"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Saturday, September 29, 2007

IS HIZBALLAH PREPARING FOR ANOTHER WAR?


SEEMS SO - NRO/THE TANK, FROM LEBANON:
Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.

Two additional objectives were achieved: First, the operation served as a probing action to determine local reaction. Second, it served as an exercise to gauge the time required (speed, synchronization, etc.) to achieve the key points and intersections.


Amazingly, there was no response from the police or the army.

HezB is also jamming cell-phone signals almost daily. Their lookouts are everywhere, at least from my vantage point, because they are watching the people I'm with and me.

HezB is also far better armed, equipped, and tactically proficient than most Americans might realize. They are terrorists to be sure: But they are also a very strong Iranian-trained guerrilla force here in Lebanon, and they seem to be getting a pass from far too many people in high places.
I BETCHYA DAMASCUS AND TEHRAN KNOW EXACTLY WHAT'S UP...

It might be timed to occur just before the next meeting of Abbas and Olmert - on 10/2, or at least before the next major "peace" conference (in Annapolis, MD), in November...

STAY TUNED.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER - PART 47: ANOTHER LEFTIST HUGS AHMADINEJAD

More proof that the Left is allied to jihadism:
(Daniel) Ortega, the head of the Marxist-leaning Sandinista party that ruled the country in the 1980s, acted as if the Cold War had never ended, telling the U.N. audience that the United States was the ``most gigantic and impressive dictatorship that has existed in the history of humanity.''

He met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for more than an hour, and the two parted with a warm embrace as cameras flashed. Afterward, Ortega told journalists his nation and Iran would form an unspecified ``front for the fight of peace.''
VIA BABALU WHO HAS LOTS MORE!

BOTTOM-LINE: IF THE JIHADISTS DIDN'T HAVE LEFTIST FRIENDS THEN THEY'D HAVE NO FRIENDS!

"OBAMA VERSUS ROMNEY" - OR WHAT HAPPENS IF IOWA PICKS THE NOMINEES AGAIN

NEWSWEEK:
The top three Democratic presidential contenders are locked in a three-way race among likely Iowa caucus-goers, according to the latest NEWSWEEK Poll—while Romney leads his Republican rivals in the Hawkeye State.

Sept. 29, 2007 - Sen. Hillary Clinton holds a double-digit lead over her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination in many national polls. But in Iowa, home to the January 2008 caucus that is the first major event of the electoral season, the Democratic race is much tighter, according to the latest NEWSWEEK Poll.

Among all Iowa Democrats surveyed, Clinton enjoys a 6-point lead over her nearest rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.


But among likely Democratic caucus-goers, she is locked in a three-way race with Obama and former North Carolina senator John Edwards, with Obama enjoying a slight edge.


Meanwhile, the NEWSWEEK Poll found that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has emerged as the top choice among Iowa’s GOP voters—well ahead of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who leads in most national polls.
If Romney wins Iowa and then NH then he will be as tough to stop as Kerry was for the Dems in '04.

And, Obama is kicking ass as far as MONEY goes - AND NOW LEADS IN IOWA.

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.... it now looks like it's gonna be Obama versus Romney. And who would win a Romney versus Obama election?

NO CONTEST. Mitt in a landslide.

(BTW: Just as 2004 pitted to Yalies; Mitt versus Barack would be between two Harvard grads. I wonder who got higher grades? BTW: Mitt has MORE Haravrd sheepskin than Barack: Mitt earned an MBA AND a JD.)

The Dems must be VERY worried.

And Al Gore ha s GOT to be thinking that his time has come again...

Full round up at MEMEORANDUM.

SPAIN MOVES INTO ALLIANCE WITH RUSSIA ON BURMA

As growing global alliances continue to move into place, socialist leader Zapatero demonstrates his solidarity with ex-KGB man, Putin on Burma.
Zapatero and Putin
You may already know that

WILL IRAN TEST THEIR FIRST NUKE, OR USE IT?

It's obvious to anyone with a brain that despite Ahmadinejad's denials in the West, IRAN WANTS NUKES.

It's obvious because there is no other possible explanation for Iran's two decades of lies and deceit about their secret enrichment program - in direct violation of their responsibilities under the IAEA and NPT. (The decades of aid which Iran has received for the nuclear POWER program was predicated on them upholding the terms of the IAEA rules and the NPT.) They would not risk it for less.

It's obvious because there is no other logical reason for Iran to build an enrichment array at the cost of hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars (with the added costs of making them SECRET and as untouchable by aerial assault as possible). AFTER ALL, IRAN STILL HAS NO WORKING REACTOR WITH WHICH TO USE ENRICHED URANIUM; THE ONLY OTHER USE FOR IT IS TO MAKE NUKES.

Therefore, I think it's important to ask two questions:

  1. Will Iran test their nuke(s)? And -
  2. How might Iran TEST their nuke(s)?

Will they do an underground test? PROBABLY. They don't have the sophisticated computers to do a simulation, and they really REALLY need to know that they work.

And to achieve the most effective deterrent, they need to be able to prove they have nukes. (Although Israel has achieved deterrence with the merely INFERENCE.)

But I WOULD ESTIMATE that Iran will not test their first nuke until they have several others on hand --- so that they could announce that they have others right after a successful test, and thereby achieve deterrence for any retaliation.

That's why we must preemptively attack Iran BEFORE they prove to the world that they have a nuke by testing it.

The sad thing is there are many MANY on the Left - (if not ALL) - who protest that a preemptive attack is wrong because - (AS OF NOW, AND UNTIL A TEST) - there is no "iron-clad" proof that Iran wants a nuke or has a nuke, (despite the inescapably simple logic).

BY THE TIME THERE IS THE IRON-CLAD PROOF THE LEFT DEMANDS... IT... IS... TOO... LATE.

That's why I say - with regard to a preemptive attack: DAMN THE LEFT; FULL SPEED AHEAD.

The alternatives are worse. The alternatives are letting them (a) test a nuke (which they'll only do if they have multiple nukes, in which case it's too late to take them down) - or letting them (b) use them, preemptively - in which case we will have to destroy them in even harsher way than if we preempt them.

THEREFORE: The sanest thing for us to do is to preemptively neutralize their nuke assets and their military assets.

Allowing the future of the world to change according to the will of a NUCLEAR Iran is worse than whatever will happen as a result of destroying Iran's nuclear and military assets.

AND WE CANNOT DEPEND ON THE IAEA OR THE UN: THEY ARE USELESS AT BEST.

More on why we must preemptively attack Iran HERE, at POWER LINE.

The Race Card is Getting Pretty Frayed in this One

We read:
"A longtime critic of Rutgers University's drive into big-time sports is being criticized over a newspaper article comment that university officials have branded as racist.

At the end of a Wednesday New York Times article about William C. Dowling's failed efforts to get Rutgers to turn away from high-stakes athletics, the tenured English professor responded to arguments that athletic scholarships provide opportunity to low-income, minority students.

"If you were giving the scholarship to an intellectually brilliant kid who happens to play a sport, that's fine," Dowling said. "But they give it to a functional illiterate who can't read a cereal box, and then make him spend 50 hours a week on physical skills. That's not opportunity. If you want to give financial help to minorities, go find the ones who are at the library after school."

Rutgers Athletic Director Bob Mulcahy told local newspapers that Dowling's comment was "a blatantly racist statement." In a statement released by the university, Rutgers President Richard McCormick called it "inaccurate and inhumane." "It also has a racist implication that has no place whatsoever in our civil discourse," McCormick said in the statement.

Source
Sounds like the university is saying that there are no smart blacks. So who exactly is being racist here?

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Questioning 20th Century Warmth

Excerpt:

In 2006, an article appeared in Science magazine reconstructing the temperature of the Northern Hemisphere back to 800 AD based on 14 smoothed and normalized temperature proxies (e.g., tree ring records). Osborn and Briffa proclaimed at the time that "the 20th century is the most anomalous interval in the entire analysis period, with highly significant occurrences of positive anomalies and positive extremes in the proxy records." Obviously, concluding that the Northern Hemisphere has entered a period of unprecedented warmth is sure to make the news, and indeed, Osborn and Briffa's work was carried in papers throughout the world and was loudly trumpeted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that publishes the journal Science.

A recent issue of Science contains an article not likely to receive any press coverage at all. Gerd Buerger of Berlin's Institut fuer Meteorologie decided to revisit the work of Osborn and Briffa, and his results raise serious questions about the claim that the 20th century has been unusually warm. Buerger argues that Osborn and Briffa did not apply the appropriate statistical tests that link the proxy records to observational data, and as such, Osborn and Briffa did not properly quantify the statistical uncertainties in their analyses. Buerger repeated all analyses with the appropriate adjustments and concluded "As a result, the `highly significant' occurrences of positive anomalies during the 20th century disappear." Further, he reports that "The 95th percentile is exceeded mostly in the early 20th century, but also about the year 1000." Needless to say, Gerd Buerger is not going to win any awards from the champions of global warming - nothing is more sacred than 20th century warming!

The reconstruction of past temperatures is a science unto itself, and the library contains many journals dedicated to the field. We could easily locate an article a week presenting a temperature reconstruction from some part of the planet that would call into question the notion that the 20th century was a period of unusual warmth. You may recall many essays we presented over the past five years examining the "hockey stick" depiction of planetary temperature (little change for 900 years, and suddenly 100 years ago, the temperature shot up) so merrily adopted by Gore and many others.

A large and important article appeared recently in Earth-Science Reviews regarding a long-term reconstruction of temperatures from Russia's Lake Baikal. In case you have forgotten your geography lessons, Lake Baikal is the world's deepest lake, it contains the world's largest volume of freshwater (20 percent of the global supply), and the lake has over 300 rivers flowing into it. Anson Mackay of University College London is the author of the article, and he notes that "the bottom sediments of the lake itself have never been directly been glaciated. Lake Baikal therefore, contains a potential uninterrupted paleoclimate archive consisting of over 7500 m of sedimentary deposits, extending back more than 20 million years." If that is not perfect enough, the Lake "is perhaps best well known for its high degree of biodiversity; over 2500 plant and animal species have been documented in Baikal, most of which are believed to be endemic." The Lake is a long way from the moderating effects of any ocean, and therefore, the Lake should experience large climatic fluctuations over long and short periods of time.

The trick to reconstructing temperatures here involves the shell remains of planktonic diatoms that have lived in the Lake for eons. During warm periods, some species of diatom phytoplankton flourish while during cold periods, some species flourish while most reduce production. Cores from the bottom of the Lake therefore contain a high-resolution temperature record for hundreds of thousands of years interpreted from biogenic silica left from the plankton.....

Of greater interest to us is what Lake Baikal can tell us about the most recent thousand years, and in particular, we are interested in the warming of the last 1000 years. Mackay notes that "between c. A.D. 850 and 1200, S. acus dominated the assemblage, most likely due to prevailing warmer and wetter climate that occurred in Siberia at this time." Well now, it certainly looks as if the Medieval Warm Period was noticed at the Lake. Next we learn that "Between c. A.D. 1200 and 1400, spring diatom crops growing under the ice decline in abundance, due in part to increased winter severity and snow cover on the lake, which is reflected in cooler early Siberian summers." The Little Ice Age then hit hard as Mackay finds "The diatom-inferred snow model suggests significantly increased snow cover on the lake between A.D. 1200 and 1775, which mirrors for the large part increases in snow cover in China during AD 1400-1900."

But here comes our favorite set of conclusions. Mackay writes "Diatom census data and reconstructions of snow accumulation suggest that changes in the influence of the Siberian High in the Lake Baikal region started as early as c. 1750 AD, with a shift from taxa that bloom during autumn overturn to assemblages that exhibit net growth in spring (after ice break-up). The data here mirror instrumental climate records from Fennoscandia for example, which also show over the last 250 years positive temperature trends and increasing early summer Siberian temperature reconstructions. Warming in the Lake Baikal region commenced before rapid increases in greenhouse gases, and at least initially, is therefore a response to other forcing factors such as insolation changes during this period of the most recent millennial cycle."

The Lake Baikal study shows that warming has occurred in the most recent century, but it is certainly nothing out of the ordinary and possibly to some degree explained by non-greenhouse forcing. The Osborn and Briffa proclamation that the 20th century was somehow out of the ordinary is certainly not confirmed by the incredible reconstruction from Lake Baikal.

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

MEDIA MATTERS STRIKES AGAIN!!


This is unbelievable!! Once again Media Matters takes something Rush says completely out of context and then the rumor is spread and people are denouncing something that wasn't even said on the floor of Congress.

Meanwhile, as Reliapundit pointed out, John Edwards really said something that should be denounced and the Drive By Media and Congress are silent. This double standard is getting ridiculous.

Friday, September 28, 2007

WEEKEND WITH THE ARTS: VAN GOGH

There's more to life than war, taxes and politics - and a lot of it's more fun, too! That's why every WEEKEND, here at THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, we post some of the cultural things we're into, things we think you might also find entertaining, enriching, and stimulating. We just might turn you on to something cool. After all, the arts - ALL ARTS, not just fine arts - are a big part of what our liberty is for, and what we're fighting to defend!

THIS WEEK: VAN GOGH: PAINTER/WRITER .. AND FILM DIRECTOR

NYTIMES:
“My God, if only I had known this country at 25, instead of coming here at 35.” That was Vincent van Gogh, freshly arrived in southern France, with its aromatic fields and star-spilling skies, in 1888. He was writing to his artist-friend Émile Bernard, 15 years his junior.

And he kept writing. On the train through Provence from Paris, his eyes glued to the window, he saw countryside “as beautiful as Japan for the limpidity of the atmosphere and the gay color effects.” Settled in the town of Arles, he stood all day in wheat fields painting “in the full heat of the sun, without any shade whatever, and there you are, I revel in it like a cicada.”

After a year in ashen Paris, he was in a chromatic delirium. He couldn’t stop cataloging the colors he was seeing and using. A painting of an orchard has a “white tree, a small green tree, a lilac field, an orange roof, a big blue sky.” His description of his painting of a sower in a field reads like Gertrude Stein:

“The chrome yellow 1 sky almost as bright as the sun itself, which is chrome yellow 1 with a little white, while the rest of the sky is chrome yellow 1 and 2 mixed, very yellow, then. ... There are many repetitions of yellow in the earth, neutral tones, resulting from the mixing of violet with yellow.”

If verbal accounts seemed inadequate, he drew ink sketches of paintings — of the sower in the field, of the orchard — right in the body of a letter, with the names of colors added. And when the descriptive circuits are overloaded, there are detonations. Frustrated at how to convey the reality that even transparent elements — water and air — have complex color ranges, he ends up shouting on paper: “No blue without yellow and orange.”

All these words, ideas, sensations and images are packed into “Painted With Words: Vincent van Gogh’s Letters to Émile Bernard” at the Morgan Library & Museum, a display of manuscripts that is also something more. Although 20 handwritten letters, given to the Morgan by Eugene and Clare Thaw, are at its center, they are surrounded by nearly two dozen paintings and drawings, half of them by van Gogh, including a splendid self-portrait.
I WILL GO SEE THIS SHOW NEXT WEEK.

BTW: VINCENT'S LETTERS TO HIS BROTHER THEO ARE A MUST READ.
(BUY A DT VERSION HERE.)

******BONUS: RELATED VIDEOS:




JOHN EDWARDS SAID A VERY ANTI-BLACK AND RACIST THING

NRO:

Asked about what he could do about "inner-city kids partaking in violence" at the MTV/MySpace Forum yesterday, Democratic candidate John Edwards offered an apocalyptic prediction for young black males:

“We cannot build enough prisons to solve this problem. And the idea that we can keep incarcerating and keep incarcerating — pretty soon we’re not going to have a young African-American male population in America. They’re all going to be in prison or dead. One of the two.”

  • I THINK HE SHOULD APOLOGIZE AND QUIT THE RACE.
  • HE IS UNFIT FOR OFFICE.

THE FACT THAT NEITHER THE LEFT, THE MSM, JESSE JACKSON OR AL SHARPTON HAS DEMANDED EDWARDS APOLOGIZE AND QUIT PROVES THEY'RE HYPOCRITES. AND PARTISANS.

*******UPDATE: GATEWAY HAS THE VIDEO!

WHAT EDWARDS SAID SOUNDS EVEN WORSE WHEN YOU SEE AND HEAR HIM SAY IT!

IT'S FREAKIN' OUTRAGEOUS!

BIRDS OF A FEATHER - PART 46: BOLIVIA, VENEZUELA AND IRAN: THE UNION OF LEFTISTS AND JIHADISTS

ABC/AP:
The leaders of Iran and Venezuela cemented an alliance aimed at countering the United States while the Iranian president reached out to a new ally in Bolivia and declared that together, "no one can defeat us."

After being vilified during his U.N. visit this week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad traveled on to friendlier territory Thursday, first stopping in Bolivia where he pledged $1 billion in investment and then visiting Venezuela to meet President Hugo Chavez.

"Together we are surely growing stronger, and in truth no one can defeat us," the Iranian leader said through an interpreter. Apparently referring to the U.S., he said, "Imperialism has no other option: Respect the peoples (of the world) or accept defeat."
PRESIDENTS EVO MORALES OF BOLIVIA AND HUGO CHAVEZ OF VENEZUELA ARE BOTH LEFTISTS.

THEY HAVE LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY EMBRACED JIHADISM.

THIS IS MORE PROOF THAT THE LEFT IS ALLIED TO THE JIHADISTS AND THAT JIHADOSM HAS MORE IN COMMON WITH LEFTISM THAN CONSERVATISM.

Columbia University's Past: Nazi Ambassador Invited to Speak in 1933

We read:

According to the David Wyman Institute of Holocaust Studies, Columbia University's invitation to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not the first granted by that prestigious institution to the representative of a despotism committed to anti-semitism.
The invitation to Iran's leader may seem less surprising, but no less disturbing, when one recalls that in 1933, Columbia president Nicholas Murray Butler invited Nazi Germany's ambassador to the United States, Hans Luther, to speak on campus, and also hosted a reception for him. Luther represented "the government of a friendly people," Butler insisted. He was "entitled to be received ... with the greatest courtesy and respect." Ambassador Luther's speech focused on what he characterized as Hitler's peaceful intentions. Students who criticized the Luther invitation were derided as "ill-mannered children" by the director of Columbia's Institute of Arts and Sciences.

And this was not all. Three years later Columbia would send a delegation to celebrate the 550th annniversary of the University of Heidelberg, even though it had already been purged of Jewish faculty members, instituted a Nazi curriculum and burned books by Jewish authors. Could this be the effect of the importation of German scholarship in the previous century? Or just that every generation supplies its share of useful idiots?

Source

What it shows is that Leftists have a compulsion to portray themselves as in possession of superior wisdom -- even if to do so they have to deny the obvious

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

ACLU Cheers Hate Crimes Legislation

We read:
"The American Civil Liberties Union today applauded the passage of the Matthew Shepard Amendment to the Defense Department authorization bill that for the first time punishes hate crimes without infringing on free speech. The amendment, offered by Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Gordon Smith (R-OR), will broaden the definition of hate crimes and give more resources to local districts unable to investigate them single-handedly.....

In the past, the ACLU has not endorsed hate crimes legislation because the organization found that earlier versions of the legislation would have had a chilling effect on free speech. Instead, this amendment only allows speech to be considered evidence of a hate crime if it directly relates to the specific act. As a result, no one will be prosecuted based on a book that he or she read, a meeting or religious service that the defendant once attended or a group in which he or she is a member - unless those speech activities specifically related to a violent hate crime.

"The hate crimes legislation is more protective of free speech than any other criminal law in the entire U.S. code," said ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel Chris Anders. "The amendment makes clear that violent hate crimes will be punished, but not mere thoughts, speech or belief. This legislation protects two fundamental American values because being able to live without the fear of being attacked just for being yourself is as American as the right to free speech."

Source
Sounds great, eh? So nobody will be prosecuted MERELY for thoughts or words. That's true. What they omit to mention, however, that words uttered in the CHAIN OF EVENTS leading up to some act of violence are criminalized. So if your Rabbi remarks in your hearing that the Torah orders stoning for homosexuals (which it does) and you then go out and assault a homosexual, then your Rabbi has committed a crime.

Clearly, the ACLU does NOT believe in free speech. They are lying through their teeth.

This could be seen as quite antisemitic and anti-Muslim legislation. Christians of course believe that homosexuals will be punished by God only (Romans chapter 1)

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY/IMAGERY, HSU-CLINTON-LORAL-KERREY AND CHINA












DOUG ROSS HAS POSTED ON SOME FASCINATING CONNECTIONS BETWEEN HSU, KERREY, LORAL, AND HILLARY - AND CHINA, CONNECTIONS WHICH DEMAND MUCH MORE SCRUTINY.

IF DOUG SHOWS UP AS DEAD AS VINCE FOSTER IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, AT LEAST WE'LL ALL KNOW WHY.

LAW OF THE SEA TREATY: Lost at Sea

Here is all you need to know about the Law of the Sea Treaty that the Democrat Senate is taking up this week: it will give the United Nations authority over the United States for the first time in world history, because a UN panel in Hamburg will have final arbitration authority about ocean navigation in international waters, with the power to forbid any shipping from entering any area of likely conflict, and to issue enormous fines to any country that disobeys–or worse. Do we really want to leave it to our America-hating detractors to determine or specify where our carrier groups or submarines can go in international waters?

A vibrant, powerful US Navy is all that the United States needs, and ever will need, to navigate the world’s seaways. If the Law of the Sea treaty had been in place in 1962, the anti-American UN might have forbidden the US from blockading Cuba. And if it had done so anyway, the UN would then have “justified” in “requiring”millions of dollars of US fines for running an ‘illegal’ blockade. And the Sovs would have put its nukes into Cuba.

Yeah–give me some of that… just what America needs.

Is it just me, or is there anyone else reading this who is scratching their heads as to why the United States would even consider ceding such power or soverighity to any external government–especially a hostile UN, which seemingly lives primarily to foil pretty much anything the US sets out to do of any consequence, all paid for primarily by the US! So we should let guys like Kim Jong Il, Assad, and Ahmadinejad have any input whatsoever into how we conduct our business? Or some EU bureaucrats in Germany? It is worse than irresponsible; it is utter madness. It is insanity.

Whether or not this happens is up to us. If we don’t do it, it isn’t going to get done. We did it once for the Immigration Bill. We did it again when MoveOn tried to smear Petraeus. And yes, we have to suck it up and go through it all again. It is that important. Contact your Senators now. And the President. Tell them what you think of putting the United Nations in charge of where the US Navy can and cannot go.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

MORE LEFT-WING AWFULIZING, BDS AND PARANOIA


'A Coup Has Occurred'

Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who leaked the secret Pentagon Papers history of the Vietnam War, offered insights into the looming war with Iran and the loss of liberty in the United States at an American University symposium on Sept. 2 :

I think nothing has higher priority than averting an attack on Iran, which I think will be accompanied by a further change in our way of governing here that in effect will convert us into what I would call a police state.

If there’s another 9/11 under this regime … it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.

Will there be anything left for NSA to increase its surveillance of us? … They may be to the limit of their technical capability now, or they may not. But if they’re not now they will be after another 9/11.

And I would say after the Iranian retaliation to an American attack on Iran, you will then see an increased attack on Iran – an escalation – which will be also accompanied by a total suppression of dissent in this country, including detention camps.
WHAT A LOON. MORE AFRAID OF BUSH THAN AGW AND AQ - COMBINED.

AND ALL THIS RANTING ABOUT THE POLICE STATE - IN A NATION THAT ADORES MOORE AND CARTER AND SHEEHAN. SHEESH.

IT'S NOT JUST BDS.

LEFTIES LIKE ELLSBERG HAVE BEEN RANTING LIKE THIS FOR DECADES.

AWFULIZING IS THE LEFT'S STANDARD M.O. - THE FAVORITE PROPAGANDA STYLE OF DEMOCRAT DEMAGOGUES.

REAGAN WAS ATTACKED WITH THE SAME CRAP - BY THE SAME CROWD.

UK'S SOCIALIST FM ON AGW: A CLICHE OF LEFT-WING IDIOCY: AGW WILL HURT THE POOR THE MOST

BBC: Equality 'threatened by climate'
Foreign Secretary David Miliband Climate change is the "greatest long-term threat" to achieving global equality, UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has told the United Nations.

Mr Miliband said although all countries are affected by climate change, the poorest people within the poorest countries will suffer the most.

He called on the richest countries to take the greatest action to combat climate change.
LOL IDIOCY.

THE APPLE DOESN'T FALL FAR FROM THE TREE: HE'S THE SON OF A FAMOUS MARXIST.

THIS PHRASE "GLOBAL INEQUALITY" IS TYPICAL LEFTIST GARBAGE.

THE FACT IS THAT SOME PEOPLE PRODUCE MORE THAN OTHERS AND THEREBY ENJOY MORE BENEFITS; IT'S CALLED PROSPERITY.

IT DOESN'T GROW ON TREES. AND IT'S NOT THE RESULT OF REDISTRIBUTION.

IF PEOPLE WANT MORE PROSPERITY, THEN I SUGGEST THEY WORK HARDER TO MAKE THEIR ECONOMY FREER.

AND THEN WORK HARDER.

AND THEN FIGHT TO KEEP THE GOVERNMENT'S GRUBBY FINGERS OFF WHAT THEY'VE EARNED.

GORE IS WRONG: CO2 NEVER CAUSED GLOBAL WARMING

VIA HOT AIR:

Carbon dioxide did not end the last Ice Age
Deep-sea temperatures rose 1,300 years before atmospheric CO2, ruling out the greenhouse gas as driver of meltdown, says study in Science.

Carbon dioxide did not cause the end of the last ice age, a new study in Science suggests, contrary to past inferences from ice core records.

“There has been this continual reference to the correspondence between CO2 and climate change as reflected in ice core records as justification for the role of CO2 in climate change,” said USC geologist Lowell Stott, lead author of the study, slated for advance online publication Sept. 27 in Science Express.

“You can no longer argue that CO2 alone caused the end of the ice ages.”
THE CO2/AGW CROWD SHALL NOW STFU.

THOSE TWO GOOSE CREEK MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS

ACCORDING TO SWORN AFFADAVITS, THEY ADMITTED IT.

EL-PAIS-GATE: ANOTHER BOGUS BUSH SCANDAL.

IF YOU THINK YOU DON'T PAY ENOUGH TAXES, THEN VOTE DEMOCRAT

THE DEMS ALL WANNA RAISE YOUR TAXES.


THE LINK GOES TO A GUY WHO CALLS IT MONDALENOMICS.


WHY COIN A NEW WORD WHEN AN OLD ONE WORKS JUST FINE: SOCIALISM.


THE DEMOCRATS, BEING GOOD LEFTISTS, ALL THINK THEY KNOW HOW TO SPEND YOUR MONEY BETTER THAN YOU DO.

DON'T LET THEM TRY.

UNDER REAGAN, WE BEAT MARX AND MONDALE.

WE CAN DO IT AGAIN.

UPDATE: Of course, the Dems say they WON'T raise YOUR taxes - just the taxes of the folks RICHER than you.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER - PART 45: SOCIALIST MUGABE AND JIHADIST AHMADINEJAD

GATEWAY:
Iran & Zimbabwe To Form Coalition of Peace


The anti-American leaders of Iran and Zimbabwe met at the UN this week and decided it was high-time they formed a Coalition of Peace.
THE ONLY ALLIES JIHADISTS HAVE ARE LEFTISTS. THESE SAYS EVERYTHING.

ARGENTINE PRESIDENT DEMANDED THAT AHMEDINEJAD EXTRADITE TERRORISTS FROM IRAN

An important bit of news that may not have appeared anywhere in the MSM stateside, President Kirchner of Argentina called on Ahmedinejad at the UN to extradite terrorists from Iran who were responsible for the bombing of two Jewish centers in Argentina in the early 1990s that murdered at least 100 people. A short translation of the second news clip: the president stated that Iran
“has not offered any of the required cooperation”; “We hope that the Islamic republic of Iran, in the framework of applicable international law, will accept and respect the jurisdiction of Argentine justice”,
Last November, the Argentine federal judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, ordered the international capture of eight Iranian citizens for involvement in the bombings of the Israeli embassy and the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. One of those Iranian citizens is former president Rafsanjani.

This certainly wasn't reported on the BBC, maybe because Kirchner also took issue with Britain over the Falkland islands.

LOST should get lost

Excerpt:

"Time was, Ronald Reagan's 600-ship Navy gave us freedom of the seas. But if Joe Biden and the Senate have their way, we'll need the permission of 21 judges in Hamburg. On Thursday, presidential wannabe Biden will chair hearings intended to lead to the ratification of the quarter-century-old Law of the Sea treaty (LOST), a document that would severely restrict our ability to use oceans to defend ourselves and would turn over control of 70% of the world's surface to a U.N. bureaucracy.

Supporters say we must be a signatory to guarantee our share of the resources to be found under the world's oceans and to avoid situations like the race to claim the sea bed under the Arctic between Russia, Canada and other states. But experience suggests a Law of the Sea tribunal won't protect interests we should be protecting ourselves. LOST would create an International Seabed Authority (ISA) with the power to regulate and tax things like seabed mining, fishing rights and deep-sea oil exploration. The ISA would decide who gets access to the sea's resources, and the companies granted these rights would pay a royalty to the ISA.

When he refused to sign ISA in 1982, President Reagan rightly decided the U.S. shouldn't be a part of this global resource grab and redistribution of wealth. It's in the area of national security that LOST is most dangerous. The [Bush] administration cites military support for the treaty because of its uniform limit on territorial waters and its establishment of `rules of the road' for littoral waters. But current international law already protects nonaggressive passage of military ships. When Reagan vetoed the treaty, the U.S. Navy had 594 warships. We could protect our own right of passage. Today the fleet has withered to 276 vessels. Is that why we need the treaty? The answer is to build more warships. Our access to the seas should be guaranteed by the Navy and not a U.N. bureaucracy."

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Soros supports checkbook science and astroturf immigration rallies

Excerpt:

How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely "NASA whistleblower" standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute , which gave him "legal and media advice"? That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship "philanthropy," by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's "politicization of science" program. That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly "censored" spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda. Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen's OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.

That's not the only case. Didn't the mainstream media report that 2006's vast immigration rallies across the country began as a spontaneous uprising of 2 million angry Mexican-flag waving illegal immigrants demanding U.S. citizenship in Los Angeles, egged on only by a local Spanish-language radio announcer Turns out that wasn't what happened, either. Soros' OSI had money-muscle there, too, through its $17 million Justice Fund. The fund lists 19 projects in 2006. One was vaguely described involvement in the immigration rallies. Another project funded illegal immigrant activist groups for subsequent court cases. So what looked like a wildfire grassroots movement really was a manipulation from OSI's glassy Manhattan offices. The public had no way of knowing until the release of OSI's 2006 annual report.

Meanwhile, OSI cash backed terrorist-friendly court rulings, too. Do people know last year's Supreme Court ruling abolishing special military commissions for terrorists at Guantanamo was a Soros project? OSI gave support to Georgetown lawyers in 2006 to win Hamdan v. Rumsfeld - for the terrorists. OSI also gave cash to other radicals who pressured the Transportation Security Administration to scrap a program called "Secure Flight," which matched flight passenger lists with terrorist names. It gave more cash to other left-wing lawyers who persuaded a Texas judge to block cell phone tracking of terrorists.

How did the NY Times and Washington Post miss this blockbuster report on a rich guy who is underwriting attacks on the government? Weren't they all in favor of getting money out of politics and not allowing the rich to dominate the political process?

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

SMOKING AND THE DHIMMI ACCOMMODATIONISTS IN CANADA

MARK STEYN/NRO:
Okay, Muslim foot-baths in Kansas City airport, gender-segregated swimming sessions at French municipal pools, banning pork from Aussie hospital menus, no eating donuts for Belgian cops during Ramadan, no seeing-eye dogs or alcohol in Minneapolis taxi cabs, fine, fine, fine. Must be sensitive and all that.

But this is an amazing victory. In Vancouver, infidels can't smoke but Muslims can:

Vancouver's hookah-parlour owners are celebrating after winning an exemption Thursday from a proposed new bylaw that will ban smoking on most sidewalks in commercial districts, in bus shelters and even in taxis passing through Vancouver.
MORE MUSLIMS GETTING SPECIAL TREATMENT. RTWT.

I BELIEVE THAT THERE ARE TWO CAUSES FOR THIS:

  • JIHADISM AND ITS CONCOMITANT VIOLENCE AND THREATS OF VIOLENCE
  • AND POSTMODERNISM - WHICH DERIDES THE WEST AND JUDEO-CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION AND PRIZES ALIEN ONES.

WITHOUT THE SELF-HATING COWARDS OF THE POSTMODERN LEFT, THERE'D BE NO ENCROACHMENT OF JIHADISM IN THE WEST.


THE LEFT IS THE ENEMY'S ESSENTIAL FIFTH COLUMN.

NEW GAME FOR SAUDI WOMEN: AWESOMELY PEPPER SPRAY SAUDI VIRTUE AND VICE THUGS

This kind of stuff gives us hope that the global war against political Islam can - to borrow a line from the not-exactly-conservative West Wing - be resolved by something short of an American flag flying over Mecca. Not much hope, but hope. This is just sublime:
Members of Khobar's Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice were the victims of an attack by two Saudi females, Asharq Al-Awsat can reveal. According to the head of the commission in Khobar, two girls pepper sprayed members of the commission after they had tried to offer them advice.... two of the Commission's employees were verbally insulted and attacked by two inappropriately-dressed females, in the old market in Prince Bandar street... Consequently, the two girls started verbally abusing the commission members, which then lead to one of the girls pepper-spraying them in the face as the other girl filmed the incident on her mobile phone, while continuing to hurl insults at them.
A couple of thugs approached a couple of relatively modern women. These women were in absolutely no mood to be groped by the kind of pathological pervs who run the V&V street teams, enforcing political Islam's obsession with controlling every minute aspect of female clothing, food, and hygiene. Hilarity ensued.

On the other hand, there's this. And this too. Still, baby steps (via Instapundit)

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

EVANGELICALS TO DOBSON, MEDIA: ACTUALLY, WE REALLY LIKE THIS FRED THOMPSON GUY

Evangelicals have now begun to explicitly challenge Dobson's attacks on Thompson. We really don't know what Dobson could've been thinking. First of all, he's just being unfair. Fred's position isn't in support of gay marriage any more than his opposition to a federal ban on abortion is in support of abortion - it's a principled federalist position coming from the guy who was on the bottom of a 99-1 in the Senate because he was against giving states anti-terrorism funds with strings attached.

Even if that wasn't true, Dobson's standards are unreasonably higher than his congregation. This is going problem for him, because evangelicals are not the slavish caricatures that the MSM makes them out to be. Dobson speaks for evangelicals to the larger world, but he doesn't determine how they'll vote. If they disagree with him on Fred - and they do - they'll tell him to go pound sand. Who're evangelicals going to vote for? Mitt? Not if the recent polls are right. And they'll stay home in a general against Hillary? Not so much.

The Richard Land quote behind the link includes the phrase "furious at Doctor Dobson." Good stuff.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

MEDIA MATTERS IS DESPICABLE!

Juan Williams Slams CNN and MSNBC for Their O'Reilly Smear!

After three years of tax-exempt operation, Media Matters’ credibility as a media watchdog is questionable. Its leader, Brock, is a self-proclaimed liar who strong-armed sources that didn’t agree with him. While writing his mea culpa, “Blinded by the Right,” Brock was hospitalized in a mental facility where he spent time in a “quiet room” and “had delusions, he thought people were trying to kill him,” according to the Drudge Report.

Media Matters stars, including Brock, Eric Alterman and Ryan Chiachiere, are hypocrites who have used the very sexist, bigoted and racist language for which they crucify others, including Imus. They appear to care more about taking out the kneecaps of conservatives than pursuing truth or accuracy in the media. After all, Media Matters certainly allows bigoted posts on their web site -- as long as they are directed toward conservatives.--Catherine Moy from Human Events

I'm sure many of you have heard the controversy with Media Matters and Bill O'Reilly of late. I am not always a fan of O'Reilly's but about 75% of the time he is right on the money. This recent controversy is just the latest attempt by Media Matters to smear a conservative.

They make their living by attacking conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and numerous others. What they do is take their words out of context in order to smear them. This latest incident is from a radio show where he was talking with African American liberal, Juan Williams about racism and he was condemning it. Media Matters took what he said out of context and are trying to make him out to be a racist. Al Sharpton even went on the air last night and defended O'Reilly and agreed that the attack was baseless.

The even bigger problem is that CNN and others took Media Matters' story and ran with it without checking into it and finding out the truth.

Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points on this:
Part 1
Part 2

Others on this story:
Outside the Beltway
Johnny Dollar's Place
National Review Online

Others on Media Matters:
Human Events

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

WHAT NOT TO FLY: "Russia unveils new passenger jet"

BBC:
Superjet 100 being unveiled Russia has unveiled a new passenger jet it hopes will establish its place as a global seller of commercial aircraft.

The 110-seat Superjet 100 has been developed by state-run business Sukhoi, in conjunction with Western partners including US giant Boeing.
I WANNA KNOW WHAT'S THE EFFIN' REASON IS BOEING IS HELPING PUTIN'S RUSSIA DEVELOP A JET!?!?!?!? Sheesh.

Then again, maybe that the only was Russia can make a SAFE passenger jet!

DEMS PROMISE HIGHER TAXES WILL SAVE THE EARTH!

DEMS WANT HIGHER TAXES: SURPRISE SURPRISE SURPRISE.

JASON WHITLOCK ON THE JENA SIX CASE

Jesse and Al, as they’re prone to do, served a kernel of truth stacked on a mountain of lies.--Jason Whitlock

It is ironic to me that Whitlock (pictured at left) is a Kansas City Star columnist because every time he has an excellent article I find out about it via the national news. I think it has something to do with the fact that I NEVER, EVER read the sports page. I linked to his page on my blog so I could check in on his articles from time to time but I have been so busy I don't even get to visit a fraction of my favorite blogs.

His recent article is on the Jena Six controversy. As usual, he speaks the truth and makes Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson look like the fools that they are. Here are some excerpts from his column but take the time to read the whole thing:
Where was our compassion long before Bell got into this kind of trouble?

That’s the question that needed to be asked in Jena and across the country on Thursday. But it wasn’t asked because everyone has been lied to about what really transpired in the small southern town.

There was no “schoolyard fight” as a result of nooses being hung on a whites-only tree.

Justin Barker, the white victim, was cold-cocked from behind, knocked unconscious and stomped by six black athletes. Barker, luckily, sustained no life-threatening injuries and was released from the hospital three hours after the attack.

A black U.S. attorney, Don Washington, investigated the “Jena Six” case and concluded that the attack on Barker had absolutely nothing to do with the noose-hanging incident three months before. The nooses and two off-campus incidents were tied to Barker’s assault by people wanting to gain sympathy for the “Jena Six” in reaction to Walters’ extreme charges of attempted murder.

Much has been written about Bell’s trial, the six-person all-white jury that convicted him of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery and the clueless public defender who called no witnesses and offered no defense. It is rarely mentioned that no black people responded to the jury summonses and that Bell’s public defender was black.

It’s almost never mentioned that Bell’s absentee father returned from Dallas and re-entered his son’s life only after Bell faced attempted-murder charges. At a bond hearing in August, Bell’s father and a parade of local ministers promised a judge that they would supervise Bell if he was released from prison.

Where were the promises and supervision before any of this?

It’s rarely mentioned that Bell was already on probation for assault when he was accused of participating in Barker’s attack. And it’s never mentioned that white people in the “racist” town of Jena provided Bell support and protected his football career long before Jesse, Al, Bell’s father and all the others took a sincere interest in Mychal Bell.

You won’t hear about any of that because it doesn’t fit the picture we want to paint of Jena, this case, America and ourselves.

His conclusion:
But the kids responsible for Barker’s beating deserve to be punished. The prosecutor needed to be challenged on his excessive charges. And we as black folks need to question ourselves about why too many of us can only get energized to help our young people once they’re in harm’s way.

I’ve been the spokesman for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Kansas City for six years. Getting black men to volunteer to mentor for just two hours a week to the more than 100 black boys on a waiting list is a yearly crisis. It’s a nationwide crisis for the organization. In Kansas City, we’re lucky if we get 20 black Big Brothers a year.

You don’t want to see any more “Jena Six” cases? Love Mychal Bell before he violently breaks the law.

Reliapundit adds: Great stuff! And you can listen to Whitlock on the Mark Levin Show HERE.

JIHADISTS AND BAATHISTS ARE LEFTISTS

Leftists don't accept the simple truth: JIHADISTS ARE OF THE LEFT:
Leftists call Ahmadinejad a "conservative" as if he was closer to Bush than Hillary, but this is false.

Leftists feel that because Bush is religious and Ahmadinejad is religious they are for all intents and purposes the same, but this is false - A BLATANT LOGICAL FALLACY.

Leftists feel this is so because they feel that conservatives are anti-libertarian because we are:
  • pro-life;
  • see a difference between secularism and atheism;
  • and accept that during wartime we might have to reduce our liberty a little in order to defeat the enemy.
NONE OF THESE CORE CONSERVATIVE POSITIONS IS ANTI-LIBERTARIAN.

ON THESE CORE/DEFINING ISSUES, THE LEFT FEELS THAT:
  • ... a mother should have the liberty to kill her yet-to-be born baby.
  • ... government must be atheistic because God has no place in the public square.
  • ... only wars which are unanimously agreed to at the UN are moral and legal.
On all this the Left is wrong wrong wrong. One of the core reasons the Left wrongly lumps conservative religious people with the jihadists is that the Left is basically RELIGIOPHOBIC.

If the Left wants to fear something they should look in the mirror; FACT:

  • Socialism killed more people in the 20th Century than religion did in the preceding twenty centuries.

BOTTOM-LINE: The Left is soft on jihadism and favors appeasing it - except when it's outright allied to it. EITHER WAY, THE LEFT IS THE ENEMY'S FIFTH COLUMN.

Which is why I have argued for a long long time: To defeat the jihadist enemy abroad we must defeat the Leftist enemy at home.

MANDELA AND LEFT-WING IDIOTARIAN JELLY-FISH











TIM BLAIR. RTWT.

Teacher: I was fired, said Bible isn't literal

Why did he have to proclaim his personal religious views as fact in a Western Civ course? Are atheist views privileged? I have taught many courses on many things over the years (at both secondary and tertiary level) and have never felt any need to denigrate Christian beliefs, even though I am an atheist. He must be a bitter man. Excerpt below:

A community college instructor in Red Oak claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted. Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday. "I'm just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master's degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job," Bitterman said.

Sarah Smith, director of the school's Red Oak campus, declined to comment Friday on Bitterman's employment status. The school's president, Barbara Crittenden, said Bitterman taught one course at Southwest. She would not comment, however, on his claim that he was fired over the Bible reference, saying it was a personnel issue. "I can assure you that the college understands our employees' free-speech rights," she said. "There was no action taken that violated the First Amendment."

Bitterman, who taught part time at Southwestern and Omaha's Metropolitan Community College, said he uses the Old Testament in his western civilization course and always teaches it from an academic standpoint. Bitterman's Tuesday course was telecast to students in Osceola over the Iowa Communications Network. A few students in the Osceola classroom, he said, thought the lesson was "denigrating their religion." ...

Bitterman said he called the story of Adam and Eve a "fairy tale" in a conversation with a student after the class and was told the students had threatened to see an attorney.

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

FISH DIET PREVENTS DIABETES?

Groan! Surely the defenders of the Omega 3 religion can come up with better than this! The study reports the usual crappy "association" (i.e. cause intrinsically unknown) and it not even based on actual Omega 3 intake -- only on REPORTED intake! I don't think I really need to say more but I could mention tiny study, weak effect, indirect criterion and non-normal "sample" etc.

There are many big studies showing Omega 3 to have no beneficial effects on cancer etc. but the belief in fish seems to be deep-seated so SOMETHING that it is good for must be found. Since most people enjoy eating fish, however, no harm is done

Excerpt from MSM article below followed by journal abstract


A diet rich in fish and other sources of omega-3 fatty acids helped cut the risk that children with a family history of diabetes would develop the disease, US researchers said. "It is a relatively large effect," said Jill Norris, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "It is exciting because it suggests we might be able to develop nutritional interventions to prevent diabetes." ......

Source

Abstract follows:

Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid Intake and Islet Autoimmunity in Children at Increased Risk for Type 1 Diabetes

By Jill M. Norris et al.

Context Cod liver oil supplements in infancy have been associated with a decreased risk of type 1 diabetes mellitus in a retrospective study.

Objective To examine whether intakes of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are associated with the development of islet autoimmunity (IA) in children.

Design, Setting, and Participants A longitudinal, observational study, the Diabetes Autoimmunity Study in the Young (DAISY), conducted in Denver, Colorado, between January 1994 and November 2006, of 1770 children at increased risk for type 1 diabetes, defined as either possession of a high diabetes risk HLA genotype or having a sibling or parent with type 1 diabetes. The mean age at follow-up was 6.2 years. Islet autoimmunity was assessed in association with reported dietary intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids starting at age 1 year. A case-cohort study (N = 244) was also conducted in which risk of IA by polyunsaturated fatty acid content of erythrocyte membranes (as a percentage of total lipids) was examined.

Main Outcome Measure Risk of IA, defined as being positive for insulin, glutamic acid decarboxylase, or insulinoma-associated antigen-2 autoantibodies on 2 consecutive visits and still autoantibody positive or having diabetes at last follow-up visit.

Results Fifty-eight children developed IA. Adjusting for HLA genotype, family history of type 1 diabetes, caloric intake, and omega-6 fatty acid intake, omega-3 fatty acid intake was inversely associated with risk of IA (hazard ratio [HR], 0.45; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.21-0.96; P = .04). The association was strengthened when the definition of the outcome was limited to those positive for 2 or more autoantibodies (HR, 0.23; 95% CI, 0.09-0.58; P = .002). In the case-cohort study, omega-3 fatty acid content of erythrocyte membranes was also inversely associated with IA risk (HR, 0.63; 95% CI, 0.41-0.96; P = .03).

Conclusion Dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acids is associated with reduced risk of IA in children at increased genetic risk for type 1 diabetes.

JAMA. 2007;298:1420-1428.


(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Ultimate Global Warming Challenge Ups Prize Money to $125,000 for Proving Humans Cause Catastrophic Climate Change

Press release from junkscience.com

The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge announced today that it raised to $125,000 the cash award to the first person to prove in a scientific manner that human emissions of greenhouse gases will cause catastrophic global climate change. (www.UltimateGlobalWarmingChallenge.com)

"Surprisingly no one has entered the contest yet," said Steven Milloy, founder and publisher of JunkScience.com and the sponsor of the Ultimate Global Warming Challenge. "I'm surprised since Al Gore, the United Nations and the mainstream media all seem to think that the notion of man made catastrophic global warming is a no-brainer," Milloy added.

The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge was launched on Aug. 7, 2007 with the popular and highly rated YouTube video entitled, "Can You Save Al Gore?" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=LBCRStksqL0).

"It appears that $100,000 is not enough to spur Al Gore and other climate alarmists to submit their proofs that humans are causing global warming," explained Milloy. "If it's a matter of money, Al Gore and the alarmists should just come out and tell us what sum it will cost the rest of us to see what proof they have."

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Too Much Liberty

Thomas Jefferson: "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."

Camille Paglia: "Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist."

Camille Paglia: "The only thing that will be remembered about my enemies after they're dead is the nasty things I've said about them”.

Camille Paglia: "It is capitalist America that produced the modern independent woman. Never in history have women had more freedom of choice in regard to dress, behavior, career, and sexual orientation."

From Samizdata

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

MY TAKE ON AHMADINEJAD

Persecution of Women in Iran

I was livid Monday at the outrage of Columbia University having Hitler Jr. speak on campus. I talked about it at length on my radio show Monday morning.

Just to give you a glimpse of the kind of freedoms people have in Iran check out the following videos. The above one details the persecution of Women in Iran, another one shows the persecution of homosexuals and another the persecution of Christians.

This article gives a great list of why it was a slap in the face to have Ahmadinejad speak at Columbia:
"...Columbia was lending its name and prestige to a leader of a terrorist-sponsoring dictatorship who denies the existence of the Holocaust, vows to eliminate Israel, preaches Islamic extremism, and aspires to build nuclear weapons."

Columbia University does not allow the ROTC on their campus, they have denied the Minutemen the right to speak and yet it is okay for a terrorist-sponsoring dictator to come and speak. It sounds like your average, insane, socialist utopia, liberal campus.

Iranian students at Columbia are upset over this because they know how this will be portrayed and used for propaganda purposes over in Iran.

It is just ridiculous because we are dealing with an irrational mad man. You cannot reason with someone who is beyond reason. Yet, the Dean of Columbia said that they would even give "Hitler a platform to speak" at their University if he was still alive. What kind of message does that send? It is okay for you to arm and sponsor terrorists but we will still send you an invitation to speak at our University so we can have an "open dialogue". Unbelievable!!

Then the President, Lee Bollinger thinks he can justify the invitation by unloading on Ahmadinejad before he gets up to speak. That just seems completely irrational to me. Lets invite someone, give them a platform to speak but bash them to their face right before they get up to speak. A little strange if you ask me.

The whole thing was a drama performance and it has made a nice propaganda piece for those in Iran.

Many are outraged over this, including state and city lawmakers who are trying to find a way to deprive Columbia of state aid as a result. Many protested both speeches.

I have never had a desire to be a part of the protest but I can guarantee you that if I lived in New York my kids and I would've been a part of the protests.