gentleman named Alan Forsythe

Okay we get it, the CBC has become the official spokesgroup for global warming hysteria.

Last week you did a drive by on Lawrence Solomon and promoted the message that there's a global warming cover-up. Yet we can't open a newspaper, turn on a radio or TV without hearing about global warming. And still, not a peep about climategate, wherein the so-called science is settled crowd admit their 'science' was never settled and that they have cooked the books.

I've listened to Suzuki talk and his message is much more about taking on the Conservatives than it is about environmentalism; he never mentions the Liberal Party's failure to pursue Kyoto goals when they were in government. His agenda is clear as is Gore's, who as others have mentioned, will soon be the first enviro-billionaire.

Many more have lined up at the gravy train or have joined the legions of useful idiots. But as the hysteria grows as we approach Copenhagen, most Canadians are deciding they don't want to be 'saved' by Gore and Suzuki and prefer their lives as they are now to lives led under the dictatorial hand of the UN.

The mainstreet media, or lamestreet media as I call it, is suppressing the story. It is not a side-show, governments are contempltating diverting trillions of dollars into useless programs, and the voting public needs to hear about the scam.

There is misinformation on the Internet, but at least one can sift through and find out what is happening, rather than relying on the lamestreet media.

With all due reverence: Thank God for the openness of the Internet

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary, Alberta

Global Warming Retraction

I asserted on these pages that there wasn't any proof of global warming and that it is a hoax, now I am forced to make a formal retraction in Lux et Veritas as the incontestable proof has come to light, and I feel that these things should be properly aired in the public forum for all to clearly see  ...

Better proof than the hockey-stick graph see Climategate - It Had to Happen

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary, Alberta

President Calls UN Climate Meeting An Undignified Propaganda Exercise

The BS Report has an excellent commentary on the UN sponsored Climate Meeting to rally support for the Copenhagen summit in December.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon organized the climate summit to help create momentum before a U.N. meeting in Copenhagen in December to reach agreement on new targets for reducing so-called greenhouse gas emissions.

The World’s Best President Calls UN Climate Meeting An Undignified Propaganda Exercise

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Czech President Vaclav Klaus sharply criticized a U.N. meeting on climate change on Tuesday at which U.S. President Barack Obama was among the top speakers, describing it as propagandistic and undignified.

Klaus said there were increasing doubts in the scientific community about whether humans are causing changes in the climate or whether the changes are simply naturally occurring phenomena.

The BS Report also has an interest view on the leftist nature of global-warming activism in general, and President Obama in particular. This is the first time I have seen this blog looks like it is well worth a return visit...

Compared to most of the world’s so-called leaders, Klaus is a clear-headed thinker and a defender of liberty and free markets.  He not only has the guts to oppose the popular man-made global warming hypothesis, but he also sees the movement itself as a veiled attack on the freedom and capitalism that has characterized western democracies.

"Characterized western democracies" but UK has had various ventures into socialism since the end of WWII, as wwll as France and other EU countries, but now it seems now the US is flirting with the dangerous mistress lady disaster.  BS Report continues...

In other words, the Czech President has far more in common with the past presidents of the United States than our current occupant of the office has with his predecessors. But perhaps I’m being unfair–never has an American president been so popular and received so many compliments and well-wishes from dictators and thugs. Castro, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Kim Il Jung and a host of others all sing the praises of Obama.

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary, Alberta

Climategate - It Had to Happen

Global-warming theories have been suspect from the beginning; certain climate scientists have hidden their data and shown to falsify their results [1] and subsequently refused to cooperate with; scientific peer review to validate their findings, contrary to normal scientific procedures.

The negative effect of global-warming theories is enormous: producing panic, global-warming industries, huge government grants to support research into global warming, policies that will have disastrous effect on; western economies and shift production and economic benefit to China, India, Russia etc. Billions of dollars that could have been spent on projects that would benefit the global community have been diverted to a myth.

Therefore let us consider the magnitude of climategate, and the assertion that "it had to happen."

The Watergate scandal was big news in the 1970s. US President Nixon was implicated in a cover-up; hiding of the facts, of a break-in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972.

That was big news because it involved the President of the United States, now we have a very different cover-up but one that actually could be bigger and more far-reaching than Watergate.

Climategate - we are talking about the leaking of thousands of documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, Hadley in the UK. Some of the documents show that scientists had deliberately distorted their findings to show a warming trend that really didn't exist, and they had done this by manipulating data to make it show what they wanted.

Emails and documents from Hadley CRU show that poor scientific methods were used, poor management of data (which is key to this particular research), but far worse it is revealed that there was a deliberate attempt to falsify and distort. That is very bad in scientific circles, as in any endeavour, but in this case it had great significance because the work at Hadley CRU is used by the UN body the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

This warming trend is known as the notorious "hockey-stick graph" [2] which tries to show that; temperatures have been relatively stable for about a thousand years and then show a very rapid upward trend coinciding with the growth of the industrial revolution from about the mid 1800s. This graph is supposed to show that global temperatures are rising with recently rising levels of carbon-dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

The hockey stick graph [3] as shown in the 2001 IPCC report. This chart shows the data from Mann et al. 1999. The colored lines are the reconstructed temperatures, and the gray shaded region represents estimated error bars.

The proponents of global-warming theory say this data supports a "correlation" between CO2 and rising global temperature. A correlation is the scientific (or statistical) term to denote that there is a mutual relation between two phenomenon, and specifically there is a dependence: one thing changes dependent on changes in the other. So the claim is that global temperatures were relatively constant until humans started to produce increasing amounts of CO2, at which point there was a corresponding increase in global temperatures.

When you look at the graph, the global-warming / CO2 connection certainly looks very convincing indeed. In fact it looks to show overwhelming evidence - it's case over! .... CO2 guilty as charged! But the problem is the graph is completely bogus from a scientific point of view. It is not science it is deception.

Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age (Northern Hemisphere)

[AMMENDMENT: The medieval warm period is correctly and prominently shown
in the IPCC’s 1990 report but omitted from subsequent reports]

During the period known as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), temperatures were up to 3 degrees Celsius warmer than today’s temperatures; we know Eric the Red and Icelanders settled in Greenland and were able to farm - that's why it was named green-land.

Equally well-know that temperatures were significantly colder during a period called the Little Ice Age; the Thames froze over, and all of Europe was in a deep freeze.

These things are beyond doubt, the knowledge of them does not depend on manipulating data of the size of tree-rings to infer temperatures. The hockey-stick graph fails to show temperature variations in the Northern hemisphere which are very well known;

If we compare the two graphs we can see that the MWP and the Little Ice Age are completely missing from the hockey-stick graph. Furthermore, common sense tells us that coming out of a very cold period the temperatures has to rise and that is where the northern hemisphere was in the mid 1800s. Thirdly we can see that the hockey-stick graph shows temperature variation of about 0.5 degrees Celsius compared to a warming period of about 3 degrees Celsius.

Common sense tells us that there is something wrong with the hockey-stick graph; it doesn't work; a fact noticed by Canadians Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick 2003 published a paper in 2003 [1] which refuted the science of the hockey-stick graph.

But the hockey-stick graph was very important to global warming theories. The UN body the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) published Mann's hockey-stick graph multiple times in their Third Assessment Report (2001). Lord Christopher Moncton in his excellent presentation "Hockey Stick, What Hockey Stick" [4]:

The IPCC’s politicized bureaucrats liked the graph so much that they reproduced it six times, in very large scale, and in full color. The “hockey-stick” graph was the only graph in the entire 2001 assessment report that was reproduced as often as this. 

As Lord Moncton points out the graph is based on data from varying widths of tree-rings, but the IPCC themselves (although the IPCC promoted the subsequent graph) "had previously given strong warnings against using tree-rings as proxies for pre-instrumental surface temperatures."

One of the problems of Mann's work is that it is based on the assumption that wider tree-rings always indicated warmer temperatures:

One reason for the IPCC’s warnings was that wider tree-rings do not always indicate warmer temperatures.

Trees grow faster not only when it is warmer but also when there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a naturally-occurring substance that is plant food.

With sunlight, chlorophyll, and water, it is an essential ingredient in plant photosynthesis, without which there would be little or no life on Earth.

Note that despite the IPCC's own standard advising against the use of tree rings, the IPPC greatly promoted the hockey-stick graph as evidence of global-warming in the Third Assessment Report (2001), reproducing "it six times, in very large scale, and in full color."

Furthermore, the situation got worse after McIntyre and McKitrick (M&Ms) paper; Mann and colleagues, and scientists at the CRU embarked on a policy of disinformation and non-compliance. But even worse, they set-out to discredit and undermine any person or publication that criticised their work.

I remember those phrases that the global-warming zealots used to parrot: "the debate is over" but there never was a proper debate. It was a fait accomplis , it was a done-deal after the IPCC issued their Third Assessment Report in 2001. The press and the public jumped aboard the global-warming train.

If the case was so clear to support global warming there would not have been any reason to suppress all other scientific opposition. It was precisely because there was no clear scientific evidence that the global-warming zealots had to resort to tactics to shut people up. If good science existed it would have spoken for itself - the problem is there never was any.

If good science existed it would have spoken for itself - the problem is there never was any.

Following the Third Assessment Report in 2001 and the controversy over the invalidity of Mann's hockey-stick, the IPCC did not offer an explanation of  the errors in their report, nor bothered to clarify, nor did they alert the public and the media as to the question mark around the content of their report.

On the contrary they tried to gloss-over the issue. The zealots doctrine is "the issue is so serious that if some of the facts are distorted - so what! We need to stampede the people to raise awareness."

So why is this issue so serious, even more far-reaching than Watergate?

The US are in the process of implementing a disastrous cap and trade (Waxman-Markey Bill) to combat the myth of global-warming. They are doing this under the leadership of President Obama at a time when the the US economy is in a shambles

The US deficit has increased by three times since Obama took office, unemployment is at an almost  unprecedented 10.2% (highest in 26 years), and at such a time the President and the leftist Democrats want to implement policies which will make the situation even worse - I say a disaster.

Why a disaster? Because it will divert billions of dollars away from US business into other countries, firstly by direct payments or penalties, and far worse by making it much more expensive for US companies to operate and therefore forcing closures or moving the businesses overseas to places such as China or India. Those countries will have exemptions which will make them far more competitive in the US and in World markets; this will inevitably result in further erosion of business  and thus jobs in in the US.

Not only job losses, but the cost of living will rise steeply because fuel costs will rise. A further twist is the loss of business and jobs means a decrease in tax revenues to government, and an increase in burden because of entitlements. The leftist approach is to further increase taxes to maintain revenues and entitlements, which on exacerbates the problem, producing another twist of the vicious-circle. (Reganomics did the opposite decreased taxes resulting in an increase in business and overall increases in wealth and a large increase in tax revenues).  

A further twist of the knife, is Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are trying to nationalise health-care (in the guise of health-care reform), which will produce a further burden on the US economy and the US people.

Here are some past related posts at Lux et Veritas which are relevant to the issues around the US economy:

For Canadians the information has been somewhat distorted;

Does the US Want Obama Health-Care Reform?

Ronald Reagan sums up liberal approach to government perfectly.

The problem with socialism

The polices of this US Administration are vitally important not only to Canadians but to the whole world: 

When Pravda Says It - You Know It's Bad

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary, Alberta 

FOOTNOTES

[1] Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick published a paper in 2003 that show the methods used by Mann et al are faulty.

McIntyre, Stephen; McKitrick, Ross (2003), "Corrections To The Mann Et. Al. (1998) Proxy Data Base And Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series"

The data set of proxies of past climate used in Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998, “MBH98” hereafter) for the estimation of temperatures from 1400 to 1980 contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects. We detail these errors and defects.

We then apply MBH98 methodology to the construction of a Northern Hemisphere average temperature index for the 1400-1980 period, using corrected and updated source data. The major finding is that the values in the early 15th century exceed any values in the 20th century. The particular “hockey stick” shape derived in the MBH98 proxy construction – a temperature index that decreases slightly between the early 15th century and early 20th century and then increases dramatically up to 1980 — is primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components.

[2] The scientific journal Nature published the hockey stick graph. In 1998 / 1999 three paleoclimatologists; Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998), otherwise referred to as “MBH98”

[3] The term hockey stick was coined by the head of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Jerry Mahlman, to describe the pattern.

[4] The excellent Lord Moncton Paper Hockey Stick, What Hockey Stick

The Media Spin on Israel

When the news media takes it's reports from Hizbullah, Hamas, or PLO sources it is usually based on outright fabrications; but leftists usually lap it up anyway.

What is harder to spot are the slight distortions, the slight twists or the spin, which although not a complete fabrication nevertheless deceive us. Because it is subtle it is more effective in its deception.

We have an expectation that our media will present us information in the news in a reasonably objective and truthful manner, and we formulate our opinions based on that assumption, however when the news concerns Israel and Palestine there is often some sort of deception involved which usually presents Israel in a bad light.

On this occasion the offending newspaper is the National Post in their headline "Peace Effort Stalls After Israel OKs Settlements, Nov. 18". The NP is usually one of the more reliable sources in this regard, however they are usually swimming against the tide of the  "mainstream media" ... which would be better named the  "lame-stream media."

Seems innocent enough but the word "settlements" completely distorts the true picture. Fortunately the NP publishes a letter to put the matter straight, but the damage is done, one more damaging distortion upon which to build the case of public opinion against Israel

Mike Fegelman, executive director, HonestReporting Canada, sheds light on the matter  ... the facts show a very different picture than that presented by the spin.

Gilo is not a 'settlement'

Contrary to the headline and body of this AFP report, the majority of the Israeli neighbourhood of Gilo is built on land legally purchased by Jews prior to 1948.

In the 1948 war, Jewish lands in Gilo were captured and confiscated by the Jordanian government. From 1948-67, Jewish landowners did not relinquish ownership to their land in Gilo and when Israel recaptured the land in the Six-Day War, Gilo was built.

Although the UN considers it a "settlement," Gilo lies within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries and is geographically contiguous to surrounding Jewish neighborhoods that pre-dated the 1967 reunification of the city.

Despite being over the 1967 Green Line, Gilo is certainly not a "settlement," in the most-used sense of the word which can conjure up images of isolated enclaves in the West Bank or hilltop outposts for those without a knowledge of the region.

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary, Alberta

The Liberal Aversion to Face the Facts

The Executive Officer, the Commander in Chief, Mr President himself called the massacre at Fort Hood a tragedy. NO! It was terrorism plain and simple.

The only tragedy is that political correctness, mealy-mouthed obscurantism, has now so ham-strung people that a non-existent "Muslim backlash" is more important than the lives of those brave men and women who are fighting Islamic terrorism, helping moderates Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq to be free from Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and to lead a better life free from tyranny.

By-the-way: The "War on Terrorism" has now been renamed by Mr. President, it is now to be known as "Overseas Contingency Operation" whatever that might mean.

The "War on Terrorism" has a clear meaning for most people, (except liberal-leftists who don't like to think in simple clear concepts); "Overseas Contingency Operation" could be anything.

Obscurantism = a policy of withholding information from the public.

The article "Silence = Acceptance" (Bombay Revisited) by Mark Steyn sheds a brilliant light on the current liberal-leftist nonsense that has been spewed up in response to the despicable and contemptible murderous jihadi traitor at Fort Hood.

It seems that the liberal-leftist view of terrorism hasn't changes since Bombay; the media are still peddling this poison. Poison because it is dangerous to all Americans, Christian, Jewish, and moderate Muslim alike.

Is it "Muslim Terrorism"? Or is it "pre-traumatic stress disorder"? (Yes really - some leftist lummock suggested that, claiming that the jihadi major could be suffering from stress caused before going to war.)

Occam's razor should apply; the theory with the least number of assumptions (the least complex) should be favoured over all others. (It is not a proof but an aid for a logical analysis)

In the case of Major Hasan there are really no assumptions required - the facts tells the story. It was an act of terror. Whether he was acting alone or or not - it is still terror. The liberal-leftist theories are built on a web of tenuous assumptions and speculations.
 
I produce Mark Steyn's article "Silence = Acceptance" in its entirety...

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary Alberta

Silence = Acceptance

Rabbi Holtzberg was not murdered because of a territorial dispute over Kashmir or because of Bush’s foreign policy.

By Mark Steyn

Shortly after the London Tube bombings in 2005, a reader of Tim Blair, the Sydney Daily Telegraph’s columnar wag, sent him a note-perfect parody of a typical newspaper headline: “British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow’s Train Bombing.”

Indeed. And so it goes. This time round — Bombay — it was the Associated Press that filed a story about how Muslims “found themselves on the defensive once again about bloodshed linked to their religion.”

Oh, I don’t know about that. In fact, you’d be hard pressed from most news reports to figure out the bloodshed was “linked” to any religion, least of all one beginning with “I-“ and ending in “-slam.” In the three years since those British bombings, the media have more or less entirely abandoned the offending formulations — “Islamic terrorists,” “Muslim extremists” — and by the time of the assault on Bombay found it easier just to call the alleged perpetrators “militants” or “gunmen” or “teenage gunmen,” as in the opening line of this report in the Australian: “An Adelaide woman in India for her wedding is lucky to be alive after teenage gunmen ran amok…”

Kids today, eh? Always running amok in an aimless fashion.

The veteran British TV anchor Jon Snow, on the other hand, opted for the more cryptic locution “practitioners.” “Practitioners” of what, exactly?

Hard to say. And getting harder. Tom Gross produced a jaw-dropping round-up of Bombay media coverage: The discovery that, for the first time in an Indian terrorist atrocity, Jews had been attacked, tortured, and killed produced from the New York Times a serene befuddlement: “It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene.”

Hmm. Greater Bombay forms one of the world’s five biggest cities. It has a population of nearly 20 million. But only one Jewish center, located in a building that gives no external clue as to the bounty waiting therein. An “accidental hostage scene” that one of the “practitioners” just happened to stumble upon? “I must be the luckiest jihadist in town. What are the odds?”

Meanwhile, the New Age guru Deepak Chopra laid all the blame on American foreign policy for “going after the wrong people” and inflaming moderates, and “that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster in Bombay.”

Really? The inflammation just “appears”? Like a bad pimple? The “fairer” we get to the, ah, inflamed militant practitioners, the unfairer we get to everyone else. At the Chabad House, the murdered Jews were described in almost all the Western media as “ultra-Orthodox,” “ultra-” in this instance being less a term of theological precision than a generalized code for “strange, weird people, nothing against them personally, but they probably shouldn’t have been over there in the first place.” Are they stranger or weirder than their killers? Two “inflamed moderates” entered the Chabad House, shouted “Allahu Akbar!,” tortured the Jews and murdered them, including the young Rabbi’s pregnant wife. Their two-year-old child escaped because of a quick-witted (non-Jewish) nanny who hid in a closet and then, risking being mown down by machine-gun fire, ran with him to safety.

The Times was being silly in suggesting this was just an “accidental” hostage opportunity — and not just because, when Muslim terrorists capture Jews, it’s not a hostage situation, it’s a mass murder-in-waiting. The sole surviving “militant” revealed that the Jewish center had been targeted a year in advance. The 28-year-old rabbi was Gavriel Holtzberg. His pregnant wife was Rivka Holtzberg. Their orphaned son is Moshe Holtzberg, and his brave nanny is Sandra Samuels. Remember their names, not because they’re any more important than the Indians, Britons, and Americans targeted in the attack on Bombay, but because they are an especially revealing glimpse into the pathologies of the perpetrators.

In a well-planned attack on iconic Bombay landmarks symbolizing great power and wealth, the “militants” nevertheless found time to divert 20 percent of their manpower to torturing and killing a handful of obscure Jews helping the city’s poor in a nondescript building. If they were just “teenage gunmen” or “militants” in the cause of Kashmir, engaged in a more or less conventional territorial dispute with India, why kill the only rabbi in Bombay? Dennis Prager got to the absurdity of it when he invited his readers to imagine Basque separatists attacking Madrid: “Would the terrorists take time out to murder all those in the Madrid Chabad House? The idea is ludicrous.”

And yet we take it for granted that Pakistani “militants” in a long-running border dispute with India would take time out of their hectic schedule to kill Jews. In going to ever more baroque lengths to avoid saying “Islamic” or “Muslim” or “terrorist,” we have somehow managed to internalize the pathologies of these men.

We are enjoined to be “understanding,” and we’re doing our best. A Minnesotan suicide bomber (now there’s a phrase) originally from Somalia returned to the old country and blew up himself and 29 other people last October. His family prevailed upon your government to have his parts (or as many of them as could be sifted from the debris) returned to the United States at taxpayer expense and buried in Burnsville Cemetery. Well, hey, in the current climate, what’s the big deal about a federal bailout of jihad operational expenses? If that’s not “too big to fail,” what is?

Last week, a Canadian critic reprimanded me for failing to understand that Muslims feel “vulnerable.” Au contraire, they project tremendous cultural confidence, as well they might: They’re the world’s fastest-growing population. A prominent British Muslim announced the other day that, when the United Kingdom becomes a Muslim state, non-Muslims will be required to wear insignia identifying them as infidels. If he’s feeling “vulnerable,” he’s doing a terrific job of covering it up.

We are told that the “vast majority” of the 1.6-1.8 billion Muslims (in Deepak Chopra’s estimate) are “moderate.” Maybe so, but they’re also quiet. And, as the AIDs activists used to say, “Silence=Acceptance.” It equals acceptance of the things done in the name of their faith. Rabbi Holtzberg was not murdered because of a territorial dispute over Kashmir or because of Bush’s foreign policy. He was murdered in the name of Islam — “Allahu Akbar.”

I wrote in my book, America Alone, that “reforming” Islam is something only Muslims can do. But they show very little sign of being interested in doing it, and the rest of us are inclined to accept that. Spread a rumor that a Koran got flushed down the can at Gitmo, and there’ll be rioting throughout the Muslim world. Publish some dull cartoons in a minor Danish newspaper, and there’ll be protests around the planet. But slaughter the young pregnant wife of a rabbi in Bombay in the name of Allah, and that’s just business as usual. And, if it is somehow “understandable” that for the first time in history it’s no longer safe for a Jew to live in India, then we are greasing the skids for a very slippery slope. Muslims, the AP headline informs us, “worry about image.” Not enough.

© 2008 Mark Steyn

Hasan Called War on Terror ‘War Against Islam’

Bosnian Muslim Waffen SS.

"Hasan Called War on Terror ‘War Against Islam," Classmate Says
by Justin Blum for Bloomberg (here)

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people and wounding 30 others at the Fort Hood Army Base in Texas, regularly described the war on terror as "a war against Islam," according to a doctor who was in a graduate program with him.

While studying for a masters degree in public health in 2007, Hasan used a presentation for an environmental health class to argue that Muslims were being targeted by the U.S. anti-terror campaign, said Val Finnell, a classmate.

"He was very vocal about the war, very upfront about being a Muslim first and an American second," said Finnell, 41, a preventive medicine doctor in Los Angeles, in an interview today. "He was always concerned that Muslims in the military were being persecuted."

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican, said she was told by Fort Hood authorities the suspect was about to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and had been “very upset and angry” in the past few days.

Finnell said he remembered Hasan “vividly” and said of the shooting: “I’m not surprised, based on the things he said in the past. I’m shocked that it happened, but not surprised.”

In conversations, students challenged Hasan on his statements and he would become “visibly upset, sweaty, nervous,” Finnell said.

Toward the end of the program, in 2008, Hasan gave a presentation that was billed as a survey of the climate for Muslims who serve in the U.S. military, Finnell said.

“It wasn’t really very objective,” Finnell said. “It was like he was trying to prove a point.”

 As I said in my previous post - there should be both screening and monitoring. It is immoral to put innocent lives at risk because of some politically correct ideology of avoiding profiling.

It is clear that there was inadequate monitoring of Major Hasan; here's the conlcusion from my post earlier today (here) "The Liberal Conclusions on Major Hasan"

Nor is it a reason for a witch-hunt. However, there are more than adequate grounds for proper precautions and for; complete shedding of political correctness.

We should remember that it Muslim solders could have been numbered with the slaughtered at Fort Hood. Giving Muslims special treatment to avoid profiling ultimately does not reward loyal Muslims, it only protects the Jihadists and therefore makes their purpose easier.

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary, AB

The Liberal Conclusions about Major Hasan

We are warned: "don't jump to conclusions about Major Hasan"

Reuter's has this report (here):

"We don't know all the answers yet and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts," Obama said.

(I recall hearing the President said that before; it was when a policeman arrested a very abusive certain professor who happened to be black; I recall the President made a pronouncement that it was stupid to arrest a man in his own home, and the President said this before he was apprised of the facts. However, the facts were the professor - Gates is his name - followed the cop into the street and was hurling abuse according to eye-witnesses in the neighbourhood.)

Is anyone "jumping to conclusions"?  It seems to me that the opposite is true; the liberal media is going out of their way to avoid the obvious conclusion that this man is under the influence of radical Islam

Hasan's cousin, Nader Hasan, said in interviews that he had agitated not to be sent overseas. "We've known over the last five years that was probably his worst nightmare," he said.

Major Hasan happily joined the army and accepted the pay six years ago - but he has been dreading being sent overseas for five years. So he kept taking the army pay until he was drafted overseas five years later. Does that seems ethical? Not in my book.

I imagine no-one in the US forces is actually looking forward to being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan - but when you join you know that it is the military that you are joining and that means you may be called on to fight. This man has a degree - he's not an uneducated man, so he can't say: "when I signed on I didn't realise that I could actually be posted overseas". So now he finds out he has a change of heart. Little bit of yellow perhaps?

Nader Hasan also said his cousin had complained, as a Muslim, of harassment by fellow soldiers.

Yeah right! See the video at Lux et Veritas of Major Hasan parading around in Arab garb (here) - sure doesn't seem like he is intimidated by anti Muslim sentiments around him. He seems to enjoy acting the part.

But in reality it is actually a difficult position to be an orthodox believer in Islam in a Western Society.

According to sharia law the Muslim should get preferential treatment to the kufr (the dhimmi class), and in Canada and the US we have this principle of equality whatever race, gender, or religious beliefs. (The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms).

But sharia law speaks against that equality, as I have discussed previously in Lux et Veritas. I explore the relationship between sharia law and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Toronto Imam - Preacher of Hate?

(Sharia is incompatible with the Canadian Charter and I am sure the same would apply to the US Constitution).

So Islamic teaching, and sharia law sets up an internal conflict. How can Major Hasan really be integrated into the US Army with his colleagues and fellow officers and soldiers when at the heart of his beliefs are that he should not mix freely with the kufr.

Hasan yelled "Allah akbar!" -- Arabic for "God is great" -- just before the shooting, Chuck Medley, Fort Hood's director of Emergency Services, told Reuters.

That's what the Jihadis scream when they attack, or just before they slice off someones head with their sword of Islam.

But the Fort Hood commander, Lieutenant-General Robert Cone, said there was no evidence this was a terrorist attack.

Hmm - must have been one of those "Christian fundamentalists", screaming: "Allah akbar". It sure seems like terrorism - one coward shooting with automatic weapons at unarmed people. Usually they prefer to attack women, children and old people. Do you remember the cruise ship the Achille Lauro? [1] On that occasion it was an old man in a wheel-chair the brave Palestinians killed - unarmed of course. The they tipped his body overboard. "Allah akbar! Allah akbar!" 

In May, a U.S. soldier at a base in Baghdad shot and killed five fellow soldiers.

I recall that shooting was by a Muslim too.

The authorities at Fort Hood were warned about Major Hasan's anti-war comments, and how he aired his views that Muslims should not be sent to fight Muslims, but the authorities did not act on the information.

Why not act on the information? Because of the success of soft Jihad. Although Jihad is real, terrorism is real, saving lives is not as important as toeing the politically correct line. Avoid profiling at all costs - this is more important than weeding out the bad apples.

"Thousands of Arab Americans and American Muslims serve honorably every day in all four branches of the U.S. military and in the National Guard," the Arab American Institute said.

There is a minority of bad apples - the vast majority of Muslims are not Jihadists. But poles such as the Pew Report show that there are a sizeable percentage of Muslims in the US who support suicide bombing and terrorism.

Statements such as the one by the Arab American Institute, have to be regarded objectively.

According to the US Department of Defence (here)  

There are 5 million to 7 million Muslims in the United States.

They make up between 10,000 and 20,000 members of the American military.

Let's say that 99% of Muslims in the military are loyal Americans and loyal to their military calling. That would be the vast majority.

BUT it would mean that 1% are not loyal. 1% is a small percentage, but if t is correct it would mean that 100 to 200 Muslims in the military are potential Jihadists.

The actual percentage may be smaller, or it may be bigger, it doesn't change the point; the statement: "Thousands of Arab Americans and American Muslims serve honorably every day in all four branches of the U.S. military and in the National Guard" while very nice to hear, is not a reason for complacency because there are likely some who are not loyal. 

Nor is it a reason for a witch-hunt. However, there are more than adequate grounds for proper precautions and for  complete shedding of political correctness. 

We should remember that it Muslim solders could have been numbered with the slaughtered at Fort Hood. Giving Muslims special treatment to avoid profiling ultimately does not reward loyal Muslims, it only protects the Jihadis and therefore makes their purpose easier.

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary, AB 

NOTES 
[1] 
On October 7, 1985, four men representing the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) took control of the liner off Egypt as she was sailing from Alexandria to Port Said.

The hijackers had been surprised by a crew member and acted prematurely. Holding the passengers and crew hostage, they directed the vessel to sail to Tartus, Syria, and demanded the release of 50 Palestinians then in Israeli prisons. After being refused permission to dock at Tartus, the hijackers killed disabled American passenger Leon Klinghoffer and then threw his body overboard.

The ship headed back towards Port Said, and after two days of negotiations, the hijackers agreed to abandon the liner in exchange for safe conduct and were flown towards Tunisia aboard an Egyptian commercial airliner.

United States President Ronald Reagan ordered that the plane be intercepted by F-14 Tomcats from the VF-74 "BeDevilers" and the VF-103 "Sluggers" of Carrier Air Wing 17, based on the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, on October 10 and directed to land at Naval Air Station Sigonella, a N.A.T.O. base in Sicily, where the hijackers were arrested by the Italians, after a disagreement between American and Italian authorities. 

The other passengers on the plane (possibly including the hijackers' leader, Abu Abbas) were allowed to continue on to their destination, despite protests by the United States. Egypt demanded an apology from the U.S. for forcing the airplane off course.

Major Hasan - Jihadi?

His brother claims he was getting some flak for being a Muslim on the base - BUT Major Hasan felt bold enough to walk around in Arab garb, and spout his opinions that the US shouldn't be in Iraq.

You can see the video from ITN News in the UK of  Major Nidal Malik Hasanin Arab Garb earlier today on Lux et Veritas (here).

It is sickening, this snake in the grass accepts wages from the US Army for the last 6 years and then when he is about to be posted to Iraq he starts protesting. According to the National Post today, he was "mortified";  I suppose killing 13 innocent people didn't come up on his moral radar.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who his family said had been harassed because of his Muslim faith and was "mortified" at the prospect of going to Iraq,

Major Hasan said at the base that he didn't think it right for Muslims to fight Muslims. BUT Hasan - Muslims are blowing Muslims up over in Iraq and Afghanistan!!

It is funny how the Muslim world makes a big fuss about US troops on "Arab soil", but the Muslim world is silent about Sudanese Arab Muslims raping, killing terrorizing Black Muslims in Darfur. Funny the BBC, CBS, and the rest don't make that point, although it is very obvious from the facts.

His brother states that he is "born in the US and a good American", but Major Hasan registered himself as a "Palestinian"

Nidal Malik Hasan was born in Virginia but didn’t think of himself as an American: on a form he filled out at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, he gave his nationality not as “American” but as “Palestinian.” A mosque official found that curious, saying: “I don’t know why he listed Palestinian. He was not born in Palestine.”

The we get the nauseating mantra about anti-Muslim backlash, that we get every time there is a Jihadi atrocity.

CBS news, is more concerned about some supposed back-lash, than the families of the murdered soldiers. Here's the CBS odious headline on their website:

Mosques Up Security in Wake of Ft. Hood 

Anti-Muslim Backlash Immediate over Suspect Accused of Killing 13 at Army Base

It makes me sick - the Jihads are bad enough... but why do our news media turn things upside down?

Remember after 9/11 we heard all about the anti Muslim backlash? It didn't happen, FBI data showed that there were more anti-Semitic attacks than anti-Muslim ones.

But that is a corner-stone of the liberal-left ideology - they judge Jihadis through the lens of their own dogma. The facts don't count when you have a theory.

Why wont these clueless-gorms just look at the facts? Unfortunately that is what libby-leftists do - they stick to their theories at all costs. Refuse to face the facts - just like Chamberlain - waving a piece of paper to the British press on landing back in England after meeting the Nazis leader:

"I have here, an agreement signed by Herr Hitler..."

 Later he said:

My good friends, this is the second time there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Now I recommend you go home, and sleep quietly in your beds

Honour? Now we see newspapers and TV media trying to tie themselves in knots to show that we can have peace with Jihadis - it is just an aberration - if we appease them and speak nicely to them it will all magically go away.

How?

How will it go away? Jihadis have contempt for liberal "weakness" (we see this in the Middle-Easts reactions to Obama's apologetic overtures and unilateral 'we will throw the olive branch and make concessions without asking for anything in return').  They appreciate strength - not weakness. Remember Osama-bin-Laden's "Strong Horse" statement?

when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse. 

The Jihads, the young men that are attracted to the movement - they like a strong horse. Christianity, our Western Democracy with its pluralism and tolerance is an abomination to them. They hate it and they want to destroy ot like they want to destroy the only democracy in the entire Middle East - which is of course Israel.

Folks, we need to protect the moderate Muslims too. We are not doing them any favours by this approach.

Robert Spencer makes some sound points:

Maybe he just snapped, perhaps under the pressure of his imminent deployment to Iraq. But it’s noteworthy that if he did, he snapped in exactly the same way that several other Muslims in the U.S. military have snapped in the past.

In April 2005, a Muslim serving in the U.S. Army, Hasan Akbar, was convicted of murder for killing two American soldiers and wounding fourteen in a grenade attack in Kuwait. AP reported: “Prosecutors say Akbar told investigators he launched the attack because he was concerned U.S. troops would kill fellow Muslims in Iraq. They said he coolly carried out the attack to achieve ‘maximum carnage’ on his comrades in the 101st Airborne Division.”

And Hasan’s murderous rampage resembles one that five Muslim men in New Jersey tried to carry out at Fort Dix in New Jersey in 2007, when they plotted to enter the U.S. Army base and murder as many soldiers as they could.

That was a jihad plot. One of the plotters, Serdar Tatar, told an FBI informant late in 2006: “I’m gonna do it….It doesn’t matter to me, whether I get locked up, arrested, or get taken away, it doesn’t matter. Or I die, doesn’t matter, I’m doing it in the name of Allah.” Another plotter, Mohamad Shnewer, was caught on tape saying, “They are the ones, we are going to put bullets in their heads, Allah willing.”

Nidal Hasan’s statements about Muslims rising up against the U.S. military aren’t too far from that, albeit less graphic. The effect of ignoring or downplaying the role that Islamic beliefs and assumptions may have played in his murders only ensures that – once again – nothing will be done to prevent the eventual advent of the next Nidal Hasan.

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary, AB

US House backs resolution condemning Goldstone report

Some sanity reigns in the US and the EU

 
Further to my post on Lux et Veritas earlier (here)

According to the JP (full report here)

The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a non-binding resolution on Tuesday condemning the Goldstone Report, that accuses Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza, and calling on the Obama administration to oppose its endorsement.

...and the EU is showing some backbone too:

Meanwhile, European nations launched intense negotiations with Arab states, ahead of a UN General Assembly debate on the report. 

In an attempt to scuttle efforts by Arab states to bring the matter to the Security Council, and from there to the International Criminal Court, EU states were backing new language emphasizing accountability for crimes against humanity and calling on Israelis and Palestinians to launch investigations into war crimes. 

The Obama administration has already condemned the report, which was expected to go to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, as unhelpful to its efforts to revive stalled Middle East peace talks.

Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said:

"I think the UN report is unbalanced, and unfair, and inaccurate,"

Pandering to the propaganda of the Arab and Muslim states does not help move towards peace in Israel-Palestine; on the contrary it is a barrier because it gives hope to all those that support Palestinian terrorism will eventually be victorious in its stated aims to destroy Israel.

What is needed is for the message to go out to the Palestinians that there is only one outcome and that is a peaceful one - not a military victory through terrorism and destruction of Israel.

The lasting principle should be that Israel has the right to defend herself against attack.

To put it simply, there can be no peace until Israel's right to exist is recognised throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

The content of the resolution is very encouraging, clearly identifying Hamas' responsiblity; a large portion of the report is included below with some key phrases high-lighted.

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary AB

The actual words of the motion passed by the House of Representatives is interesting & illuminating:

RESOLUTION

Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ in multilateral fora.

Whereas, on January 12, 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed Resolution A/HRC/S-9/L.1, which authorized a `fact-finding mission’ regarding Israel’s conduct of Operation Cast Lead against violent militants in the Gaza Strip between December 27, 2008, and January 18, 2009;

Whereas the resolution pre-judged the outcome of its investigation, by one-sidedly mandating the `fact-finding mission’ to `investigate all violations of international human rights law and International Humanitarian Law by . . . Israel, against the Palestinian people . . . particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression’;

Whereas the mandate of the `fact-finding mission’ makes no mention of the relentless rocket and mortar attacks, which numbered in the thousands and spanned a period of eight years, by Hamas and other violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian targets in Israel, that necessitated Israel’s defensive measures;

Whereas the `fact-finding mission’ included a member who, before joining the mission, had already declared Israel guilty of committing atrocities in Operation Cast Lead by signing a public letter on January 11, 2009, published in the Sunday Times, that called Israel’s actions `war crimes’:

Whereas the mission’s flawed and biased mandate gave serious concern to many United Nations Human Rights Council Member States which refused to support it, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon,Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland;

Whereas the mission’s flawed and biased mandate troubled many distinguished individuals who refused invitations to head the mission; Whereas, on September 15, 2009, the `United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ released its report;

Whereas the report repeatedly made sweeping and unsubstantiated determinations that the Israeli military had deliberately attacked civilians during Operation Cast Lead;

Whereas the authors of the report, in the body of the report itself, admit that `we did not deal with the issues . . . regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas and second-guessing decisions made by soldiers and their commanding
officers `in the fog of war.’;

Whereas in the October 16th edition of the Jewish Daily Forward, Richard Goldstone, the head of the `United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’, is quoted as saying, with respect to the mission’s evidence-collection methods, `If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.’;

Whereas the report, in effect, denied the State of Israel the right to self-defense, and never noted the fact that Israel had the right to defend its citizens from the repeated violent attacks committed against civilian targets in southern Israel by Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations operating from Gaza;

Whereas the report largely ignored the culpability of the Government of Iran and the Government of Syria, both of whom sponsor Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations;

Whereas the report usually considered public statements made by Israeli officials not to be credible, while frequently giving uncritical credence to statements taken from what it called the `Gaza authorities’, i.e. the Gaza leadership of Hamas;

Whereas, notwithstanding a great body of evidence that Hamas and other violent Islamist groups committed war crimes by using civilians and civilian institutions, such as mosques, schools, and hospitals, as shields, the report repeatedly downplayed or cast doubt upon that claim;

Whereas in one notable instance, the report stated that it did not consider the admission of a Hamas official that Hamas often `created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the mujahideen, against [the Israeli military]‘ specifically to `constitute evidence that Hamas forced Palestinian civilians to shield military objectives against attack.’;

Whereas Hamas was able to significantly shape the findings of the investigation mission’s report by selecting and prescreening some of the witnesses and intimidating others, as the report acknowledges when it notes that `those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of or conduct of hostilities by the Palestinian armed groups . . . from a fear of reprisals’;

Whereas even though Israel is a vibrant democracy with a vigorous and free press, the report of the `fact-finding mission’ erroneously asserts that `actions of the Israeli government . . . have contributed significantly to a political climate in which dissent with the government and its actions . . . is not tolerated’;

See more of the House Resolution at the Washington Independent here