|
THE SKEPTIC'S GUIDE TO GLOBAL WARMING
By Avi Davis
 Several months ago I would have been hard put to believe that there existed any credible opposition to the global warming juggernaut.
Steamrolling its way through the world, coopting, in its invidious way, our media ,political class and intellectual elites, it had seemed to have ruthlessly demolished its opposition, crushing all common sense and castigating anyone who dared voice uncertainty as a heretic.
That all changed last week when I was invited to attend the Heartland Institute's international conference in New York City, Global Warming : Was it Ever Really a Crisis? At this world gathering of climatologists, astrophysicists, journalists, policy analysts, pundits and politicians, I discovered a vast underground of activists and moles, some of whom have been laboring for years to thwart the progress of the doomsday philososphy. The level of sophistication and deliberation was beyond almost any other gathering of a similar nature I have ever attended. And I believe that the 800 or so other attendees, from all parts of the world, would readily agree with me.
By far the most impressive idea percolating through the conference was that predicting weather patterns and graphing changes in the atmosphere is an enormously hazardous undertaking fraught with the inaccuracy. That is because there are innumerable variables that play into producing our weather forecasts, from ocean currents to wind strength and to the power and duration of cosmic rays, none of which can be adequately measured nor always accounted for. Weather predictions are generated by super computers which produce models after being fed appropriate data. Yet the quality and consistency of that data is always suspect when we consider the large amount variables that need to be gathered in order to produce a prediction. Most scientists retain a healthy skeptiism when it comes to climate modeling. In 2003 , when a German group polled over 500 climatologists on whether these climate models can accurately predict future climate conditions, only a thrid (35.1%) agreed,18.3% were uncertain and nearly half ( 46.6%) disagreed.
A second impressive statistic exposed Al Gore's assurances that global warming is settled science, validated by at least 90% of the scientific community, as a fatuous lie. To prove it, the conference organizers reproduced a thick 300 page petition against global warming as foundational science, signed by 31, 291 scientists from around the world, 9,000 of whom hold Ph.Ds.
The third revelation was that the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere has historically followed an increase in temperature and never quite the other way around. This was demonstrated through a viewing of a documentary on the issue - Global Warming: Emerging Science and Understanding, which took to task Gore's famous 30 foot graphs in his 2005 documentary An Inconvenient Truth,. Gore's graphs, if you remember, plotted the rise and fall in world temperatures over the past 150 years, and compared that trajectory to a graph situated immediately below it which plotted the rise in carbon emissions over the same period. But the attempt to prove that carbon dioxide emissions paralleled the rise in global temperatue was misleading, if not deliberately fraudulent. That is because the two graphs were presented one below the other, without superimposing their trajectories upon one another in order to definitvely make the point. But if the two graphs are merged, as the documentary demonstrates,it becomes obvious that over the past 150 years, CO2 emmissons have actually followed , not preceded, the rise in global temperatures. In fact graphs offered by geophysicists' reports confim that over a 650,000 year period the same phenomenon recurrs.
The fourth important understanding imparted by the Conference was the role governmental bureaucracies and supra-govermmental organizations play in controlling and manipulating the global warming agenda.
Man-made global warming theory is fed by pseudo- quantitative predictions from climate careerists working off mega computers and which involves scientists at the National Association for Atmospheric Research ( NCAR); NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Department of Commerce's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab. These organizations have become multi-billion dollar scientific weather bureaucracies, as intent on self -preservation and budgetary enhancement as they are on accurately predicting the weather. They are, however, overshadowed in graft, collusion and obfuscation by the International Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC) a scientific intergovernmental body tasked to evaluate the risk of climate change caused by human activity. The panel was established in 1988 by the United Nations. It shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prizewith Al Gore, an honor which hoi sted it into the pantheon of the movement's prophetic elite.
But the IPCC is not a gathering of expert scientists on the issues and includes very few real climatologists or atmospheric physicists. It is a political body, hewing to ideology and following politically correct lines of operation and reportage. One of the more damning ( and alarming) revelations at the conference was that of the controversy which surrounded the IPCC's second report, The Science of Climate Change in 1995. According to insiders, the report had originally concluded that there was no evidence that human beings have had any influence on the climate. Yet the original version of the report was substantially edited with 15 different sections of Chapter 8 ( the chapter dealing with the extent of human influence) being amended to reflect the opposite point of view. The Executive Summary to the report, the only part that in practise most politicians ever read, clearl y hewed to the accepted fact of human interference, contrary to the conclusions of the original manuscript.
That editorial hit job was almost certainly the work of IPPC's first chairman, the alarmist Swedish professor Bert Bolin. But he did not get away scot free. Professor Frederick Seitz, the former chairman of the American Science Academy , wrote in the Wall Street Journal on June 12th, 1996 that " I have never before witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer review process than the events that led to this IPCC report."
He proceeded to demand that the IPCC process be abandoned. From then on,the IPPC's serial campaign of disinformation only grew more robust and continues today as the flagship of the global warming armada.
Having said all this, it is the weather itself which seems to be having the last laugh on all of us, effectively closing the deabte. This year, the United States experienced one of its most severe winters on record, , with snow falling in such unlikely locations as New Orleans, Las Vegas, Alabama, and Georgia. Canada had its first " White Christmas " for the first time in 37 years. Satellite data, as recently as last week, revealed that three of the Great Lakes -- Erie, Superior, and Huron -- were almost completely frozen over. In Washington, DC, what was supposed to be a massive rally against global warming was upstaged by the heaviest snowfall of the season, which all but shut down the capital. Only 2,000 global warming diehards turned up to protest global warming
Meanwhile, the National Snow and Ice Data Center has acknowledged that due to a satellite sensor malfunction, it had been underestimating the extent of the loss of Arctic sea ice to the tune of 193,000 square miles -- an area the size of Spain.
So much for Gore's predictions on the melting of Greenland - or other parts of the Arctic Ice Cap.
The ultimate conclusion, of even alarmists, is that 2008 was the coolest year of the past decade, eclisping the steadily warming eight years of this century and rendering the average global temperatures over this period appreciably middling - neither too hot, nor too cold.
Predictably, none of this sems to have fazed the Alarmist lobby ( fittingly referred to as " the bedwetters" by Lord Monckton at the New York conference). The juggernaut is rolling on with Britain contemplating the issue of carbon footprint identity cards; the United States Congress about to debate the efficacy of Cap and Trade legislation; Al Gore pronouncing last week that global warming is still " incontrovertible science" and the U.N. planning a major conference on climate change for December, on the lines of the farcical 1999 Kyoto gathering.
Why do they then persist in their misbegotten crusade? Well, there are a lot of people with a lot of things to protect. For one, there are oodles of money to be made by the alarmist industry and its supporters, and we know by just looking at our newspapers and magazines that going " green" is the new fashionable statement, encouraging a raft of new industries to cater to the chic and prosperous. The scientists who have built their reputations on global warming alarmism run the risk of suffering career -ruining opprobrium should their science prove wonky, ultimately exposing them as the perpetrators of the most serious scientific scandal of the century. Then , of course , there are the social engineers and environmental idealogues who are salivating at the opportunity to control our political systems, our economies and &nb sp;our daily lives. ( Another Lord Monckton bon mot: might be appropriate here: " the greens are just too yellow to admit they're red.")
But the stubborn facts of the Earth's relative indifference to human activity endures. A common refrain among the climatological participants was that the Earth is constantly passing through alternate periods of warming and subsequent cooling and little that man has done or not done over the past 10,000 years has altered this fact. During the Medieval period, right through to the mid-19th Century , the world traversed what is dubbed The Little Ice Age, exemplified, most tellingly, by the centuries long annual freezing of the Thames River in England ( which does not occur any longer) and the icing up of harbors inthe Netherlands. Correspondingly, since about 1850, the Earth has been passing through a period of gradual warming , which oddly enough seems to be coming to an end just as we are getting serious about it.
What remains is nature - indomitable, relentless nature - dynamic and mysterious and about which we still know too little. If the global warming alarmists reserved a little more reverence for the enigma of our planet and a little less bile for the human beings who populate it,,then perhaps all the money, political capital and intellectual energy they have summoned could be poured into a real human problem that can be humanly solved.
Want to comment on this article? See Avi Davis’ blog
Avi Davis is the Executive Director and Senior Fellow of the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles. He can be contacted at isdev@ix.netcom.com
Robert Spencer-Victory at Facebook?
by Robert Spencer
The story of Todd Snider and his Facebook group “I Wonder How Quickly I Can Find 1,000,000 People Who Support Israel,” which appeared on FrontPage last Friday in the article “Facebook Jihad," has taken a bizarre new turn.Snider, you may recall, is the enterprising and dedicated fourteen-year-old who last summer started a Facebook group that quickly grew to become the largest pro-Israel group on the popular social networking site. Snider’s group, “I Wonder How Quickly I Can Find 1,000,000 People Who Support Israel,” which he founded in July 2008, had over 180,000 members by mid February of this year. But on February 15, 2009, Snider’s Facebook group was hacked and destroyed by a pro-Hizballah group calling itself “Lebanese Shee’a Hackers.” The hackers completely erased the original site content and replaced it with threatening, obscenity-laced pro-jihad, anti-Israel propaganda datelined Bint Jbeil, South Lebanon: “DEAR ADMINS, DON’T WASTE MY AND YOUR TIME , LEAVE THIS GROUP ITS BETTER FOR BOTH THIS IS THE LAST TIME ILL EDIT YOU INFO , NEXT TIME AND IN A COUPLE OF HOURS YOU WILL LOOSE EVERYTHING RELATED TO THIS GROUP….” (Frontpagemag)
NEWS: EUROPE AND AMERICA
 Muslim hate preacher ridicules troops abused in anti-war protests - and mocks their dead comrade
By MICHAEL SEAMARK, ANDREW LEVY and MATT SANDY
A Muslim preacher of hate today ridiculed British soldiers who were abused during a homecoming parade - branding them cowards who have an 'uncanny knack for death by friendly fire'. Firebrand preacher Anjem Choudary praised the Muslims who had protested at yesterday's parade for the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment in Luton. And in an inflammatory message posted on an Islamic extremist website, Choudary viciously mocked their comrade who was killed by friendly fire in Iraq. His words came as police charged a man who allegedly shouted abuse at the Muslim anti-war protesters. A second march which took place today in Watford passed off peacefully, with hundreds of residents turning out to cheer on the soldiers. Choudary, who has links with banned Muslim cleric Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, likened the soldiers to Nazis and branded yesterday's homecoming a 'vile parade' of 'brutal murderers'. (Dailymail.co.uk)
The War Is Over: Federal courts have just surrendered in the war against radical Islam - Andrew C. McCarthy
The war is over. Our peerless armed forces took Tora Bora and, when we finally let them, Fallujah. But al-Qaeda won in Washington, and that has made all the difference. The War on Terror has radically altered the compact between the American people and their government by dramatically changing the nature of the U.S. courts. Until this new, unaccountable monster is caged, it will continue to devour our political community’s capacity to wage war and to defend itself. And that caging had better happen soon, because the word “war” in this context refers only to our nation’s forcible military response after the 9/11 attacks finally made the atrocities of radical Islam impossible to ignore any longer. Our response did not start the war. That war, radical Islam’s jihad against the United States and the West, continues — and ever more perilously. As we hollow ourselves out by the day, we become a much softer target. (NationalReview)
"Homegrown" terrorist recruitment in Somalia- Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson
WASHINGTON — Senior U.S. counterterrorism officials are stepping up warnings that Islamist extremists in Somalia are radicalizing Americans to their cause, citing their successful recruitment of the first U.S. citizen suicide bomber and potential role in the disappearance of more than a dozen Somali American youths.In recent public statements, the director of national intelligence and the leaders of the FBI and CIA have alluded to the case of Shirwa Ahmed, a 27-year-old college student from Minneapolis who blew himself up in Somalia on Oct. 29 in one of five simultaneous bombings attributed to al-Shabaab, a group with close links to al-Qaida. (Seattletimes)
Shari'a making inroads in the West-Olivier Guitta
Pakistan recently gave in to the pressure of Islamist militants. Indeed to buy off peace, Pakistani authorities allowed the imposition of Shari'a (Islamic law) in the Swat Valley. How long the cease-fire will last is anyone's guess. But in any case, Pakistan has allowed a precedent that could extend to other provinces; in fact the Swat Valley is only about 160 kilometers from Islamabad, the capital. But Shari'a is not making inroads only in Pakistan - it is creeping into the West. One area particularly touched by this phenomenon is the judicial system in Europe. Two recent cases in Italy and France are particularly troublesome. In Italy, three members of a Brescia-based Maghrebi family (father, mother and eldest son) were accused of beating and sequestering their daughter/sister Fatima because she had wanted to live a "Western" life. (Jpost)
Italy: Islamists are the main terrorist threat, says report-AKI
Rome, 10 March (AKI) - The Italian government investigated 216 terror threats against Italy last year, concluding that Islamist cells were the "primary threat to the public interest, both inside Italy and abroad," according to a report released on Tuesday. The extent of the terror threat was revealed in an anti-terrorism report presented to the department of information security. Al-Qaeda's leadership "is still playing a central role" in international terrorism, the report said, adding that investigators were giving priority to probes of jihadist plots. In Italy, Islamist terror cells were "fluid and scattered", tending to coalesce around "charismatic individuals," the report stated. (AKI)
Norway: County to adapt swimming classes for Muslim girls
The education director of the Aust-Agder county in Norway decided that Muslim students will not be granted an exemption from swimming classes because they don't want to show bare skin. Agderposten reported today about the problem after a municipality in the county asked the education director if it was possible to exempt Muslim girls from swimming lessons. The education director can find no legal basis for an exemption, but suggests that Muslim girls should be enabled to participate under their own conditions. The suggestions are that the students can use swimming suits that cover the body according to Muslim law, that segregated groups be set up and that Muslim students be given the possibility to shower before the other students and use a closed dressing room. Education director Karen Junker doesn't remember getting similar requests. (Islamineurope)
Academic freedom
Neoliberalism and Higher Education-Stanley Fish
I’ve been asking colleagues in several departments and disciplines whether they’ve ever come across the term “neoliberalism” and whether they know what it means. A small number acknowledged having heard the word; a very much smaller number ventured a tentative definition. I was asking because I had been reading essays in which the adjective neoliberal was routinely invoked as an accusation, and I had only a sketchy notion of what was intended by it. When one of these essays cited my recent writings on higher education as a prime example of “neoliberal ideology” (Sophia McClennen, “Neoliberalism and the Crisis of Intellectual Engagement,” in Works and Days, volumes 26-27, 2008-2009), I thought I’d better learn more. What I’ve learned (and what some readers of this column no doubt already knew) is that neoliberalism is a pejorative way of referring to a set of economic/political policies based on a strong faith in the beneficent effects of free markets. (fish.blogs. nytimes)
Victimology 101 at Yale-Heather Mac Donald
While the rest of the university tightens its belt, guess who's exempted from the austerity campaign?
In December 2008, Yale University president Richard Levin announced a series of budget cuts to compensate for a 25 percent drop in the value of Yale's endowment. This February, the university launched the Office of LGBTQ [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer] Resources to provide support for Yale's homosexual community. According to its director, the new office is intended to make the "University feel like a friendly place as opposed to an alien, hostile place" to gays. The recession, it appears, is going to have little impact on the academic culture of victimology and the ever-growing bureaucracy that supports it. (Weeklystandard)
Israel Apartheid Week bigger than ever-Elan Lubliner
The fifth annual Israel Apartheid Week, which ended on Sunday, was a more popular, better attended, and more aggressive series of anti-Israel rallies and lectures than ever before. "Forty-four international cities held IAW events, which is twice as much as last year, and in Toronto thousands of people attended events. Almost every building was filled to maximum capacity," Golda Shahidi, spokeswoman for Students Against Israel Apartheid, told The Jerusalem Post by phone from Toronto on Wednesday.The rise in participation was largely due to the world's reaction to the recent war in Gaza, said Amos Hermon, the head of the Jewish Agency's Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. "We haven't seen a wave of anti-Israel feelings this strong in the last two decades." "After Cast Lead, it was easier for certain 'students for life' to manipulate opinion on campuses. They're equipped and very well funded by Arab countries and anti-Israel organizations to set up an agenda against Israel. They get away with it too because many faculty members on campuses are anti-Israel and don't try hard enough to keep the balance," Hermon told the Post on Wednesday. (Jpost)
Media Bias
BBC Digs Another Hole :Following a third Palestinian bulldozer attack, the BBC still won't learn.
In July 2008, we caught the BBC's shocking first response to a Palestinian bulldozer attack in Jerusalem. Offering a glimpse into the BBC's warped journalism, the initial headline read "Israel bulldozer driver shot dead". While the BBC later amended its headline, this example offered evidence of the BBC's mindset - the initial instinct to portray Israel as an aggressor and a Palestinian as a victim even if that Palestinian was actively involved in a terrorist attack against innocent civilians. Less than three weeks later, another Palestinian bulldozer attack took place. This time, in a virtual repetition of the first incident, the BBC's initial response the second time was a headline questioning whether an attack had taken place at all. The headlines on the BBC's web page went from "New Vehicle 'Attack' in Jerusalem" to "New Digger 'Attack' in Jerusalem," then finally settled on "Israel Hit By New Digger Attack." (Honestreporting)
NYT Writer Deceitfully Claims Climate Conference Disharmony-Marc Sheppard
You’d expect a gathering of over 700 reputable scientists, economists, and policy makers tackling an issue as topical and media-hyped as global warming to be big news. And you know it would be, had the goal of their discussions and presentations been to parrot and propagate the conclusions of the alarmist mainstream. But instead, attendees of the International Conference on Climate Change arrived on Sunday prepared to put anthropogenic warming claims to the test, and for their sins the publicity they received ranged from none to insulting. This was the second year that Heartland’s ICCC was held in NYC, and the second year the city’s premiere newspaper dispatched environment writer Andrew Revkin to discredit its significance. Last year’s hatchet-piece smugly challenged the expertise, motivations and funding of the scientists in attendance, and concluded by suggesting that few attendees were actual men of science at all. And, while it touched upon what Revkin considered a “dizzying range of ideas on what was, or was not, influencing climate,” such was not its focus. (Americanthinker)
Freedom of Speech
 Don’t Say a Word: A U.N. resolution seeks to criminalize opinions that differ with the Islamic faith-Christopher Hitchens
The Muslim religion makes unusually large claims for itself. All religions do this, of course, in that they claim to know and to be able to interpret the wishes of a supreme being. But Islam affirms itself as the last and final revelation of God’s word, the consummation of all the mere glimpses of the truth vouchsafed to all the foregoing faiths, available by way of the unimprovable, immaculate text of “the recitation,” or Quran. If there sometimes seems to be something implicitly absolutist or even totalitarian in such a claim, it may result not from a fundamentalist reading of the holy book but from the religion itself. And it is the so-called mainstream Muslims, grouped in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, who are now demanding through the agency of the United Nations that Islam not only be allowed to make absolutist claims but that it also be officially shielded from any criticism of itself. (Slate)
Bat Yeor’s remarks at Columbia Law School-Transcribed by Atlas Shrugs and Tundra Tabloids.
I would like first to thank Prof. Philip Hamburger, for having invited me to participate in this panel and for having chosen a subject that suddenly emerges in the 21th irreligious century. There are reasons for the sudden international gravity of this topic and maybe we could touch a bit on that too in the discussion. I want to remind the participants that this is not just a theoretical problem, because there are people who have been assassinated, killed, and who live in fear and terror, their whole lives destroyed by what is called blasphemy. There are reasons why this problem of blasphemy has taken on such importance. I want to say that it will take on more and more of importance, and if we don’t try to solve the problems, the questions, the issues which are related to the problems of blasphemy, of religious respect and so on, the whole of western civilization might be changed and even destroyed. (Internationalfreepresssociety)
ANTISEMITISM
Sweden's anti-Israel apartheid policy is about more than sport-ABRAHAM COOPER and HAROLD BRACKMAN
Neutral Sweden's mixed World War II legacy is still debated by historians. On the one hand it supplied Nazi Germany with iron ore and ball bearings and allowed the Wehrmacht to use the Swedish railway system to transport soldiers. On the other hand, spurred on by the Danes, it accepted Danish Jews marked for mass murder by the Nazis. Ultimately, the good name of Sweden was redeemed by the unparalleled heroics of one of its own - Raoul Wallenberg, who, using the cover of a Swedish diplomat, helped save tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews destined for Auschwitz, only to disappear into the Soviet Gulag. For decades, no Swedish government had the courage to demand his return from the jaws of the neighboring Russian bear. While this Swede will forever be revered by the Jewish nation, it is brutally clear in 2009 that Jews and especially those uppity ones from Israel are of little concern to Swedish authorities, as their policies become more reminiscent of apartheid South Africa or Berlin in the 1930s than a 21st-century Scandinavian democracy. (Jpost)
Beware the new axis of evangelicals and Islamists-Melanie Phillips
Melanie Phillips says there is a dangerous new alliance between anti-Israel Christians and radical Muslim groups, often plotting in secret against their common enemy.
Last weekend the Revd Stephen Sizer, vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water appeared at an anti-Israel meeting with an Islamist called Ismail Patel. Patel has not only accused Israel of ‘genocide’ and ‘war crimes’ but considers Disney to be a Jewish plot and supports Hamas, Iran and Syria. Sizer is a virulent opponent of Christian Zionism and of Israel, which he has said he hopes will disappear just as did the apartheid regime in South Africa. He has also applauded Iranian President Ahmadinejad for having ‘looked forward to the day when Zionism ceased to exist’. Nevertheless, the appearance of an Anglican churchman on a pro-Islamist platform in Britain is a new and significant development. The Church of England recently banned its clergy from joining the BNP; should it not equally ban them from siding with the forces of Islamofascism? (Spectator.co.uk)
 STOCKHOLM (EJP)---Between 6,000 and 10,000 anti-Israel demonstrators marched on Saturday in the streets of Malmo to protest against the Israel-Sweden tennis match.
Dozens of them clashed with Swedish police in the southern city as they sought to disrupt the match Davis cup match. At least five rock-throwing protesters were held, police say. There were no reports of injuries.
The demonstrators, mostly youths, tried to storm an arena where the Sweden-Israel Davis Cup match was being held. They chanted slogans condemning Israel's operation in Gaza and urged support for the Palestinians. "We are ... anarchists who want to protest against the fact that there are this many police officers to protect the representatives of a repressive occupying force that massacred so many innocent people in Gaza," a demonstrator, who identified himself only as Jan, told AFP.Swedish police said the clashes near the Baltic Hall arena began soon after thousands of people attended the peaceful Stop the Match rally in central Malmo. (EJP)
Violent Intruders Attack Brooklyn Synagogues-Nissan Ratzlav-Katz"I (IsraelNN.com) For the second time in less than a week, a packed Brooklyn, New York, synagogue has been the target of threats of violence by intruders. On Monday, according to Yeshiva World News, an Arab man in his mid-30s entered Boro Park's 'Sephardish Shul' and began making proclamations of jihad. Members of a Jewish volunteer security organization, the Shomrim, apprehended the threatening individual. They held him until police officers arrived at the scene, arresting the suspect. Detectives spoke with the "Middle Eastern man" at a station house near the synagogue. Police officials reminded the community, "If you see something, say something." Security in Brooklyn's heavily Jewish Boro Park area has been stepped up during the Purim holiday. (INN)
TERRORISM, INTERNET, JIHAD
FBI’s Embarrassing Response to CAIR Questions-Steve Emerson
A U.S. Congressman who serves on a committee controlling the FBI's budget is blasting the Bureau's response to a set of questions regarding an FBI freeze on contacts with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The Investigative Project on Terrorism reported January 29th that evidence tying CAIR and its founders to a U.S.-based Hamas support network prompted the Bureau to sever routine outreach meetings with the organization. That evidence was part of the government's prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which ended in November with the conviction of five former officials on 108 counts. "[I]f CAIR wishes to pursue an outreach relationship with the FBI, certain issues must be addressed to the satisfaction of the FBI. Unfortunately, these issues cannot be addressed at the local level and must be addressed by the CAIR National Office in Washington, D.C.," an October letter from Oklahoma City Special Agent in Charge James E. Finch said. Similar letters were issued in other states. (Familysecuritymatters)
Terrorist watch list hits 1 million-Peter Eisler
WASHINGTON — The government's terrorist watch list has hit 1 million entries, up 32% since 2007.
Federal data show the rise comes despite the removal of 33,000 entries last year by the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center in an effort to purge the list of outdated information and remove people cleared in investigations. It's unclear how many individuals those 33,000 records represent — the center often uses multiple entries, or "identities," for a person to reflect variances in name spellings or other identifying information. The remaining million entries represent about 400,000 individuals, according to the center. The new figures were provided by the screening center and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to requests from USA TODAY. (usatoday)
Spain marks anniversary of train bombings - victims angry - Summary-DPA
Madrid - Spain on Wednesday marked the fifth anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, the country's biggest terrorist attack, amid complaints by the victims that the authorities had forgotten them. Victims' representatives said they would have hoped for bigger official acts to commemorate the bombings carried out by Islamist extremists, who killed 191 and injured more than 1,800 people.Madrid regional Prime Minister Esperanza Aguirre and mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon laid a wreath at a marble slab paying tribute to the victims and rescuers, and parliament observed a minute of silence. (Earthtimes)
Germany/Belgium: Investigation into suspect terror cell
Anti-terror investigations are not rare in Europe, and I've long ago stopped reporting about every single arrest. However, in this case, it seems like a wide-spread international investigation, and yet I couldn't find any other mention of it. Ahmad al-Khalifa, eloquent preacher and head of the mosque in the Munich neighborhood of Freimann appeared rather monosyllabic Tuesday. Police and prosecutors arrived at his house and mosque and three other places in Munich and Garching at 6AM.The investigation is focused on Ahmad al-Khalifa and six other defendants, including the chairman of the Islamic Congregations in Germany (IGD), Ibrahim el Zayat. [ed.: the organization is related to the Muslim Brotherhood]. They are suspected of having contacts with Islamic terrorism. Special units of the police stormed in total 14 targets yesterday in Munich, Garching, Berlin, North Rhine-Westphalia and Belgium, including prayer rooms, mosques and numerous offices and homes. A police spokesperson says that extensive evidence was seized.
 Self-proclaimed ex-terrorists tell Western Michigan University crowd to 'wake up'-Paul M. Davis
KALAMAZOO -- To illustrate his point, self-described former Islamic terrorist Kamal Saleem lay down on the Miller Auditorium stage before an audience of 1,300 people Tuesday.America is similarly asleep to the threat of an Islamic fundamentalism bent on destroying Western culture, spreading Islamic Shariah law worldwide and has no qualms about using violence to achieve those goals -- including in the United States, Saleem said."America didn't know what to do with 9/11. They hit the snooze button and went right back (to sleep). Today we gotta wake up as a nation," Saleem said. "A great speaker said, 'My people perish for the lack of knowledge.' Today knowledge is given to you," he told an audience whose members at times applauded and other times vocally disagreed during the more than hourlong presentation Tuesday. (mlive)
Radical ENVIRONMENTALISM and Science
Stern Words for Global Warming Alarmists-Christopher C. Horner
Ironies and double standards can be subtle. And, in giddy “historic” times, the ironies can be absolutely blistering. For example, consider the media’s different contortions when covering the positions of presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama on the matter of a “global warming” treaty. For example, last week the Obama administration proclaimed that expectations shall be lowered on that front and, for some reason, broadcast anchors eschewed rending of cloth and gnashing of teeth, and the print media couldn’t be bothered with the usual editorials and hit pieces masquerading as news items to condemn the seemingly rational assessment. The words in question came in a speech by President Obama’s “climate envoy,” former Clinton-Gore “Kyoto” aide Todd Stern, that the global warming agenda demanded of Bush was too ambitious and “not going to happen.” (To whom do you present your credentials as “climate envoy”? Mother Nature?) (Humanevents)
Increased Number Think Global Warming Is “Exaggerated”-Lydia Saad
Most believe global warming is happening, but urgency has stalled
PRINCETON, NJ -- Although a majority of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is either correctly portrayed in the news or underestimated, a record-high 41% now say it is exaggerated. This represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject. As recently as 2006, significantly more Americans thought the news underestimated the seriousness of global warming than said it exaggerated it, 38% vs. 30%. Now, according to Gallup's 2009 Environment survey, more Americans say the problem is exaggerated rather than underestimated, 41% vs. 28%. (Gallup)
 Scientists discover the brain's 'God spot'... and show that faith helps human survival
Scientists searching for a 'God spot' in the brain have found three areas that control religious belief.A study of 40 participants, including Christians, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists, showed the same areas lit up when they were asked to ponder religious and moral problems. MRI scans revealed the regions that were activated are those used every day to interpret the feelings and intentions of other people. 'That suggests that religion is not a special case of a belief system, but evolved along with other belief and social cognitive abilities,' said Jordan Grafman, a cognitive neuroscientist at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland. Scientists, philosophers and theologians continue to argue about whether religious belief is a biological or a sociological phenomenon. (Dailymail.co.uk)
Society and CULTURE
At Radio City, a Showdown Between Maher and Coulter-Dave Itzkoff
Tucked into an angular lounge chair in an Art Deco suite above Radio City Music Hall on Monday evening, Ann Coulter, the conservative author, was awaiting her would-be adversary, the liberal comedian Bill Maher. She and Mr. Maher had agreed to face off in a series of debates over the next three nights, and Ms. Coulter was concerned that their material might go stale from repeated performances. “Bill wants me to behave like a wife who laughs each time she hears her husband tell the same story,” Ms. Coulter said. “I told him I’m not an actress, or I’d have a bigger apartment.” A few minutes later, Mr. Maher, host of the HBO series “Real Time With Bill Maher,” entered the room, dressed in jeans and a Planet Hollywood jacket. He hugged Ms. Coulter, and noted the high-heeled shoes she was wearing. “Did you get taller?” Mr. Maher asked.“I wanted to intimidate you,” Ms. Coulter replied teasingly. They sat as their moderator, Mark Halperin, an editor at large for Time magazine, explained the rules of the debate (“Basically, I’m going to stay out of your way,” Mr. Halperin said), then retired to separate dressing rooms. (NYT)
 IN THE BLOOD: Why do vampires still thrill?-Joan Acocella
“Unclean, unclean!” Mina Harker screams, gathering her bloodied nightgown around her. In Chapter 21 of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” Mina’s friend John Seward, a psychiatrist in Purfleet, near London, tells how he and a colleague, warned that Mina might be in danger, broke into her bedroom one night and found her kneeling on the edge of her bed. Bending over her was a tall figure, dressed in black. “His right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare breast which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.” Mina’s husband, Jonathan, hypnotized by the intruder, lay on the bed, unconscious, a few inches from the scene of his wife’s violation...That scene, and Stoker’s whole novel, is still ringing in our ears. Stoker did not invent vampires. If we define them, broadly, as the undead—spirits who rise, embodied, from their graves to torment the living—they have been part of human imagining since ancient times. Eventually, vampire superstition became concentrated in Eastern Europe. (It survives there today.) (Newyorker)
www.americanfreedomalliance.org
|
