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 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.

When Pravda Says It - You Know It's Bad

The polices of this US Administration are vitally important to Canadians.

When Pravda Says You Are Too Liberal - you know that things are bad.

The economics of the Obama administration are vitally important to Canada and the whole world, so when Pravda criticizes the economic "tax & spend" liberal policies of the US, it should be time to wake up.

The deficit in the US has tripled in the first year of this administration. It is now three times what it was when Obama took office.

Why worry say some liberals? Well the answer should be obvious: foreigners hold nearly half the $7.5 trillion U.S. public debt. That means that the American taxpayers not only paid a massive $383.4 billion dollars in interest charges during the Obama's first year, but fully half of that money went overseas, without any benefit to the US economy whatsoever. Money down the drain - out the window - just to maintain the debt where it is.

$383.4 billion dollars in interest charges over the first year of Obama's administration; that averages to almost $32 billion per month in interest charges. Not one cent of that goes to schools, health care, roads, or to paying the ever increasing government payroll.

The data is taken from the US Treasury here

That $383.4 billion dollars is money that comes from the tax-payer; money that doesn't go to buying homes, paying off mortgages, or buying goods and services that help build the US economy. But here is the worst part - fully half of it goes overseas.

You have to be an ostrich if that doesn't frighten you.

BUT, it is going to get worse, because the Obama administration want to increase spending even more. There is the energy bill, the Cap and Trade bill that will add billions in costs to the economy, which must be born by industry and private citizens - it will be a disaster. (Millions of green jobs? Does anyone believe that?) Plus there will be a massive increase in costs to the US taxpayer as a result of the proposed health care reform in is current form, which will result in a further restriction on growth and recovery.

Cutting taxes helps the economy; increasing taxes slows down and stifles the economy.

It has been shown in the past that the best way to stimulate the economy and create jobs is to cut taxes. A cut in employment tax for example, provides an immediate boost to industry, by reducing their costs. This produces a direct stimulus which acts fairly quickly. However, the current economic policy is exactly the opposite. That is why we should all be concerned; if the US economy falters the whole world will feel the effects. (Think of the huge amount of US aid that currently is distributed all round the globe; if the US economy is not strong how can they sustain this giving?)

The US with its massive spending is lagging the recovery of the rest of the world - not leading it. That should be proof enough. But tax and spend is at the heart of liberal dogma. It doesn't work but they are not about to let the facts get in the way of their liberal  ideology.

Where are the conservatives in Canada? We seem to be complacent up here.

If the US economy falls - we will be drowned in the tsunami.

"The American Self Immolation, Truly a Sight to See" from Pravda:

It can be safely said, that the last time a great nation destroyed itself through its own hubris and economic folly was the early Soviet Union (though in the end the late Soviet Union still died by the economic hand).

Now we get the opportunity to watch the Americans do the exact same thing to themselves. The most amazing thing of course, is that they are just repeating the failed mistakes of the past. One would expect their fellow travelers in suicide, the British, to have spoken up by now, but unfortunately for the British, their education system is now even more of a joke than that of the Americans.

While taking a small breather from mouthing the never ending propaganda of recovery, never mind that every real indicator is pointing to death and destruction, the American Marxists have noticed that the French and Germans are out of recession and that Russia and Italy are heading out at a good clip themselves.

Of course these facts have been wrapped up into their mind boggling non stop chant of “recovery” and hope-change-zombification. What is ignored, of course, is that we and the other three great nations all cut our taxes, cut our spending, made life easy for small business…in other words: the exact opposite of the Anglo-Sphere.

That brings us to Cap and Trade. Never in the history of humanity has a more idiotic plan been put forward and sold with bigger lies. Energy is the key stone to any and every economy, be it man power, animal power, wood or coal or nuclear. How else does one power industry that makes human life better (unless of course its making the bombs that end that human life, but that's a different topic).

Never in history, with the exception of the Japanese self imposed isolation in the 1600s, did a government actively force its people away from economic activity and industry.

Even the Soviets never created such idiocy. The great famine of the late 1920s was caused by quite the opposite, as the Soviets collectivized farms to force peasants off of their land and into the big new factories. Of course this had disastrous results. So one must ask, are the powers that be in Washington and London degenerates or satanically evil?

Where is the opposition?

Where are the Republicans in America and Tories in England?

 Where are the conservatives in Canada? If the US economy falls - we will be drowned in the tsunami.

Read the "The American Self Immolation, Truly a Sight to See" here


Gurth Whitaker
Calgary AB

Sloppy Reporting or Political Spin

“Heeeere’s Barack” by Mark Leibovich in today's National Post on Presidents Obama's decision to grant interviews with ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Univision shows a troubling bias and lack of honesty in reporting the facts.

According to Leibovich, President Obama “will sit for interviews with ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Univision, and the Late Show With David Letterman” but not the “Food Channel and Fox News”.

Presumably Mark Leibovich deliberately places Fox News alongside the Food Channel to marginalise the conservative news network, and minimise its importance, instead of recognising its powerful place in news broadcasting.

Prophetic Words from George Washington

History Repeats Itself - Prophetic Words from George Washington.
 
I received this quote from a contributor – stunning in its relevancy for today... History repeats itself.

America's obsession with dialogue

The Dangers of Dialogue
Iraqi leader Nuri al-Maliki engages Syria in dialogue, huge care bombs follow the next day.That's not how dialogue is supposed to work.