Friday, March 16, 2007

Line o' the Day


Their proposition that we should let the extremists win in Iraq and that will reduce terrorism is like saying, let Hitler take France and that will secure things a bit more. Or that if only we hadn’t taken on Hitler he wouldn’t have bombed the East End. It’s a completely fatuous proposition. For the extremists, it’s fantastic that people are saying this —because the logical conclusion is to surrender. -- Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, on those who claim the Iraq war has made the world a more dangerous place (hat tip: PrairiePundit and Larwyn)

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Blue Dog Democrats Redux


Dan Riehl:

Matt Stoller has a post up at MyDD. Below are the so-called Blue Dog Democrats not in line on the supplemental bill. Liberal activists are targeting them for pressure. If you are from one of these districts, consider applying a little pressure the other way. These are all Dems serving in moderate to somewhat conservative districts. Let them know that deserting our troops will seal their electoral fate come next year.

Michael Arcuri (NY-24)

John Barrow (GA-12)

Melissa Bean (IL-08)

Dan Boren (OK-02)

Jim Cooper (TN-05)

Bud Cramer (AL-02)

Lincoln Davis (TN-04)

Joe Donnelly (IN-02)

Brad Ellsworth (IN-08)

Bob Ethridge (NC-02)

Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-20)

Baron Hill (IN-09)

Tim Mahoney (FL-16)

Jim Marshall (GA-08)

Mike McIntyre (NC-07)

Collin Peterson (MN-07)

John Salazar (CO-03)

Joe Sestak (PA-07)

Heath Shuler (NC-11)

Gene Taylor (MS-04)

Yes, Mr. Rove? Yes, sir. With a little work, I agree, we could turn the Blue Dogs into another surreptitious component of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy™. Sir, why are you cackling?

Monday, March 12, 2007

US Taxpayers funding TNN: the Terrorist News Network


Joel Mowbray, writing in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required), offers a startling insight into the Middle East's information war:


U.S. taxpayers fund an alternative to Al-Jazeera. The Al-Hurra network was once a voice for secular democracy, human rights, and peace. It was once a voice against terrorism.


Iraqi parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi and Ken Tomlinson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, have expressed deep concern with Al-Hurra's new direction.


In December of 2006, Al-Hurra broadcast most of a speech by Hassan Nasrallah -- the leader of Hezbollah. Tomlinson called the decision to air Nasrallah's vitriolic, hate-filled speech, "It's the single worst decision I've witnessed in all my years in international broadcasting."


Al-Hurra's decision to run the speech represents a new course charted by its new chief executive, Larry Register, a long-time CNN producer. Register took over the reins of Al-Hurra in November. According to Mowbray, he quickly lifted the ban against broadcasting terrorists' speeches.


Over the last several months, Al-Hurra has aired live speeches by Nasrallah and Hamas chief Ismaeil Haniya.


In addition, it broadcast an interview with a reported Al-Qaeda terrorist who expressed glee at 9/11, saying it rubbed "America's nose in the dust."


These incidents don't appear to be aberrations. At a staff meeting, Register allegedly "bragged" about his personal relationship with a Hamas senior official.


When Israel implemented new security procedures, temporarily limiting access to Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, Al-Hurra aired several hours of "breathless, live breaking news" coverage. One commentator offered an opinion that Israel planned to "destroy" the mosque. Ikrima Sabri, an Arafat associate, fabricated on-air stories that Israeli soldiers had tossed explosives into the mosque.


This is the same Sabri who, just weeks before 9/11, prayed for the destruction of the United States, the U.K., and Israel.


Register has set a new course for Al-Hurra, which is paid for with our tax dollars. It is a course that offers yet another outlet for terrorists' views.


You and I -- and all American taxpayers -- are funding an ex-CNN operative who is waging open information warfare against the United States.


And not only has CNN helped spawn a new outlet for pro-terror information warfare, but its equal offense is a stunning failure to cover important world events -- such as Iran's declaration of war on the United States. I therefore think it's fair to simply call it TNN.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Kudos to Ted Koppel


I visited the invaluable Newsbusters site this evening and almost fell out of my chair after reading Noel Sheppard's latest post. Ted Koppel, former host of Nightline, was interviewed by Tim Russert on Meet the Press this morning.


I won't spoil the surprise. Here's what happened next:

Koppel: I made a little note here of something that Ambassador Khalilzad said to you a moment ago. He said, “The region will not be stable until Iraq is stabilized.” It’s the one thing nobody talks about. Everyone is concerned about the United States being in the middle of a civil war inside Iraq. But they forget about the fact that if U.S. troops were to pull out of Iraq, that civil war could become a regional war between Sunnis and Shia. And the region, just in case anyone has forgotten, is the Persian Gulf, where we get most of our oil, and, I’ve talked about this before, natural gas. So, the idea of pulling out of there and letting the region, letting the national civil war expand into a regional civil war, something the United States cannot allow to happen.

Russert: Ted Koppel, you are tonight airing on the Discovery Channel a special called “Our Children’s Children’s War,” the “long war” as you call it repeatedly, that this war on terror is much more than just Iraq, and it’s going to go on for a long time.

Koppel: It could go on, I mean, Gen. Abizaid with whom I spoke talked into terms of generations. And, if you think about two things, that’s not so hard to imagine. Number one, the Cold War after all, lasted 50 years. Uh, we didn’t know it when we began it. We didn’t know it, we didn’t know how long it was going to be when we were in the middle of it. But, it lasted half a century.

If you look back at the elements of the war against terrorism, that war was going on, and has been going on for the past 24 years. We just didn’t connect the dots. 24 years ago, the precursors of Hezbollah blew up the U.S. marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. That was 1983, 241 Americans killed. In the interim between then and now you had two attacks on the World Trade Center, you had the blowing up of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, you had the attempt to blow up the U.S.S. Cole, you had the bombing of the two U.S. embassies in East Africa. This war’s already been going on for 24 years; we were just a little bit slow to recognize it.

...

Koppel: I see a lot of wishful thinking going on here in Washington right now. I mean when Congress talks about, first of all, setting these these milestones. And, the irony is if the Iraqis successfully meet the milestones, the implication is we stay. If they fail to meet the milestones we leave. That doesn’t make any sense at all. It ought to be the other way around. If they fail, we stay because they need us. If they succeed, we can start to pull out again.

So, I, I have this feeling that on the one hand, the Democrats are making a great deal of hay out of saying we have to get out of Iraq, and indeed we do at some point or another. But the notion that the war will be over when we pull out of Iraq, and even when we pull out of Afghanistan, you heard what Gen. Abizaid had to say, it’s not going to be over. It’s going to be a different war, but the war continues.

...

Koppel: The Democrats are going to find themselves in a terribly uncomfortable position when this becomes their war. And believe me, George Bush is going to hold on to it and pass it off to them. This is going to be an issue a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. It’s not going to be that easy to get out.

Well done, Mr. Koppel. Well done.

I find very little to admire in the mainstream media, but you could have knocked me over with a feather when I read the transcript. My congratulations to Ted Koppel and Discovery Channel for speaking truth to "progressives."

UK Channel 4: The Great Global Warming Swindle


From UK's Channel 4, a fascinating -- if politically incorrect -- documentary of monumental importance. You must watch this video. And be sure and pass it on to your friends.


Some of the highlights:


Careful analysis of solar activity for the past 100 years...


...and the past 400 years link Earth's temperatures with solar activity.


Over 500 million years, cosmic ray activities -- emanating from the sun -- can be tied directly to Earth's temperatures.


"We're inside the atmosphere of the sun... The sun is driving climate change. CO2 is... irrelevant."


Dr. Frederick Seitz: "...In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report..."


"...the rich countries can afford to engage in luxurious experimentation with other forms of energy, but for us we are at the stage of survival..."


"...I don't see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry..."


Patrick Moore, co-founder Greenpeace: "I think one of the most pernicious aspects of the modern environmental movement is the romanticization of peasant life. And the idea that industrial societies are the destroyers of the world. The environmental movement has evolved into the strongest force there is for preventing development in the developing countries. I think it's legitimate for me to call them anti-human."

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Is Al Gore's Inconvenient Fiction a $250 Billion Scam?


A quick recap: Records show that Al and Tipper Gore paid a monthly gas-and-electric bill of $2,400 for their 20-room mansion and related outbuildings. That includes $500 a month for their poolhouse. Gore claimed that he bought "carbon offsets" to make up for his $30K annual energy tab. Where did he buy offsets? From Generation Investment Management (GIM), a firm which lists Gore as Chairman.


Wanton profiteering appears to be at the very heart of "carbon offsets." Put simply, a wide range of respected scientists, environmentalists, researchers, agriculturalists, and activists believe that carbon offsets are a "scam", "fantasy", "fiction", "nonsense", "fraudulent" and worse. And they've been saying so since 2000, though to read the newspaper you wouldn't know it.

Gore, GIM and Carbon Neutral



Al Gore's GIM works "with two offset providers (The Chicago Climate Exchange and the Carbon Neutral Company) to ensure our London and Washington D.C. offices are fully carbon neutral."

Carbon Neutral -- once called Future Forests -- has come under fire from various environmental organizations and activists. These groups say that carbon offseting "is a scam."

In June of 2000, the World Rainforest Movement Bulletin noted that the UN's Climate Panel had disappointed environmentalists by tacitly approving a "carbon market" that would generate profits for certain companies while allowing carbon emissions to continue unabated.


The panel -- the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- issued a Special Report on Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF). In May of 2000, the report claimed that an accounting system for trading trees or soil for industrial emissions was feasible. Among the authors of the report were numerous parties that would benefit directly from such an accounting system.

This report was roundly denounced by environmentalists:

...How was it possible for the IPCC to produce such a report? ...one of the reason's for the report's failure is, sadly, surely quite simple: some of the authors (and the companies they work for) will benefit financially from having drawn the conclusions they drew...

Future Forests and other carbon offset companies have an intriguing history that is directly tied to the UN, the IPCC, and its recommendations.

The Carbon-Offset 'Fantasy'


A UK-based environmentalist group called The Corner House, in a 2001 report, describes the carbon-offseting scheme and labels it a "fantasy":

...The following "carbon equations", for instance, which represent the current market approach in microcosm, are cited in recent promotional material by the British tree-planting firm Future Forests [Ed: now Carbon Neutral]:


* 7 trees = 5 London-New York single air tickets
* 5 trees = 1 year's driving of an ordinary car
* 2 trees = 4 pots of tea a day for 6 years
* 40 trees = 1 average home's CO2 emissions over 5 years

These calculations are part of Future Forests' invitation to individuals and corporations to become "carbon-neutral®". It doesn't matter how much fossil fuel you use, or what you use it for. Simply write out a cheque and the carbon professionals will punch numbers into their computers representing your carbon-dioxide emissions, plant the requisite number of trees, and watch over them for you...

Further, Corner House derides the idea that conservation steps can be traded for emissions to make pollution "climate neutral", calling it "nonsense."

How much for that Carbon Offset?


New Internationalist illustrates just how nonsensical the carbon-offset trade is:

If the science of offsets were as well established as the companies selling them insist they are, then there should be little disparity between their estimates of, for example, a flight’s climate impacts and the remedy.

* According to Climate Care, an Oxford-based offset company that has a partnership with British Airways and funds projects in the South, a globe-spanning trip flying from London to visit NI offices in Toronto, Christchurch and Adelaide and then returning to London would emit approximately 6 tonnes of CO2 and would cost $85 to offset.
* Another British company, the Carbon Neutral Company (favoured by rock stars), says the same trip would produce only 4.3 tonnes of CO2 and would cost just $60, which apparently buys 4 trees in Durham.
* An Australian company, Climate Friendly, asserts that the journey emits 11.63 tonnes of CO2 and would cost $195 (US) to offset by financing wind projects.
* Finally, Dutch offsetter, Green Seat, has determined that the flight will emit 8.68 tonnes of CO2, and would cost $180 to offset, which apparently buys the required 434 trees in Africa.


Thus, to offset a flight, the carbon-offset accounting geniuses have arrived at prices of $60, $85, $180, $195 or a maximum discrepency ratio of 3.25 to 1.

Now, that's science!

Carbon Offsets: a "fictitious" new market


Even earlier, in May of 2000, a presentation at the Agrarian Studies 2000 Conference at Yale University denounced the carbon offset market in extremely stark terms.


...This [carbon-offset] market is being put together not so much by states as by a burgeoning international web of technocrats, multilateral agencies, corporate alliances, brokers, lobbyists, consultants, financiers, think tanks, lawyers, forestry companies and non-government organizations...

...the [biological climate-change equivalents, or carbon sequestration credits] commodity to be traded in this new market is fictitious...

That's right. Fictitious. Further, the Yale presentation offers a series of stunning rebukes to the carbon offset trade:

It's a striking sociological fact that the impossibility of constructing a non-fraudulent, standardized technical commodity of biological climate-change equivalents through plantation forestry has so far proved no obstacle to attempts to create a market which would make rights to that commodity privately ownable, transferrable, and accumulable...

A fraudulent market?

The presentation went on to describe the interests of additional parties positioned to profit from this "fictitious" trade, naming the following "web of actors":

* Corporate Networks tied to mining and fossil fuels
* Industry-friendly think tanks and NGOs who act as facilitators of the carbon trade
* Consultants set to profit from brokering, managing and certifying carbon offsets
* Professionals such as genetic engineering researchers who might optimize trees for carbon absorption
* Plantation owners and their state backers who stand to financially benefit
* Forestry companies who have announced expansion plans to address the carbon offset market

The National Institute of Health defines a conflict of interest as "employees, consultants or members of the government bodies using their positions for purposes that are, or give the appearance of being, motivated by a desire for private financial gain for themselves or others such as those with whom they have funding or business or other ties."

The vested interests of the UN's IPCC Panel


Solar energy portal Ecotopia reports that members of the IPCC "...had vested interests in reaching unrealistically and unjustifiably optimistic conclusions about the possibility of compensating for emissions with trees... [and] should have been automatically disqualified from serving on an intergovernmental panel charged with investigating impartially the feasibility and benefits of such 'offset' projects."


The IPCC panel consisted of:

* Richard Tipper of the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management (ECCM), a consulting company deriving revenue from carbon-absorption forestry projects. According to Ecotopia, "ECCM works closely with Future Forests... Tipper helped form ECCM some months after being appointed to the LULUCF panel."


* Mark Trexler, a founder of Trexler & Associates, a pioneering firm "poised to make millions of dollars by promoting and monitoring carbon sequestration and other 'climate mitigation' projects."

* Pedro Moura-Costa, an executive of Ecosecurities Ltd., a consulting firm specializing in the "generation of Emission Reduction Credits" from carbon-offseting activities. Ecosecurities has offices in the US, the UK, Brazil, Australia and The Netherlands.

* Gareth Philips of SGS Forestry, a division of the Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS) of Geneva, the world's largest inspection, auditing and testing company. SGS Forestry derives revenue from its carbon forestry projects. SGS certifies Costa Rica's carbon offsets and "hopes to expand its work."

* Sandra Brown of Winrock International, an Arkansas-based organization which accepts contracts from "public and private" sources. Winrock "provides forest carbon monitoring technical services to U.S. government agencies and a wide range of private sector and non-governmental organizations. "

* Peter Hill of Monsanto Corporation, which has a "large stake in genetically modified organisms, including, potentially, organisms modified to take up or store carbon more efficiently."

The World Rainforest Movement investigated these bizarre financial ties and concluded that the IPCC report "must now be shelved due to their clear conflict of interest and a new report instigated which will be free of the taint of intellectual corruption."

A $10 to $250 Billion Fiction


Just how big a market is the "certified tradeable offset" business set to commence in 2008? The World Bank estimates a $10 to $20 billion market. That may be a pittance compared to the real value of carbon trading.


In 2005, Grist Magazine went further, offering that "carbon could become one of the largest markets in the world, with a trading volume of $60 billion to $250 billion by 2008."

Sadly, the entire "fiction" has few backers among serious scientists and researchers. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), based in Laxenburg, Austria, evaluated Kyoto-style accounting systems and stated, "We cannot compare the effectiveness of fossil fuel with land-use change and forestry activities with respect to reduced emissions."

This finding -- confirmed by both the Royal Society, the UK's independent national academy of science, and Canada's David Suzuki Foundation, as well as many eminent individual scientists -- is devastating for the Kyoto Protocol.

It means that it's impossible to trade surface-level carbon -- in trees and soils -- for CO2 emissions from cars, industries and homes. The commodity which would be traded in such a market doesn't exist.

Of course, pieces of paper can be and are being exchanged claiming that some patch of wooded land "compensates for" some set of industrial emissions.

But in atmospheric terms, these documents are worthless. Buying and selling them can only further destabilize climate. With the Bonn agreement of July 2001, the Kyoto Protocol has lost "all environmental integrity". Any "confidence in the emissions trading system" is misplaced.

In other words, the whole carbon offset boondoggle appears to be a "fraudulent market" of epic proportions. It has been denounced by scientists, environmentalists, academics, and researchers almost continuously since May of 2000.


But it goes without saying that when you're talking tens of billions of dollars, you can be certain that Al Gore, Michael Milken, Tony Coelho and the mainstream media will be anything but disinterested observers.


Also see:
Anchoress: 17,000 scientists dissent-no consensus on global warming
Bill Hobbs
BizzyBlog: Globaloney and Globalarmism: Consensus, Conschmensus
BlameBush and IowaHawk
Blue Crab Boulevard: More Polar Bears than Ever
Carbon Trade Watch
Corner House: Democracy or Carbocracy - Intellectual Corruption and the Future of Climate Debate
Corner House: Shopping for Carbon - A New Plantation Economy
Dan Riehl
Don Surber
Google Video: The Great Global Warming Swindle
Hang Right Politics
Hot Air
Jules Crittenden
New Internationalist - Carbon Offset Facts
Newsbusters

Friday, March 09, 2007

Associated Press Parade of Stupidity - Chapter 6,033


LGF describes yet another case of APPCS (Associated Press Political Correctness Syndrome). In the Phillipines, a Christian preacher suggested that extremists who murder in the name of religion might be misguided. Said extremists called for his beheading. I guess that'll cure him.

And the Associated Press, responsible for covering the extremists' protests, cleverly cropped the most important photograph:


Of course, the AP's caption happened to omit the complete caption. A correction issued several days later read:


Associated Press: Filipino Muslims display a banner, which reads 'Behead Those Who Insult Islam,' and t-shirts with a wanted sign during a rally Wednesday March 7, 2007, at a downtown Manila square , to protest recent televised preaching by a Christian sect leader Eli Soriano, who alleges that Muslims are killers. More than 1,000 Muslims took part in the rally and demanded Soriano, who is currently in hiding, be extradited back to the Philippines so he can face charges being brought against him. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

When you combine censorship with stupidity, you're talking a prototypical Associated Press story.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

AP Parade of Stupidity, chapter 3,063


AP headline (hat tip: TigerHawk and Larwyn):


"House Democrats to unveil Iraq war plan"

Next week, Democrats intend to unveil plans to defeat Hitler and the spread of Soviet-dominated Communism.

Update 18:23 ET: Oops. It looks like the AP realized its mistake and 'repaired' the headline so as not to disclose the Democrats' Roadmap for Terrorists.


"Thanks, 'Progressives'!"

In matters of national security, you can always count on the Democrats. And their public relations arm, also known as the Associated Press.

"Rendering... nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete"


ENDGAMEThere's this:

I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering those nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.

-- Ronald Reagan, Address to the Nation, March 23, 1983

and then there's this:

...a group of countries, led by Israel and the U.S., had been working since 1981 on a mega-secret project to develop and deploy a weapon system that can neutralize nuclear weapons.

The highly advanced, space-deployable, BHB weapon system, code-named XXXBHB-BACAR-1318-I390MSCH, has extraordinary potential and is a key part of the West's deterrence strategy. For the past twenty-five years, the project and the scientists involved in it were kept in strict secrecy and their existence denied. The scientists rejected Nobel Physics prize and Nobel Peace prize nominations and have been
repeatedly and deliberately the subject of intense military disinformation through the media in order to divert attention from their highly secretive work...

...Although we have only limited information, it appears that Iran's rapidly developing nuclear capabilities could be neutralized and rendered obsolete, as could the capabilities of other rogue countries...

-- Thomas McInerney, Paul Vallely writing in Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Presidential Idol



I don't feel no ways tired!


I come too far from where I started from!


Nobody told me that the road would be easy!


I don't believe he brought me this far to leave me.


* * * (polite applause) * * *


Thank y'all. Thank y'all very, very much. Ah really appreciate it!


I'm sorry, dog, but it wasn't a good choice. It really didn't work for me.


Honestly, it sounded like you were pandering. Insincere. But that's just me.


Hillary, you look really beautiful. The work you've had done has... really softened you.


I just think it was a poor choice today. You can do better than that. But you looked really, really cute.


Was that a southern drawl or a car alarm going off?


You sounded like someone attached electrodes to a jackal... and then turned up the juice.


If I had to listen to your voice for four years, I'd put my head in a blender and select "smoothie". And then purée.


Hillary. You're an utter, utter disaster. Think about it: Hillary-care, Whitewater, the Rose Law firm records, the cattle futures windfall. Then, you layer on that voice. You've got a better chance of landing the prima ballerina role in Swan Lake.


Wow.


Hillary, how'd it feel to perform using a difficult accent and then... kind of get... ripped -- in front of millions of people -- by the judges?


. . .


I will put your head on a pike, Seacrest, so that everyone who follows you will know what happens when you cross Hillary Clinton!


- And thanks for watching Presidential Idol, folks! Remember to text your vote to 888-555-IDOL!


Oven-baked good readin', just like Mama used to make:
Anchoress, Baldilocks, Gateway Pundit, Hang Right Politics, Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin, Mr. Verb, OTB, Rick Moran, STACLU