You Decide

Always decide for yourself whether anything posted in my blog has any information you choose to keep.

Monday, November 30, 2009

 

"UN Digs In On Climate 'Fraud' " (Drudge Headline)

Note:  I pulled the previous video due to advertising on it.

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"UN Digs In On Climate 'Fraud' " (Drudge Headline)
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/29/ipcc-climate-change-leaked-emails

Monday, November 30, 2009

 

"The Secret of Oz" trailer - How to Fix the 2010 Depression - directed by Bill Still


Saturday, November 28, 2009

 

"It's B-a-a-a-ack!

Commentary from Powerlineblog.com.  Political Cartoon by Michael Ramirez.

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It's B-a-a-a-ack!

Source Powerlineblog.com

November 27, 2009 Posted by John at 8:53 AM

"I'm the wrong guy to draw this analogy, since I never go to horror movies--they scare me. But I believe there is one long-running series featuring a serial killer who wears a hockey mask and carries a chain saw or some such thing, and keeps coming back, seemingly from the dead. That's how I'm starting to see the Democrats' government medicine plan. Try as hard as they might, the American people can't seem to kill it.

Byron York says that Harry Reid is determined to pass the Senate's version of the bill by New Year's. On paper, this seems impossible, given the short time available, the number of amendments that will be proposed by Democrats as well as Republicans, and the other issues the Senate needs to take up. Nevertheless, it may well happen. Why? Because the bill is so unpopular:

[T]he biggest problem for Democrats, by far, is that public support for the bill is slowly and steadily falling. According to Pollster.com, the average of all the polls done on health care shows 48.7 percent of Americans opposed to the bill, and 39.5 percent in favor. The gap between disapproval and approval has never been bigger.

The reason the Democratic leadership and the White House are rushing to pass the bill is that they know it is killing them and believe doing it quickly will kill fewer of them than doing it slowly. If they pass it by year's end, perhaps voters will move on to other concerns by the November 2010 midterm elections.

Ever since the Obama administration took office, a common refrain has been, "How dumb do they think we are?" It seems the Democrats believe that voters are not just stupid, but forgetful as well.

MichaelBarone, meanwhile, notes that the federal deficit is now running at 10 percent of GDP, a figure never before approached in peacetime. The Democrats' health care measures, once they kick in, are projected to add another $1.8 trillion in federal spending, and that figure, appalling as it is, is undoubtedly far too low. Nevertheless, the Democrats are "unfazed":

That suggests that, at least for some Democrats, huge looming budget deficits are not a bug but a feature. Just as Ronald Reagan hoped that cutting taxes would force politicians to cut spending, these Democrats hope that increasing spending will force politicians to increase taxes to levels common in Western Europe. ...

[Poll data on the economy] mirrors voters' current opposition to Democratic health care bills. Democratic leaders nonetheless want to jam one through before their current majorities are eroded, as they seem likely to be, in the 2010 elections. This is politically risky, but makes sense if your goal is to expand government.

So the battle over health care is not just about health care. It's about whether government will permanently gobble up more of the private-sector economy -- and slow it down in the process.

I think that's right. I don't believe that Democrats in Congress actually disagree with the majority of voters who expect a government takeover of medicine to result in worse health care at a higher cost. Rather, the Democrats believe that degraded health care is an acceptable price to pay for what they are really after--government domination over the life of every citizen. Whether the American people understand how profound is the Democrats' assault on their liberties, and will be willing to do what it takes to throw the greedy rascals out of power, remains to be seen."



http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/025033.php


Saturday, November 28, 2009

 

Two Medical Students

Big Grin

Two Medical Students

Two  medical students were walking along the street when they saw  an old man walking with his legs spread apart. He was  stiff-legged and walking  slowly.

One student said to his friend:  "I'm sure that poor old man has Peltry Syndrome. Those people  walk just like that."

The other student says: "No, I don't  think so. The old man surely has Zovitzki Syndrome.. He  walks slowly and his legs are apart, just as we learned in  class."

Since they couldn't agree they decided  to ask the old man. They approached him and one of the  students said to him, "We're medical students and couldn't  help but notice the way you walk, but we couldn't agree on the  syndrome you might have.  Could you tell us what it  is?"

The old man said, "I'll tell you, but  first you tell me what you two fine medical students  think."

The first student said, "I think it's  Peltry  Syndrome."
The  old man said, "You thought - but you are  wrong."
The  other student said, "I think you have Zovitzki  Syndrome."
The  old man said, "You thought - but you are  wrong."
So  they asked him, "Well, old timer, what do you  have?"

The old man said, "I thought it was GAS  - but I was wrong,  too!"


Saturday, November 28, 2009

 

"Rigging a Climate 'Consensus'

Spot on.       Smash

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"Rigging a Climate 'Consensus'

About those emails and 'peer review.'
Source Wall Stree Journal

"The climatologists at the center of the leaked email and document scandal have taken the line that it is all much ado about nothing. Yes, the wording of their messages was unfortunate, but they insist this in no way undermines the underlying science. They're ignoring the damage they've done to public confidence in the arbiters of climate science.

"What they've done is search through stolen personal emails—confidential between colleagues who often speak in a language they understand and is often foreign to the outside world," Penn State's Michael Mann told Reuters Wednesday. Mr. Mann added that this has made "something innocent into something nefarious."

Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, from which the emails were lifted, is singing from the same climate hymnal. "My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not read well. I regret any upset or confusion caused as a result. Some were clearly written in the heat of the moment, others use colloquialisms frequently used between close colleagues," he said this week.

We don't doubt that Mr. Jones would have phrased his emails differently if he expected them to end up in the newspaper. He's right that it doesn't look good that his May 2008 email to Mr. Mann regarding the U.N.'s Fourth Assessment Report said "Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?" Mr. Mann says he didn't delete any such emails, but the point is that Mr. Jones wanted them hidden.

The furor over these documents is not about tone, colloquialisms or whether climatologists are nice people. The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced. The impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start.

According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been published in select scientific journals, after having gone through the "peer-review" process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure enough, any challenges from critics outside this clique are dismissed and disparaged.

This September, Mr. Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the leaked emails that: "Those such as [Stephen] McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted." Mr. McIntyre is a retired Canadian businessman who checks the findings of climate scientists and often publishes the mistakes he finds on his Web site, Climateaudit.org. He holds the rare distinction of having forced Mr. Mann to publish a correction to one of his more famous papers.

As anonymous reviewers of choice for certain journals, Mr. Mann & Co. had considerable power to enforce the consensus, but it was not absolute, as they discovered in 2003. Mr. Mann noted in a March 2003 email, after the journal "Climate Research" published a paper not to Mr. Mann's liking, that "This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the 'peer-reviewed literature'. Obviously, they found a solution to that—take over a journal!"

Mr. Mann went on to suggest that the journal itself be blackballed: "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board." In other words, keep dissent out of the respected journals. When that fails, redefine what constitutes a respected journal to exclude any that publish inconvenient views.

A more thoughtful response to the emails comes from Mike Hulme, another climate scientist at the University of East Anglia, as reported by a New York Times blogger:

"This event might signal a crack that allows for processes of re-structuring scientific knowledge about climate change. It is possible that some areas of climate science has become sclerotic. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science."

The response from the defenders of Mr. Mann and his circle has been that even if they did disparage doubters and exclude contrary points of view, theirs is still the best climate science. The proof for this is circular. It's the best, we're told, because it's the most-published and most-cited—in that same peer-reviewed literature. The public has every reason to ask why they felt the need to rig the game if their science is as indisputable as they claim."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574559630382048494.html?mod=googlenews_wsj


Friday, November 27, 2009

 

"BREAKING: New Zealand's NIWA accused of CRU-style temperature faking

Am linking to this because of graphs in original article which won't copy to this page.  Looks like those emails are causing a ripple effect felt around the world.

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"BREAKING: NZ’s NIWA accused of CRU-style temperature faking

Source TBR.cc Investigate Magazine 


http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/breaking-nzs-niwa-accused-of-cru-style-temperature-faking.html


Friday, November 27, 2009

 

"Climategate e-mails sweep America, may scuttle Barack Obama's Cap and Trade laws

"Climategate e-mails sweep America, may scuttle Barack Obama's Cap and Trade laws 

By Gerald Warner Last updated: November 26th, 2009

Source  Blogs.Telegraph.co.uk

"Just a few considerations in addition to previous remarks about the explosion of the East Anglia Climategate e-mails in America. The reaction is growing exponentially there. Fox News, Barack Obama’s Nemesis, is now on the case, trampling all over Al Gore’s organic vegetable patch and breaking the White House windows. It has extracted some of the juiciest quotes from the e-mails and displayed them on-screen, with commentaries. Joe Public, coast-to-coast, now knows, thanks to the clowns at East Anglia’s CRU, just how royally he has been screwed.

Senator James Inhofe’s Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has written to all the relevant US Government agencies, acquainting them with the nature of the e-mails. But the real car crash for Obama is on Capitol Hill where it is now confidently believed his Cap and Trade climate legislation is toast. It was always problematic; but with a growing awakening to the scale of the scientific imposture sweeping the world, as far as the Antipodes, the clever money is on Cap and Trade laws failing to pass, with many legislators sceptical and the mid-term elections looming ever closer.

At the more domestic level, the proposed ban on incandescent light bulbs, so supinely accepted in this servile state of Britain, is now provoking a huge backlash in America. US citizens do not like the government coming into their houses and putting their lights out. Voters may not understand the cut and thrust of climate debate at the technical level, but they know when the Man from Washington has crossed their threshold uninvited.

The term that Fox News is now applying to the Climategate e-mails is “game-changer”. For the first time, Anthropogenic Global Warming cranks are on the defensive, losing their cool and uttering desperate mantras such as “You can be sceptical, not denial.” Gee, thanks, guys. In fact we shall be whatever we want to be, without asking your permission.

At this rate, Copenhagen is going to turn into a comedy convention with the real world laughing at these liars. Now is the time to mount massive resistance to the petty tyrants and hit them where it hurts – in the wallet. Further down the line there may be, in many countries, a question of criminal prosecution of anybody who has falsified data to secure funds and impose potentially disastrous fiscal restraints on the world in deference to a massive hoax. It’s a new world out there, Al, and, as you may have noticed, the climate is very cold indeed."


http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100018034/climategate-%20%20e-mails-sweep-america-may-scuttle-barack-obamas-cap-and-trade-laws/


Friday, November 27, 2009

 

"Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away

"Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away

Source George Monbiot's Blog, Guardian.co.uk

"Climate sceptics have lied, obscured and cheated for years. That's why we climate rationalists must uphold the highest standards of science

I have seldom felt so alone. Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. The emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, they say, are a storm in a tea cup, no big deal, exaggerated out of all recognition. It is true that climate change deniers have made wild claims which the material can't possibly support (the end of global warming, the death of climate science). But it is also true that the emails are very damaging.

The response of the greens and most of the scientists I know is profoundly ironic, as we spend so much of our time confronting other people's denial. Pretending that this isn't a real crisis isn't going to make it go away. Nor is an attempt to justify the emails with technicalities. We'll be able to get past this only by grasping reality, apologising where appropriate and demonstrating that it cannot happen again.

It is true that much of what has been revealed could be explained as the usual cut and thrust of the peer review process, exacerbated by the extraordinary pressure the scientists were facing from a denial industry determined to crush them. One of the most damaging emails was sent by the head of the climatic research unit, Phil Jones. He wrote "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

One of these papers which was published in the journal Climate Research turned out to be so badly flawed that the scandal resulted in the resignation of the editor-in-chief. Jones knew that any incorrect papers by sceptical scientists would be picked up and amplified by climate change deniers funded by the fossil fuel industry, who often – as I documented in my book Heat – use all sorts of dirty tricks to advance their cause.

Even so, his message looks awful. It gives the impression of confirming a potent meme circulated by those who campaign against taking action on climate change: that the IPCC process is biased. However good the detailed explanations may be, most people aren't going to follow or understand them. Jones's statement, on the other hand, is stark and easy to grasp.

In this case you could argue that technically he has done nothing wrong. But a fat lot of good that will do. Think of the MPs' expenses scandal: complaints about stolen data, denials and huffy responses achieved nothing at all. Most of the MPs could demonstrate that technically they were innocent: their expenses had been approved by the Commons office. It didn't change public perceptions one jot. The only responses that have helped to restore public trust in Parliament are humility, openness and promises of reform.

When it comes to his handling of Freedom of Information requests, Professor Jones might struggle even to use a technical defence. If you take the wording literally, in one case he appears to be suggesting that emails subject to a request be deleted, which means that he seems to be advocating potentially criminal activity. Even if no other message had been hacked, this would be sufficient to ensure his resignation as head of the unit.

I feel desperately sorry for him: he must be walking through hell. But there is no helping it; he has to go, and the longer he leaves it, the worse it will get. He has a few days left in which to make an honourable exit. Otherwise, like the former Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, he will linger on until his remaining credibility vanishes, inflicting continuing damage to climate science.

Some people say that I am romanticising science, that it is never as open and honest as the Popperian ideal. Perhaps. But I know that opaqueness and secrecy are the enemies of science. There is a word for the apparent repeated attempts to prevent disclosure revealed in these emails: unscientific.

The crisis has been exacerbated by the university's handling of it, which has been a total trainwreck: a textbook example of how not to respond. RealClimate reports that "We were made aware of the existence of this archive last Tuesday morning when the hackers attempted to upload it to RealClimate, and we notified CRU of their possible security breach later that day." In other words, the university knew what was coming three days before the story broke. As far as I can tell, it sat like a rabbit in the headlights, waiting for disaster to strike.

When the emails hit the news on Friday morning, the university appeared completely unprepared. There was no statement, no position, no one to interview. Reporters kept being fobbed off while CRU's opponents landed blow upon blow on it. When a journalist I know finally managed to track down Phil Jones, he snapped "no comment" and put down the phone. This response is generally taken by the media to mean "guilty as charged". When I got hold of him on Saturday, his answer was to send me a pdf called "WMO statement on the status of the global climate in 1999". Had I a couple of hours to spare I might have been able to work out what the heck this had to do with the current crisis, but he offered no explanation.

By then he should have been touring the TV studios for the past 36 hours, confronting his critics, making his case and apologising for his mistakes. Instead, he had disappeared off the face of the Earth. Now, far too late, he has given an interview to the Press Association, which has done nothing to change the story.

The handling of this crisis suggests that nothing has been learnt by climate scientists in this country from 20 years of assaults on their discipline. They appear to have no idea what they're up against or how to confront it. Their opponents might be <snip>s, but their media strategy is exemplary.

The greatest tragedy here is that despite many years of outright fabrication, fraud and deceit on the part of the climate change denial industry, documented in James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore's brilliant new book Climate Cover-up, it is now the climate scientists who look bad. By comparison to his opponents, Phil Jones is pure as the driven snow. Hoggan and Littlemore have shown how fossil fuel industries have employed "experts" to lie, cheat and manipulate on their behalf. The revelations in their book (as well as in Heat and in Ross Gelbspan's book The Heat Is On) are 100 times graver than anything contained in these emails.

But the deniers' campaign of lies, grotesque as it is, does not justify secrecy and suppression on the part of climate scientists. Far from it: it means that they must distinguish themselves from their opponents in every way. No one has been as badly let down by the revelations in these emails as those of us who have championed the science. We should be the first to demand that it is unimpeachable, not the last."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/nov/25/monbiot-climate-leak-crisis-response


Thursday, November 26, 2009

 

"Judge wipes out $500,000 debt to punish 'repulsive' bank

The bank will no doubt appeal this 'til the cows come home, but for now a victory for the homeowners. 

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November 26, 2009
"Judge wipes out $500,000 debt to punish 'repulsive' bank
Source TimesOnline.co.uk

"Greg and Diane Horoski’s story may seem familiar. They bought their home before the boom and, when house prices soared, increased their mortgage to finance a small business.
 
Interest rates rose, health bills poured in, and then the housing market crashed so that they ended up owing thousands of dollars more than their bungalow was worth.
 
Yesterday they went to court in New York expecting to be thrown out — but instead they emerged with their debt of $500,000 (£300,000) written off and a mortgage-free home.
 
Judge Jeffrey Spinner ruled that their lender’s behaviour had been “harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive to the extent that it must be appropriately sanctioned so as to deter it from imposing further mortifying abuse”.
 
The decision, which is to be the subject of an appeal, offered possible relief for some of the 7.5 million Americans who are behind with their mortgages and face losing their homes. One in seven homes in America is now in the process of being repossessed as many families find it impossible to pay off the high-interest mortgages that were handed out in abundance when the property market was at its height.
 
The Horoskis were just one couple caught up in what the judge called the “yawning abyss of a deep mortgage and housing crisis”.
 
Mrs Horoski, an English professor, bought the 3,400 sq ft (315 sq m) bungalow 15 years ago for less than $200,000. In 2004, after the value of the home soared, she refinanced with a mortgage for $292,500 from Deutsche Bank at an initial interest rate of 10.375 per cent that rose as high as 12.5 per cent.
 
The couple, both of whom have medical problems and who live with their adult daughter, used the extra money for healthcare and to help to finance Mr Horoski’s online business selling collectable dolls. But the value of their home plummeted in the property crash and is now appraised at no more than $275,000 — less than the mortgage.
 
The Horoskis thus joined the one in four Americans “under water” on their mortgages — the US term for “negative equity”.
 
Facing financial difficulties because of Mr Horoski’s health problems, the couple began having trouble making the mortgage payments in 2005. IndyMac Bank, a division of the California-based OneWest Bank, which services the loan for Deutsche Bank, sought to evict the couple.
 
IndyMac claimed that with interest and penalties they owed more than $527,437. Because the case involved a high-interest “sub-prime” mortgage, the bank was required by New York state law to attend a court conference to seek a settlement that would keep the owners in their home before completing the foreclosure. The bank, however, rejected repeated offers by the Horoskis to make reduced monthly payments with help from their adult daughter. It flatly turned down an offer by the daughter to buy the house for its current value with money from another lender to pay off the bulk of the mortgage.
 
The judge was outraged and accused the bank’s representatives of an “opprobrious demeanour and condescending attitude”. He pointed out that the Horoskis had turned up for court on six occasions, despite Mrs Horoski’s difficulty in walking and her husband’s many health problems.
 
“At each appearance, they have assiduously attempted to resolve this controversy in an amicable fashion, only to be callously and arbitrarily turned away,” he wrote.
 
Eviction would leave the Horoskis and their daughter homeless, “leading to an additional level of problems, both for them and for society”. The mortgage was “hereby cancelled, voided, avoided, nullified, set aside and is of no further force and effect”.
 
Mr Horoski told the New York Post that negotiating with the bank was “like dealing with organised crime”. He said: “I think the judge felt it was almost a personal vendetta. The bank was so intransigent that he decided to punish them.”
 
OneWest said that it “respectfully disagreed” with the judge’s decision and would appeal."
 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6932535.ece

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

 

"Global Warming Bombshell

Article quoted exactly from Powerlineblog.com.  Three links below are referenced in the first paragraph of their commentary.

Yellow highlighting added by me.

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"Global Warming Bombshell
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024993.php
 
"The Alarmists Do "Science": A Case Study
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024995.php
 
"When In Doubt, Delete
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024996.php
______

"More From the East Anglia Archives

Source Powerlineblog.com   November 23, 2009 Posted by John at 7:00 PM

"We've written about the leaked emails and other documents from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Center here, here and here. Another intensely interesting email thread, which doesn't seem to have gotten much notice, relates to the fact that the last decade, contrary to the alarmists' predictions, has tended to get cooler, not warmer.

At the end of 2008, the scientists at East Anglia predicted that 2009 would be one of the warmest years on record:

On December 30, climate scientists from the UK Met Office and the University of East Anglia projected 2009 will be one of the top five warmest years on record. Average global temperatures for 2009 are predicted to be 0.4∞C above the 1961-1990 average of 14 ∫ C. A multiyear forecast using a Met Office climate model indicates a rapid return of global temperature to the long-term warming trend, with an increasing probability of record temperatures after 2009.

We know now that the alarmists' prediction for 2009 didn't come true. What's interesting is that in January of this year, another climate alarmist named Mike MacCracken wrote to Phil Jones and another East Anglia climatologist, saying that their predicted warming may not occur:

Your prediction for 2009 is very interesting...and I would expect the analysis you have done is correct. But, I have one nagging question, and that is how much SO2/sulfate is being generated by the rising emissions from China and India.... While I understand there are efforts to get much better inventories of CO2 emissions from these nations, when I asked a US EPA representative if their efforts were going to also inventory SO2 emissions (amount and height of emission), I was told they were not. So, it seems, the scientific uncertainty generated by not having good data from the mid-20th century is going to be repeated in the early 21st century (satellites may help on optical depth, but it would really help to know what is being emitted).

That there is a large potential for a cooling influence is sort of evident in the IPCC figure about the present sulfate distribution--most is right over China, for example, suggesting that the emissions are near the surface--something also that is, so to speak, 'clear' from the very poor visibility and air quality in China and India. So, the quick, fast, cheap fix is to put the SO2 out through tall stacks. The cooling potential also seems quite large as the plume would go out over the ocean with its low albedo--and right where a lot of water vapor is evaporated, so maybe one pulls down the water vapor feedback a little and this amplifies the sulfate cooling influence.

Now, I am not at all sure that having more tropospheric sulfate would be a bad idea as it would limit warming--I even have started suggesting that the least expensive and quickest geoengineering approach to limit global warming would be to enhance the sulfate loading.... Sure, a bit more acid deposition, but it is not harmful over the ocean.... Indeed, rather than go to stratospheric sulfate injections, I am leaning toward tropospheric, but only during periods when trajectories are heading over ocean and material won't get rained out for 10 days or so.

In any case, if the sulfate hypothesis is right, then your prediction of warming might end up being wrong. I think we have been too readily explaining the slow changes over past decade as a result of variability--that explanation is wearing thin. I would just suggest, as a backup to your prediction, that you also do some checking on the sulfate issue, just so you might have a quantified explanation in case the prediction is wrong.

Otherwise, the Skeptics will be all over us--the world is really cooling, the models are no good, etc.

Sulphur dioxide, like carbon dioxide, is emitted as a result of industrial activity. Unlike carbon dioxide, it is actually a pollutant. But whereas carbon dioxide tends to warm, sulphur dioxide tends to cool, and MacCracken suggests that SO2 emissions from China and India may well be offsetting the temperature impact of CO2. The net effect of human activity, therefore, may be much closer to neutral than the alarmists have been claiming.

How did the British scientists, whose careers are committed to the proposition that human activity is causing catastrophic warming of the globe, respond? Surprisingly, Tim Johns reacted with insouciance:

Mike McCracken makes a fair point. I am no expert on the observational uncertainties in tropospheric SO2 emissions over the recent past, but it is certainly the case that the SRES A1B scenario (for instance) as seen by different integrated assessment models shows a range of possibilities. In fact this has been an issue for us in the ENSEMBLES project, since we have been running models with a new mitigation/stabilization scenario "E1" (that has large emissions reductions relative to an A1B baseline, generated using the IMAGE IAM) and comparing it with A1B (the AR4 marker version, generated by a different IAM). The latter has a possibly unrealistic secondary SO2 emissions peak in the early 21st C - not present in the IMAGE E1 scenario, which has a steady decline in SO2 emissions from 2000. The A1B scenario as generated with IMAGE also show a decline rather than the secondary emissions peak, but I can't say for sure which is most likely to be "realistic".

The impact of the two alternative SO2 emissions trajectories is quite marked though in terms of global temperature response in the first few decades of the 21st C (at least in our HadGEM2-AO simulations, reflecting actual aerosol forcings in that model plus some divergence in GHG forcing). Ironically, the E1-IMAGE scenario runs, although much cooler in the long term of course, are considerably warmer than A1B-AR4 for several decades! Also - relevant to your statement - A1B-AR4 runs show potential for a distinct lack of warming in the early 21st C, which I'm sure skeptics would love to see replicated in the real world... (See the attached plot for illustration but please don't circulate this any further as these are results in progress, not yet shared with other ENSEMBLES partners let alone published). We think the different short term warming responses are largely attributable to the different SO2 emissions trajectories.

So far we've run two realisations of both the E1-IMAGE and A1B-AR4 scenarios with HadGEM2-AO, and other partners in ENSEMBLES are doing similar runs using other GCMs. Results will start to be analysed in a multi-model way in the next few months. CMIP5 (AR5) prescribes similar kinds of experiments, but the implementation details might well be different from ENSEMBLES experiments wrt scenarios and their SO2 emissions trajectories (I haven't studied the CMIP5 experiment fine print to that extent).

Cheers,
Tim

Got that? Here is a translation: assumptions about SO2 emissions do have a "quite marked...impact" on global temperatures under the warmists' various models. What impact they have varies from model to model. Which model is correct (if any)? Who knows? But as a result of increased SO2 in the atmosphere, there is "potential for a distinct lack of warming in the early 21st C."

That must come as a great relief, since everyone involved in this exchange has been telling the public that global warming is an imminent catastrophe. But no! The prospect of a "distinct lack of warming in the early 21st C[entury]" is bad, because "skeptics" would "love" it!

Phil Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit, now weighs in. Does he welcome the idea that, contrary to his own predictions, there may be little or no warming in coming decades? No!

Tim, Chris,

I hope you're not right about the lack of warming lasting till about 2020. I'd rather hoped to see the earlier Met Office press release with Doug's paper that said something like -half the years to 2014 would exceed the warmest year currently on record, 1998!

Still a way to go before 2014.

I seem to be getting an email a week from skeptics saying where's the warming gone. I know the warming is on the decadal scale, but it would be nice to wear their smug grins away.

Better that the Earth experience the cataclysm of global warming than that the skeptics be proved right? It makes one wonder how seriously Jones believes in the catastrophe of global warming. Jones then frets about whether the weather is really as cool as the weathermen are saying:

Chris - I presume the Met Office continually monitor the weather forecasts. Maybe because I'm in my 50s, but the language used in the forecasts seems a bit over the top re the cold. Where I've been for the last 20 days (in Norfolk) it doesn't seem to have been as cold as the forecasts.

So the very climate scientists who keep saying that global warming will be an unparalleled disaster for humanity are telling the Earth: Heat up, <snip> it!

But let's go back to the main point. Apparently the alarmist climatologists acknowledge that SO2, frequently emitted in conjunction with CO2, nullifies, wholly or in part, any warming tendency associated with the CO2. What is the net effect? This is, obviously, an empirical, quantitative question. But these scientists can't answer it, not only because each of their models gives a different result, but because they have no idea how much SO2 is being emitted by the main countries that produce that pollutant, India and China. Having no idea what the facts are, their models are useless. It does appear, however, that one obvious alternative to impoverishing humanity in a most-likely-futile effort to stave off global warming would be emitting a whole lot of SO2 over the ocean, and continuing those emissions indefinitely rather than banning them as is currently contemplated by the warmists' models.

Climate science is in its infancy, and every proposition is controversial. What climate scientists like those at East Anglia don't know dwarfs what they do know. They can produce a model for every occasion, but are the models any good? If so, which one? One thing we know for sure is that they don't generate reliable predictions. In every scientific field other than global warming, a scientific hypothesis that generates false predictions is considered disproved. When it comes to global warming, however, there is no such thing as falsification. Which is the ultimate evidence that the alarmist scientists are engaged in a political enterprise, not a scientific one.

UPDATE: A reader writes:

You are doing a solid job interpreting the CRU emails and their implications. Thank you.

I am professionally close to this subject (not academically, I do decision analysis for a large 'emitter'), so must request to remain anonymous. However, one thing I would point out is that at least temporally (correlation, not causation), the 'scrubbing' of coal in the US corresponds very closely with the warming of the 80's and 90's, and the warming slowing in he aughts. Since the 80's large numbers of US coal plants have been 'scrubbed' removing both Nitrous Oxides (NOx) and Sulfur Dioxides (SO2), or shut down. Previous to that, my suspicion was that the warming effects were relatively balanced between the CO2 warming and the SO2 cooling, but the environmental movement forced the removal of the SO2, imbalancing things from a temperature perspective. I don't mean to paint with too broad a brush, as some should certainly have been scrubbed for acid rain issues, however, they (environmentalists/regulators) did paint with too broad a brush, and coal plants with no acid rain problems, such as those along the Atlantic coast, were and are being forced to scrub or shut. Plants in the midwest were causing acid rain in the east, and should have been scrubbed. Those on the eastern seaboard should not have been forced to scrub (at rate payers expense), because it was ending up in the ocean, where it was doing minimal if any harm. But they were and are all being forced to scrub or shut (the cap and trade is a sham, the real action is in the emission rate regulation, thus the collapse of the emission prices...you are theoretically allowed to continue to emit by purchasing an offsetting credit from someone who reduced theirs so much they have extra emission allowances, but states mandate your emission rates be so low that you are forced to scrub to meet them, regardless of how many allowances you have or buy.)

I personally have a physics eduction, and the fact the IPCC models ignore the solar forcing is an absolute travesty of science. The sun plays a significant role. That is not to say that CO2 is unimportant, but it is impossible to know how much without taking the sun into account.

Another interesting connection with the role of SO2 is 'the year without a summer' 1816, a confluence of low solar activity (are you following the sunspot cycle?) along with a large injection of SO2 from the Mt. Tambora volcanic eruption. There were snowstorms (not frost, accumulation) throughout eastern canada and the northeast and mid atlantic states. In July and August. A year after the eruption.

Anyway, good job on the coverage, keep digging, the truth will out."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/025011.php


Wednesday, November 25, 2009

 

YouTube - WHO advisors paid by H1N1 vaccine makers profiting on fear?

Sidebar comment on YouTube:  It's the kind of information that fuels conspiracy theoristseverywhere... Danish journalists claim several World HealthOrganisation advisers are on the payroll of leading pharmaceuticalcompanies that make swine flu vaccines. RT talks to Louise Volle, ajournalist at the Danish Daily Information newspaper and a co-author ofthe report.


Tuesday, November 24, 2009

 

"Obama says 'step closer' to climate deal

Bet his staff forgot to tell him about the climate fraud emails.   

_____________

"Obama says 'step closer' to climate deal

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=TX-PAR-MWN76&show_article=1


Tuesday, November 24, 2009

 

"New EU President Rompuy announces 2009 as "first year of global governance"

"New EU President Rompuy announces 2009 as "first year of global governance"

Sees Copenhagen as step towards global management

Old-Thinker News | Nov. 20, 2009

By Daniel Taylor

"The new EU President, Herman Van Rompuy, has proclaimed 2009 as the "first year of global governance." During Rompuy's intervention as President on November 19th, hestated,

"2009 is also the first year of global governance, with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of the financial crisis. The climate conference in Copenhagen is another step towards the global management of our planet."

Rompuy attended a Bilderberg dinner at Hertoginnendal, Brussels on November 15th, during which he announced a plan to implement EU wide taxes that will be paid directly to Brussels. Recently Mario Borghezio (Italy), member of the European Parliament,spoke openly against the influence of globalist organizations such as the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission. "Is it possible that no one has noticed that all 3 (EU Presidential candidates) frequently attend Bilderberg or Trilateral meetings?," asked Borghezio. Rompuy will undoubtedly serve globalist interests during his reign of the European Union."

http://oldthinkernews.com/Articles/oldthinker%20news/new_eu_president_herman_van_romp.htm


Tuesday, November 24, 2009

 

"Red Alert: The Second Wave of The Financial Tsunami ... first & second quarter of 2010

Rather long but interesting opinion.

______________

"Red Alert: The Second Wave of The Financial Tsunami
The Wave Is gathering force & could hit between the first & second quarter of 2010


by Matthias Chang
Global Research, November 22, 2009
Future Fast Forward

"Many of my friends who have been receiving my e-mail alerts over the last two years have lamented that in recent weeks I have not commented on the state of the global economy. I appreciate their anxiety but they forget that I am not a stock market analyst who is paid to write articles to lure investors back into the market. My website is free and I do not sell a financial newsletter so there is no need for me to churn out daily forecasts or analysis.

However, when the data is compelling and supports an inevitable trend, it is time for another review. This Red Alert is to enable visitors to my website to take appropriate actions to safeguard their wealth and welfare of their families in the coming months.

Since the last quarter of 2008, unrelenting currency warfare has been waged by the key global economies and while this competition thus far has been non-antagonistic, it will soon be antagonistic because the inherent differences are irreconcilable. The consequences to the global economy will be devastating and for the ordinary people, massive unemployment and social unrest are assured.

The policy-makers of these countries faced with the total collapse of the international financial architecture have concluded that the solution, the only solution is quantitative easing (i.e. massive injection of liquidity) to salvage the “too big to fail” banks and reflate their depressed economies. This is best reflected in Bernanke’s candid remark that, “the US government has a technology, called the printing press (or today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost”.

This is the crux of the problem!

The Irreconcilable Differences

Some two decades ago, it was decided by the global financial elites that the framework for the global economy shall consist of:

1) A global derivative-based financial system, controlled by the US Federal Reserve Bank and its associate global banks in the developed countries.

2) The re-location from the West to the East in the production of goods, principally to China and India to “feed” the developed economies.

The entire system was built on a simple principle, that of a FED-controlled global reserve currency which will be the engine for growth for the global economy. It is essentially an imperialist economic principle.

Once we grasp this fundamental truth, Bernanke’s boast that the “US can produce as many US dollars as it wishes at no cost” takes on a different dimension.

I have talked to so many economists and when asked what is the crux of the present financial problem, they all respond in unison, “it is the global imbalances... the West consumes too much while the East saves too much and consumes not enough”. This is exemplified by the huge US trade deficits on the one part and China’s massive surpluses on the other.

Incredible wisdom and almost everyone echoes this mantra. The recent concluded APEC Summit was no different. This mantra was repeated as well as the call for freer trade between trading nations.

This is a grand hoax. All the current leaders on the world’s stage are corrupted to the rotten core and as such have no interest to call a spade a spade and expose the inherent contradictions within the existing financial system.

The call for a multi-polar world is meaningless when the entire global financial system is based on the unipolar US dollar reserve currency. This is the inherent contradiction within the present system and the problems associated with it cannot be resolved by another global reserve currency based on the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights as advocated by some countries. It was stillborn, the very moment it was conceived!

The leaders of China, Japan and the oil producing countries of the Middle East are all cursing and pissing about the current situation, but they don’t have the courage of their convictions to spell it out to their countrymen that they have been conned by the financial spin masters from the Fed acting on the instructions from Goldman Sachs.

Tell me which leader would dare admit that they have exchanged the nation’s wealth for toilet papers?

The toilet paper currency pantomime continues.

We have now reached a stalemate in the current currency war, not unlike the situation of the Cold War between the NATO pact countries and the Warsaw pact countries. Both sides were deterred by the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine of nuclear wars. The costs to both sides were horrendous and it was only when the Soviet Union could not continue with the pace and cost of maintaining a nuclear deterrent and was forced into bankruptcy that the balance tilted in favour of the NATO alliance.

But it was a pyrrhic victory for the US and it allies. What kept the ability of the US to maintain its military might and outspend the Soviet Union was the right to print toilet paper currency and the acceptance of the US dollar by her allies as the world’s reserve currency.

But why did the countries allied to the US during the Cold War accepted the status quo?

Simple! They were all conned into believing that without the protection of Big Brother and its military outreach, they would be swallowed up by the communist menace. They agreed to march to the tune of the US Pied-Piper.

The next big question – why did the so-called “liberated” former communist allies of the Soviet bloc jump on the bandwagon?

Simple! They all believed in the illusion that was fostered by the global banks, led by Goldman Sachs that trading and selling their goods and services for the toilet paper US reserve currency would ensure untold wealth and prosperity.

But the biggest game in town was the Asia gambit. Japan, after a decade of recession following the burst of her property bubble did not have the means and the capacity to bring the game to the next level as envisaged by the financial architects in Goldman Sachs.

And China was the biggest beneficiary. The senior management of Goldman Sachs brokered a secret pact with China’s leaders that in exchange for orchestrating the most massive injection of US dollar capital and wholesale re-location of manufacturing capacity in the history of the global economy, China would recycle their hard-earned US toilet paper reserve currency wealth into US treasuries and other US debt instruments.

This was the necessary condition precedent for the global financial casino to rise to the next level of play.

Why?

The New Game

The financial architects at Goldman Sachs had a master plan – to dominate the global financial system. The means to achieve this financial power was the Shadow Banking System, the lynchpin being the derivative market and the securitization of assets, real and synthetic. The stakes would be huge, in the hundreds of US$ trillions and the way to transform the market was through massive leverage at all levels of the financial game.

But there was an inherent weakness in the overall scheme – the threat of inflation, more precisely hyperinflation. Such huge amounts of liquidity in the system would invariably trigger the depreciation of the reserve currency and the confidence in the system.

Hence the need for a system to keep in check price inflation and the illusion that the purchasing power of the toilet paper reserve currency could be maintained.

This is where China came in. Once China became the world’s factory, the problem would be resolved. When a suit which previously cost US$600 could be had for less than US$100, and a pair of shoes for less than US$5, the scam masterminds concluded that there would be no foreseeable threat to the largest casino operation in history.

China agreed to the exchange as it has over a billion mouths to feed and jobs for hundreds of millions needed to be secured, without which the system could not be maintained. But China was pragmatic enough to have two “economic systems” – a Yuan based domestic economy and a US$ based export economy, in the hope that the profits and benefits of the export economy would enable China to transform and establish a viable and dynamic domestic market which in time would replace the export dependent economy. It was a deal made with the devil, but there were no viable alternative options at the material time, more so after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Next Level of the Game

The next level of the game was reached when the toilet paper reserve currency literally went virtual – through the simple operation of a click of the mouse in the computers of the global banks.

The big boys at Goldman Sachs and other global banks were more than content to leave Las Vegas for the mafia and their miserable billions in turnover. The profits were considered dimes when compared to the hundreds of trillions generated by the virtual casino. It was a financial conquest beyond their wildest dreams. They even called themselves, “Master of the Universe”. Creating massive debts was the new game, and the big boys could even leverage more than 40 times capital! Asset values soared with so much liquidity chasing so few good assets.

However, the financial wizards failed to appreciate and or underestimate the amount of financial products that were needed to keep the game in play. They resorted to financial engineering – the securitization of assets. And when real assets were insufficient for securitization, synthetic assets were created. Soon enough, toxic waste was even considered as legitimate instruments for the game so long as it could be unloaded to greedy suckers with no recourse to the originators of these so-called investments.

For a time, it looked as if the financial wizards have solved the problem of how to feed the global casino monster.

Unfortunately, the music stopped and the bubble burst! And as they say the rest is history.

The Goldman Sachs Remedy

When losses are in the US$ trillions and whatever assets / capital remaining are in the US$ billions, we have a huge problem – a financial black-hole.

The preferred remedy by the financial masterminds at Goldman Sachs was to create another hoax – that if the big global banks were to fail triggering a systemic collapse, there would be Armageddon. These “too big to fail” banks must be injected with massive amount of virtual monies to recapitalize and get rid of the toxic assets on their balance sheet. The major central banks in the developed countries in cahoots with Goldman Sachs sang the same tune. All sorts of schemes were conjured to legitimize this bailout.

In essence, what transpired was the mere transfer of monies from the left pocket to the right pocket, with the twist that the banks were in fact helping the Government to overcome the financial crisis.

The Fed and key central banks agreed to lend “virtual monies” to the “too big to fail” global banks at zero or near zero interest rate and these banks in turn would “deposit” these monies with the Fed and other central banks at agreed interest rates. These transactions are all mere book entries. Other “loans” from the Fed and central banks (again at zero or near zero interest rates) are used to purchase government debts, these debts being the stimulus monies needed to revive the real economy and create jobs for the growing unemployed. So in essence, these banks are given “free money” to lend to the government at prior agreed interest rates with no risks at all. It is a hoax!

These “monies” are not even the dollar bills, but mere book entries created out of thin air.

So when the Fed injects US$ trillions into the banking system, it merely credits the amount in the accounts of the “too big to fail” banks at the Fed.

When the system is applied to international trade, the same modus operandi is used to pay for the goods imported from China, Japan etc.

For the rest of world, when buying goods denominated in US$, these countries must produce goods and services, sell them for dollars in order to purchase goods needed in their country. Simply put, they have to earn an income to purchase whatever goods and services needed. In contrast, all that the US needs to do is to create monies out of thin air and use them to pay for their imports!

The US can get away with this scam because it has the military muscle to compel and enforce this hoax. As stated earlier, this status quo was accepted especially during the Cold War and with some reluctance post the collapse of the Soviet Union, but with a proviso – that the US agrees to be the consumer of last resort. This arrangement provided some comfort because countries which have sold their goods to the US, can now use the dollars to buy goods from other countries as more than 80 per cent of world trade is denominated in dollars especially crude oil, the lifeline of the global economy.

But with the US in full bankruptcy and its citizens (the largest consumers in the world) being unable to borrow further monies to buy fancy goods from China, Japan and the rest of the world, the demand for dollar has evaporated. The dollar status as a reserve currency and its usefulness is being questioned more vocally.

The End Game

The present fallout can be summarized in simple terms:

Should a bankrupt country (the US) be allowed to use money created out of thin air to pay for goods produced with the sweat and tears of hardworking citizens of exporting countries? Adding insult to injury, the same dollars are now purchasing a lot less than before. So what is the use of being paid in a currency that is losing rapidly its value?

On the other hand, the US is telling the whole world, especially the Chinese that if they are not happy with the status quo, there is nothing to stop them from selling to the other countries and accepting their currencies. But if they want to sell to the mighty USA, they must accept US toilet paper reserve currency and its right to create monies out of thin air!

This is the ultimate poker game and whosoever blinks first loses and will suffer irreparable financial consequences. But who has the winning hand?

The US does not have the winning hand. Neither has China the winning hand.

This state of affairs cannot continue for long, for whatever cards the US or China may be contemplating to throw at the table to gain strategic advantage, any short term gains will be pyrrhic, for it will not be able to address the underlying antagonistic contradictions.

When the survival of the system is dependent on the availability of credit (i.e. accumulating more debts) it is only a matter of time before both the debtor and creditor come to the inevitable conclusion that the debt will never be paid. And unless the creditor is willing to write off the debt, resorting to drastic means to collect the outstanding debt is inevitable.

It would be naïve to think that the US would quietly allow itself to be foreclosed! When we reach that stage, war will be inevitable. It will be the US-UK-Israel Axis against the rest of the world.

The Prelude to the End Game

The US economy will be spiraling out of control in the coming months and will reach critical point by the end of the 1st quarter 2010 and implode by the 2nd quarter.

The massive US$ trillions of dollars stimulus has failed to turn the economy around. The massive blood transfusion may have kept the patient alive, but there are numerous signs of multi-organ failure.

There will be another wave of foreclosures of residential and more importantly commercial properties by end December and early 2010. And the foreclosed properties in 2009 will lead to depressed prices once they come through the pipeline. Home and commercial property values will plunge. Banks’ balance sheets will turn ugly and whatever “record profits” in the last two quarters of 2009 will not cover the additional red ink.

Given the above situation, will the Fed continue to buy mortgage-backed securities to prop up the markets? The Fed has already spent trillions buying Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages with no potential substitute buyer in sight. Therefore, the Fed’s balance sheet is as toxic as the “too big to fail” banks that it rescued.

In the circumstances, it makes no sense for anyone to assert that the worst is over and that the global economy is on the road to recovery.

And the surest sign that all is not well with the big banks is the recent speech by the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, William Dudley at Princeton, New Jersey when he said that the Fed would curtail the risk of future liquidity crisis by providing a “backstop” to solvent firms with sufficient collateral.

This warning and assurance deserves further consideration. Firstly, it is a contradiction to state that a solvent firm with sufficient collateral would in fact encounter a liquidity crisis to warrant the need for a fall back on the Fed. It is in fact an admission that banks are not sufficiently capitalized and when the second wave of the tsunami hits them again, confidence will be sorely lacking.

Dudley actually said that, “the central bank could commit to being the lender of last resort... [and this would reduce] the risk of panics sparked by uncertainty among lenders about what other creditors think”.

To put it bluntly what he is saying is that the Fed will endeavour to avoid the repeat of the collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros and AIG. It is also an indication that the remaining big banks are in trouble.

It is interesting to note that a Bloomberg report in early November revealed that Citigroup Inc and JP Morgan Chase have been hoarding cash. The former has almost doubled its cash holdings to US$244.2 billion. In the case of the latter, the cash hoard amounted to US$453.6 billion. Yet, given this hoarding by the leading banks, the New York Federal Reserve Bank had to reassure the financial community that it is ready to inject massive liquidity to prop up the system.

It should come as no surprise that the value of the dollar is heading south.

When currencies are being debased, volatility in the stock market increases. But the gains are not worth the risks and if anyone is still in the market, they will be wiped out by the 1st quarter of 2010. The S&P may have shot up since the beginning of the year by over 25 per cent but it has been out-performed by gold. The gains have also lagged behind the official US inflation rate. It has in fact delivered a total return after inflation of approximately minus 25 per cent. When Meredith Whitney remarked that, “I don’t know what’s going on in the market right now, because it makes no sense to me”, it is time to get out of the market fast.

In a report to its clients, Société Générale warned that public debt would be massive in the next two years – 105 per cent of GDP in the UK, 125 per cent in the US and in Europe and 270 per cent in Japan. Global debt would reach US$45 trillion.

At some point in time, all these debts must be repaid. How will these debts be repaid?

If we go by what Bernanke has been preaching and practising, it means more toilet paper currency will be created to repay the debts.

As a result, debasement of currencies will continue and this will further aggravate existing tensions between the competing economies. And when creditors have enough of this toilet paper scam, expect violent reactions!"

Matthias Chang is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16218


Monday, November 23, 2009

 

"Global Warming" SCAM - A Further Look

I enjoy Kark Denninger's financial commentaries, hence have posted him frequently.  However, was never aware of his technical background which I have highlighted below.
______________________

Saturday, November 21. 2009

Posted by Karl Denninger in at12:29

"Global Warming" SCAM - A Further Look

Ok, having spent a fair bit of tme sifting through the files referenced in my original Ticker on this subject, I have some additional observations.

Please note - in my "past life" I ran an ISP, and am a qualified expert in these matters.  I write spam filtering software commercially and have since 1995, being the author of the first ISP-centered spam interdiction package.  As such when it comes to issues like Internet mail transport I can easily speak to what is supposed to be present - and what is not.

Further, I want to note that my interest in this has absolutely nothing to do with the underlying claim - "Is Man-Made Global Warming Real?"  Rather, my interest in this is whether or not the alleged scientific process has been followed - or subverted.

There is one axiom that I believe we can all agree on:

The climate is always in flux - that is, it is always changing.  It has done so over the millions of years in the past, and will in the millions of years in the future.

Science is the process by which we take a question and:

That's "The Scientific Method."

To the extent that method is corrupted on purpose one does not have science.  To the extent that it is corrupted out of necessity (e.g. missing data that one requires, and thus one "guesses") this is accepted provided one discloses one's guess and how it was derived - that is, provided there is no material concealment.

In the "Big Science World" the check and balance on concealment - and outright fraud - is peer review and post-publication duplication.  To be able to duplicate the results claimed, however, the algorithms, code, methods and data sets must be made publicly available so that anyone who desires to do so can validate the claimed experimental results. 

In the spirit of science, I will note that I fully expect others to try to validate (or dispute) my observations below.  As such you can find the original archive at Wikileaks should you decide you would like to do so, and I encourage all other independent investigation.

Now, on to the observations, after spending an evening and morning with the data (and no, I haven't gone through it all yet - there's a hell of a lot here folks.) 

There are apparently 1073 emails, each with a sequence number but those numbers are not sequential.  That is, there are a lot of sequence numbers missing.  However, the dates in the files appear to be ordinal (that is, increasing from earliest to latest) with the last entry being November 12th of this year.

This strongly implies this is a partial data set intercept of email from some point.  The same person does not appear as a "to" or "from" in each email (although there is a lot of commonality), which belies the general idea that this was someone's "saved storage" - at least at first blush.

The intercept, wherever it happened, does not appear to have been done at the system or transport level.  Specifically, the "Received:" and "Message-ID:" lines that are part of all internet-transported email are missing.  This strongly implies that wherever these emails came from, they were saved/stored by one or more user(s) and were not an automated process that was maintaining archival (or forensic) logs.

The emails themselves, however, look authentic.  That is, the formatting is consistent with character mode operation in many of the messages (Unix) and Windows or MAC format programs in others.  The quoting is consistent - and correct for the time period in question.  Attachments are missing, again implying that this is someone's "saved copy" and NOT from a system-level stream.  The early emails contain a fairly significant number of messages that are consistent with the user being on a character-mode terminal (e.g. ELM, MUTT or similar on a Unix system), including the quoting and line formatting.  The message content shift toward "desktop email programs" - that is, appearing to be more and more programs such as Eudora, Thunderbird, Outlook and the like is also apparent as time goes on.

My conclusions on the email data set itself are that this is very likely to be either (1) someone's "private email" storage of things they wanted to save, or (2) it was a working directory of someone who was in the process of putting forward a response to an FOI request or internal inquiry of some sort.  The messages are not the entire email stream to or from any specific set of users, but rather are a set selected in some fashion - either by the person saving them as "important" or by someone collating messages for the purpose of responding to some sort of request.  The majority of the messages themselves are what appear to be ordinary and reasonable discourse between scientists and researchers with an occasional "revealing glance" at the various defensive (and offensive!) approaches to those who question their premise and conclusions.  Wikileaks concurs with the latter assessment.

In short, I see nothing in that data set that implies that the messages have been tampered with, but there is also no reasonable way to prove their provenance as the necessary information to do so (routing and message-id information) is missing.  A well-place FOI request should resolve that problem, if anyone is particularly interested in doing so.

The data sets included in the archive are also interesting.  Again, a reasonably-detailed look through them shows nothing implying that they have been tampered with, and they include data and computer code (source program code) from a wide variety of time periods.  It appears authentic.

Comments within, however, disclose an extraordinary amount of extrapolation and "curve fitting" - that is, fitting results to data, not the other way around as it should be that appears to have been going on in the process of so-called "analysis."  Worse, there are plenty of comments that make clear that the researchers are literally making things up as they go along - much of the data sets are claimed to be incomplete, inaccurate in terms of their time frames .vs. what is claimed in the headers and titles, and containing junk values.

There is some real trouble here, in that if you're not sure what you've got (that is, you're not sure what the data is!) or worse, you're knowingly missing pieces that you need to perform an analysis, what are you "analyzing"? 

Worse, there are comments in the files that make clear that there are observations that are outside of what has been published - and worse, some of those observations are ten times outside the alleged "resolution" of claimed results.  Uh, that's a major problem, and goes back to what I have repeatedly said about so-called "climate science" for a very long time, specifically (from Musings):

It is, however, entirely possible that we will find that indeed man is responsible for some of the warming that is taking place, but that this contribution is extremely small - say, 5%. That is, if the global temperature is due to rise by 10 degrees F in the next 100 years, we are responsible for only 0.5F of that rise! Thus, were we to completely cut off CO2 emissions, we'd STILL see a 9.5F rise in temperature. Obviously, if this is the case, then the data does not support taking any sort of drastic action at this time.

The problem with the current political-speak coming from these so-called "scientists" is that it contains no real data and no ranges of uncertainty on their alleged measurements.

That's not science folks - its politics - and we must, as a nation and people, refuse to be cowed by bald claims without the presence of facts behind them.

I have long argued that the major problem with so-called "published papers" on global warming is that it is rare to see find measurement uncertainties reported in the alleged findings, and competing studies have cited wildly different values for the same thing (e.g. atmospheric CO2 emitted by man per year.)

I believe we can now deduce why those uncertainties are missing - they are not being carried through the computational process as is required for any scientific calculation and this omission is in fact intentional.

This is, quite literally, first-semester college physics (or chemistry, or any other "hard" science.)  If you turn in an answer to the question "How long is that ruler?" that reads "12 inches" you get a zero.

The scientist says "12 inches +/- 0.1 inch", reflecting the limits of his measurement.  The carrying through of uncertainties is essential to hard science, as only from that process can one compute the statistical bands of probability that the result reported is actually the result in the real world.

Uncertainties in measurement are additive - that is, if I measure two rulers and each is reported as "12 inches +/- 0.1 inch" then the total length of the two rulers is 24 inches +/- 0.2 inch - because it is possible that both errors were on the same side.

When one performs complex mathematical functions on input data uncertainties must also be carried through the mathematical functions. Without that we know nothing about the quality of the result - it is entirely possible, given data with enough noise in it, to produce what looks like a perfectly valid answer but have it be absolute trash and of no value at all.

The only way to know if that is possible is for all measurements to be reported with their uncertainties attached, and for all uncertainties to be carried through all computational processes.

It is quite clear, from the data sets I have looked at, that this is simply not being done.  Instead computations are being "fudged" to fit data to expected previously claimed results and/or data sets simply discarded or modified that do not fit with either previously-published numbers or desired outcomes.  Here's just one example from the comments in the files:

ARGH. Just went back to check on synthetic production. Apparently - I have no memory of this at all - we're not doing observed rain days! It's all synthetic from 1990 onwards. So I'm going to need conditionals in the update program to handle that. And separate gridding before 1989. And what TF happens to station counts?

OH F**K THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I'm hitting yet another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it's just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they're found.

This, by the way, is exactly the (intentional) "error" that was made by the "ratings agencies" and banks when it came to securitized debt that had "less than fully-verified income and assets" as a component.  Uncertainties on the reported income and assets were never determined from experimental sampling and carried through the computational process.  If they had been then the outcomes that we have actually seen would have been predicted within the range of possible outcomes for this debt.  Instead, the issued securities were rated "AAA" because the agencies did not apply an uncertainty to each of the alleged reported numbers.  That's what happens when you ignore the scientific method - you put garbage into a computation, you get garbage back out and it is impossible for an outside observer to detect that you did so because you refuse to give him the uncertainties associated with your claimed "measurements"!

Some of the guys working on this stuff appear to be genuinely trying to clean up other people's trash.  But trash in produces trash out, and if you can't successfully defend the statistical integrity of the data going into your computational models you have nothing.

This leaves me with one final question: since we have emails now apparently documenting an attempt to "paper over" temperature decreases in recent years, and we also have claims of "lost" data, one wonders - was the data really lost, or was it intentionally deleted or withheld from other researchers who asked for it, as providing it would show that measurement uncertainties were not carried through computationally - and if they were, the claimed results in the so-called "peer reviewed" paper would be impossible to validate?

Without hard proof of whatever answer is propounded to that question we as the people of this planet must insist on a full stop for all purported "climate amelioration" efforts, as there is every possibility that the entirety of this so-called science in fact proves exactly nothing, except that the so-called "researchers" have added much CO2 to the atmosphere producing the electricity required to power their computers!

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and from the released set of data that proof is, quite simply, not present and accounted for."


http://market-ticker.org/archives/1651-Global-Warming-SCAM-A-Further-Look.html


Sunday, November 22, 2009

 

Cartoon

From Steve Quayle, QNews. 

_______________________

"respecting everyone EXCEPT Americans

http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/09_Photo_of_Day/091120.photo.of.day.b.html


Sunday, November 22, 2009

 

"Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China

Saw a few of these photos on a Chinese pop site, enough to make you cry.
 
Two things strike me as very important  (1)  As Obama tries to shove climate change .. carbon footprint down our throats for the purpose of further draining our personal financial resources, the world might focus its attention to the amount of toxic pollution being churned out by Chinese factories.  This will continue until their government is forced to clean it up.  Focus on the problem there, not here because over the past 40 years we've cleaned up most of ours.
 
(2)  Which comes to the next point they can't afford to clean upor install technology so long as our Fed in collusion with congress continues hair on fire deficit spending and BORRWING FROM CHINA WITHOUT PAYING THEM BACK.  They try to shove the blame off on consumers however I feel responsibility lies on the shoulders of the mass of corruption in Washington spending like drunk sailors on a three day pass.
 
I am very grateful to China for loaning the US money but we need to repay the debt so they can work on environmental cleanup of their own nation.
 
Caveat, if you have a weak stomach don't click the link. 
If you ever thought our pollution is bad do yes click the link.
 
"Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China
October 21st, 2009 by Key | Posted in Featured, News | 1,166 Comments »

[QQ] October 14, 2009, the 30th annual awards ceremony of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund took place at the Asia Society in New York City. Lu Guang (å�¢å¹¿) from People's Republic of China won the $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his documentary project “Pollution in China.â€�

http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/

Sunday, November 22, 2009

 

$300 Million Dollar Vote

"Sweeteners for the South

By Dana Milbank
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Source The Washington Post
"Staffers on Capitol Hill were calling it the Louisiana Purchase.

On the eve of Saturday's showdown in the Senate over health-care reform, Democratic leaders still hadn't secured the support of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of the 60 votes needed to keep the legislation alive. The wavering lawmaker was offered a sweetener: at least $100 million in extra federal money for her home state.

And so it came to pass that Landrieu walked onto the Senate floor midafternoon Saturday to announce her aye vote -- and to trumpet the financial "fix" she had arranged for Louisiana. "I am not going to be defensive," she declared. "And it's not a $100 million fix. It's a $300 million fix. ............."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/21/AR2009112102272_pf.html

Saturday, November 21, 2009

 

"Mutated strain of H1N1 virus detected in US and Norway

Interesting info, take it for what it's worth.  Have not verified either article with any news source.

____________


"Mutated strain of H1N1 virus detected in US and Norway


From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!
This is the latest sighted revision, approved on 20 November 2009.  
Friday, November 20, 2009

"Health officials in both the United States and Norway have confirmed the presence of a mutated strain of the H1N1, swine flu virus in several patients in the countries. The mutation is resistant to current treatments for H1N1 such as tamiflu, oseltamivir and zanamivir.

At least three patients in Norway were confirmed to have the mutated strain of H1N1, with two of the cases being fatal. Health officials say the three cases are not related and isolated from one another.

At least four new cases of the mutation were detected in patients at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina. Three of the four cases were fatal. Two prior cases of the mutation in the same state, were reported in the Summer of 2008. Health officials say none of the cases are related.

Director of the Center for Disease Control's Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Anne Schuchat says the cases are appearing in the U.S. "sporadically."

"It's just too soon for us to say what this is going to mean long term. It's an important finding for the influenza virologists, and they're looking into it. [The mutation] has no implications for how good the match of the vaccine is and no implications for treatment with antiviral medicine," said Schuchat during a press conference.

Health officials in other countries such as Mexico, China, Japan, Ukraine and Brazil, also report cases of the mutation."

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Article/144550/Mutated_strain_of_H1N1_virus_detected_in_US_and_Norway
__________

From a blog, have not confirmed this through a news source, no source for this posting cited.

"PNEUMONIC PLAGUE REPORTED IN EASTERN POLAND

Wednesday, 18 November 2009 19:40

News - Highlighted News

"Reports are coming in of people dying of symptoms similar to the pneunomic plague in an Emergency Room in Bialystok in the north east of Poland.

A doctor reported treating three patients with symptoms similar to the pneumonic plague, including burned lungs. One the patients died in his arms. The doctor said that it appeared be a bacterial infection and that no antibiotics worked. He also thought it could be a more virulent strain of the swine flu.

The victims came from small villages close to Bialystok.

Low flying aircraft were heard in the region a few nights ago.

Cases similar to the pneumonic plague have also be reported in Lithuania, close to the Polish border and to Bialystok.

The appearance of something resembling the pneumonic plague in Poland shortly after low flying aircraft made carried out unexplained missions during the night time in the same area has parallels with the recent incident in the Ukraine.

Witnesses reported low flying planes carrying out aerosol spraying shortly before the pneumonic plague was diagnosed in victims a few days later.

The Ukrainian government and WHO moved swiftly to declare the swine flu virus had mutated to become more dangerous and implement martial law.

This is an email from Poland:

My friend a doctor who works in Emergency Room in Bialystok (Eastern North of Poland) called me saying that he had 3 cases of patients with symptoms similar to the pneumonic plague. "If it is h1n1, so it means that it has changed for very virulent form and it kills in matter of hours". One patient died in his hands. I do not know what happened to other two. He is going to inform me how's the situation, but he expects it to get much worse. No antibiotic works for the disease! "

http://www.theflucase.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1861%3Apneumonic-plague-reported-in-eastern-poland&catid=41%3Ahighlighted-news&Itemid=105&lang=en


Saturday, November 21, 2009

 

"Global Warming" SCAM - Hack/Leak FLASH

Enjoy Denninger's take on things.  More quotes from emails than my previous post on the subject.

Awww poor babies caught with their hands in the cookie jar our pockets.

___________

"Global Warming" SCAM - Hack/Leak FLASH

Friday, November 20. 2009

Posted by Karl Denninger in Corruption at 12:01

Source The Market Ticker 

"Apparently a "Global Climate Center" was hacked and the contents have been posted to the Internet.  A ZIP file exceeding 60MB and containing a huge number of emails and other documents has been posted worldwide.

Original speculation as to whether the files posted were legitimate or some sort of spoof appears to now be confirmed as legitimate:

“It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.”

I have not had time to read all of the material yet (there are over a thousand files involved!) but what I have skimmed looks VERY <snip>ing.  Contained within the documents are what appear to be admissions of intentional tampering with data as well as intentional falsification of results to "show" man-made global warming.

One of the emails says:

"I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline."

That is, to hide a decline in global temperatures.

It gets better.  Another message, this one allegedly from 2000:

It was good to see you again yesterday - if briefly. One particular thing you said - and we agreed - was about the IPCC reports and the broader climate negotiations were working to the globalisation agenda driven by organisations like the WTO. So my first question is do you have anything written or published, or know of anything particularly on this subject, which talks about this in more detail?

Oh, so it's not about the planet getting warmer, but rather is a convenient means of advancing an agenda that has already been pre-determined?

Then there's this:

In my (perhaps too
> > harsh)
> > view, there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model
> > results by individual authors and by IPCC.
This is why I still use
> > results from MAGICC to compare with observed temperatures. At least
> > here I can assess how sensitive matches are to sensitivity and
> > forcing assumptions/uncertainties.

(Pardon the formatting, it's text-mode email 'yanno.)

Guess who that was addressed to?  Michael Mann.  You know, the (infamous and now discredited) "Mann Hockey Stick"?

Guess where that email originated?  NASA.

Yes, I have the file.  So do a few million other people.

There's enough evidence in there, in my opinion, of outrageously fraudulent conduct to make this the scandal of the 20th and 21st century.

Sorry folks, there's no science here - this is, from what I see, a massive and outrageous fraud, and now that the documents have been confirmed as authentic it is time to pull the curtain down on this crap and start locking up all of the proponents - starting with AL GORE.

Here are some interesting "meta statistics" on the documents, and the number of times the words referenced appear:

Just for starters.

If you think that's bad, you might like this - from the file "ipcc-tar-master.rtf":

General Comments

The idea that climate without human intervention can only undergo “natural variability”, and that “climate change” can only result from human activity is false and fallacious. It is in conflict with all that we know of evolution and geology. It is simply wrong to assume that “ climate change” automatically implies human influence on the climate.

 

This fallacy is embraced by the Framework Convention on Climate Change, but the IPCC (Footnote to “Summary for Policymakers. Page 1) claim that they are prepared to accept “natural variability” as “climate change”. They are, however, unwilling to accept the truth, which is that climate can change without human intervention.

 

....

 

47 out of 91 models listed in Chapter 9 assume that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing at the rate of 1% a year when the measured rate of increase, for the past 33 years, has been 0.4% a year. The assumption of false figures in models in order to boost future projections is  fraudulent. What other figures are falsely exaggerated in the same way?

Update 12:58 - Oh oh.... From Phil Jones... and its recent:

From: Phil Jones <[email protected]>
To: "Michael E. Mann" <[email protected]>, "raymond s. bradley" <[email protected]>
Subject: A couple of things
Date: Fri May  9 09:53:41 2008
Cc: "Caspar Ammann" <[email protected]>

....

 2. You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting in FOI requests for all emails Keith and Tim have written and received re Ch 6 of AR4. We think we've found a way around this.

And then there's this...

From: Phil Jones <[email protected]>
To: "Michael E. Mann" <[email protected]>
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same?  I don't have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
    Cheers
    Phil

One has to wonder: was the "way around it" (the FOI) mentioned in the first correspondence to intentionally destroy the emails requested? "

http://market-ticker.org/archives/1648-Global-Warming-SCAM-HackLeak-FLASH.html


Friday, November 20, 2009

 

"Ukraine; Virus Is Mixture Of H1N1 And Parainfluenza, Causes Cardiopulmonary Failure; Indicates BioW

This came in email.  Seems to shed more light on the type virus in the Ukraine from a pathologist.

_______

"Ukraine; Virus Is Mixture Of H1N1 And Parainfluenza, Causes Cardiopulmonary Failure; Indicates BioWeapon

Filed Under Pandemic, Ukraine
[Translated from Russian]
Source HealthFreedomAlliance.org

"Based on autopsies, we have come to the conclusion: it’s not pneumonia, but cardiopulmonary insufficiency and cardiogenic shock … The virus enters directly into the lungs, there is bleeding … Antibiotics should not be used …

Why do we have such a high mortality rate in the country? Because people are going to pharmacies to get medicine instead of going to their doctors to be treated … No it is not pneumonic plague. It’s all nonsense … antibiotics do not help … Those with strong immune systems will survive. People with weak immune systems will succumb to the illness … Face Masks provide 30% extra protection. Wearing glasses gives an additional 10% protection, that is 40%, because the virus penetrates the mucose membranes.

The Head of the Chernivtsi regional forensic bureau, Professor Victor Bachinsky PhD, makes a strong statement: all the victims of the virus in Bukovina (22 persons aged 20 to 40 years) died not from bilateral (double) pneumonia, as previously thought, but as a result of viral distress syndrome, i.e. the total destruction of the lungs. We caught up with Professor Bachinsky, to find out how he came to this conclusion, and how people can protect themselves from this disease.

Professor, you said earlier that the virus, from which many people have died – is a mixture of types of parainfluenza and influenza A/H1N1. How do you cure this disease?

The question of how to treat this virus is not up to me. I am a pathologist. I just found out what it is and made an exact diagnosis. It is important to provide the correct treatment based on diagnosis.

There are strict protocols and standards of treatment in medicine. If a doctor treats a patient who dies, their relatives can make a complaint that they were not treated properly (misdiagnosed).The Ministry of Health has set the protocols and standards of treatment for each diagnosis. If diagnosed correctly, the treatment should be correct …

In the Chernivtsi region 18 people have died. We studied all the history and evidence from this disease, preclinical, clinical, resuscitation. When we perform an autopsy organs and tissues have histological studies (cell analysis) and we concluded that it was not pneumonia, and has no relation to pneumonia whatsoever.

These results are the foundation to ensure that doctors who treat this disease all over Ukraine, change their tactics and standards of care.

Can this new virus be cured?

It depends on the immune system. If a person’s immune system is strong, they will overcome it. There are people who carry this strain of H1N1 and remain on their feet and don’t even realise they are sick.

Antibiotics definitely should not be taken. Antibiotics are the reason we have such a high mortality and infection rate in this country, because people go to the pharmacy, describe their symptoms to the pharmacist and ask for drugs. They buy antibiotics, take them, this lowers their immune system and as a result they become sick. If prescriptions were required to buy these medications, like in other countries, this would not have happened. It is the ability to buy antibiotics over the counter without a prescription which has done so much harm to the State.

During autopsies, what did the lungs look like? Were they really black, which gave rise to so much talk of pulmonary plague?

No, they are not black … This is not pneumonic plague. It’s all nonsense. Pneumonic plague has a very different morphology. We have, for example, 60 thousand people who became sick and 23 have died. With pulmonary plague, we would now have a mortality rate of 59 thousand …

This is a viral attack that destroys the lungs.

It turns out that not only in Bukovina, but also throughout the Ukraine people did not die from pneumonia, but from this toxic strain?

Yes, It’s not pneumonia! This destruction of the lungs. This strain is very toxic, and if the immune system is weak, there is bleeding in the lungs. In the lungs there is a tiny structure – acinus, which looks like a bunch of grapes. When you breathe, oxygen enters this tiny “bunch of grapes” ( pulmonary alveoli ). On the surface of the acinus are the capillaries, where red blood cells saturate with oxygen and give blood, which supplies all tissues and organs in the body.

And once the virus enters the lungs – hemorrhaging begins immediately in the acinus. A continuous hemorrhage … It takes several hours. In the blood fibrin is formed, and from it – giolinovaya membrane, resembling a plastic bag. It envelops the acinus, and the person breathes in oxygen, but it is not transferred to the tissues. And people just gasp. There is a cardio-pulmonary insufficiency and cardiogenic shock. People die of cardiogenic shock. And there is no pneumonia. Pneumonia – an inflammation, which is treated with antibiotics. Antibiotics cannot help at any stage. There should be absolutely different treatment.

And how about “Tamiflu” – does it help?

This is not an antibiotic, it is an antiviral drug, which should be applied on the second or third day of the disease. But you can not use Tamiflu as a preventitive, because it is toxic.

What are the best measures to resist the disease? Is it advisable to use a mask, garlic, vitamin C?

The primary method of prevention is a face mask. This give 30% extra protection. If you wear glasses – it is 40%, because the virus enters through the mucous membranes.

It is necessary to improve the human immune system. Not only now, but in general. Garlic, onions, wild rose, viburnum (guelder rose), raspberries, citrus fruit, honey, and other fruits and vegetables – whatever you want. Those with a strong immune system will survive. Those with weaker immune systems will succumb to the disease.

We have a lot of people in Ukraine who like shopping at the open markets. If we can avoid open markets, the less people will be in contact with each other and more lives will be saved.

You have contacted the Health Ministry and advised them to review the standards for treatment of patients. What did they say?

We sent them all our data, the necessary protocols and standards of treatment, our diagnosis. But it is clear that decisions cannot be instantaneous.

And why until now has nobody else known about this disease? What were the leading specialists in the Ministry of Health doing all this time?

Perhaps this is due to the fact that there are scientists who are working on a purely theoretical basis. And there are scientists who have seen the autopsy results. I practice as head of the regional forensic bureau and as a professor. The fact that we have established this diagnosis – it is not just to my credit, and this is not my personal opinion. This is the opinion of specialists, morphologists and doctors in Bukovina. There are five professors in our group – I just head the group.

Professor Victor Bachinsky, PhD., is a coroner in the Chernivtsi region of Ukraine. He provides evidence which indicates that parainfluenza mixed with the H1N1 virus, not pneumonic plague, has caused so much illness in Ukraine. Yet more strains of influenza which have combined, a strong indication that we are dealing with a laboratory developed bio-weapon."

Original article in Russian by Anna Yashchenko here: www.unian.net/rus/news/news-346721.html

http://www.prisonplanet.com/ukraine-virus-is-mixture-of-h1n1-and-parainfluenza-causes-cardiopulmonary-failure-indicates-bioweapon.html

http://blogs.healthfreedomalliance.org/blog/2009/11/16/ukraine-virus-is-mixture-of-h1n1-and-parainfluenza-causes-cardiopulmonary-failure-indicates-bioweapon/


Friday, November 20, 2009

 

"Hadley CRU hacked with release of hundreds of docs and emails (Global Warming)

I in no way am a proponent for hacking into any data base however this news comes after the fact.

For those of us suspecting stats are being tweaked, read on.  This breach may be one reason why they've backed down on signing the climate change agreement next month.

____________

"Hadley CRU hacked with release of hundreds of docs and emails

November 19, 9:42 PM
Essex County Conservative ExaminerTerry Hurlbut

"The University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre appears to have suffered a security breach earlier today, when an unknown hacker apparently downloaded 1079 e-mails and 72 documents of various types and published them to an anonymous FTP server. These files appear to contain highly sensitive information that, if genuine, could prove extremely embarrassing to the authors of the e-mails involved. Those authors include some of the most celebrated names among proponents of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

The FTP link first appeared on a blog called The Air Vent. The blog's owner, identified as "Jeff Id", downloaded the file, examined it, and posted a brief summary on his blog. Another commenter, identified as "Steven Mosher," passed the information on to Steven McIntyre's Climate Audit blog and to another blog, The Blackboard, run by a blogger identified as "Lucia." Most recently, blogger Anthony Watts, who runs a blog titled "Watts Up With That?" mentioned the FTP archive in his own blog.

Commentary on all the blogs involved has been brisk, except, oddly enough, at The Air Vent, where only seven comments have been received.

The FTP server is in a Russian domain and uses the anonymous FTP protocol, which does not require a pre-registered user account or password for downloading. The file is named FOI2009.zip, an apparent reference to US Public Law 89-554, 80 Stat. 383, the Freedom of Information Act.

Several commentators have expressed skepticism as to the authenticity of the archive, pointing to its lack of clear provenance and suggesting that someone was attempting to embarrass, either directly or indirectly, the dignitaries attending the upcoming climate-change conference in Copenhagen. Other commentators who have examined the e-mails in the archive conclude that the header and other information that they contain is too detailed to be a hoax. Thus far, no commentator has found anything in the e-mail headers that appears to be mistaken.

Some of the most embarrassing e-mails are attributed to Philip Jones, the Director of the CRU; Keith Briffa, his assistant; Michael E. Mann of the University of Virginia; Malcolm Hughes at the University of Arizona; and others. One such e-mail makes references to the famous "hockey-stick" graph published by Mann in the journal Nature:

I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

The emphasis in the above quote was added.

Mr. Mosher offered this summary of the rest of the e-mails that he had found:

And, you get to see somebody with the name of phil jones say that he would rather destroy the CRU data than release it to McIntyre. And lots lots more. including how to obstruct or evade FOIA requests. and guess who funded the collection of cores at Yamal.. and transferred money into a personal account in Russia[.] And you get to see what they really say behind the curtain.. you get to see how they “shape” the news, how they struggled between telling the truth and making policy makers happy. [Y]ou get to see what they say about Idso and pat micheals, you get to read how they want to take us out into a dark alley, it’s stunning all very stunning. You get to watch somebody named phil jones say that John daly’s death is good news.. or words to that effect. I don’t know that its real.. But the CRU code looks real

John Daly (not to be confused with the professional golfer of the same name) is identified in one of the e-mails as a global-warming skeptic who died in January of 2004.

As embarrassing as the e-mails are, some of the documents are more embarrassing. They include a five-page PDF document titled The Rules of the Game, that appears to be a primer for propagating the AGW message to the average subject/resident of the United Kingdom. The document suggests that it is a precis of a longer document housed at the Web site of the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Developing...

Update: The Russian FTP server administrator appears to have deleted the archive. The text of the link was: <http://ftp.tomcity.ru/incoming/free/FOI2009.zip>

Activity on The Air Vent has picked up considerably since this story broke.

Further Update: Two other possessors of the file have uploaded it to two other file-sharing services: MegaUpload and FileDropper.

Further Update: A Pirate Bay torrent link is now available.

Also: The "72 documents" refers to 72 files and folders at the top level of a directory called "documents." In fact, reliable counts indicate at least 3485 documents present, not counting the e-mails."

http://www.examiner.com/x-28973-Essex-County-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m11d19-Hadley-CRU-hacked-with-release-of-hundreds-of-docs-and-emails


Friday, November 20, 2009

 

"Alaskan Fisherman talks about Sarah Palin

August 08

"Alaskan Fisherman talks about Sarah Palin

By Dewie Whetsell, Alaskan Fisherman
As posted in comments on Greta’s article referncing the MOVEON ad about Sarah Palin

by Dewey Whetsell

"The last 45 of my 66 years I’ve spent in a commercial fishing town in Alaska. I understand Alaska politics but never understood national politics well until this last year. Here’s the breaking point: Neither side of the Palin controversy gets it…It’s not about persona, style, rhetoric, it’s about doing things. Even Palin supporters never mention the things that I’m about to mention here.

1- Democrats forget when Palin was the Darling of the Democrats, because as soon as Palin took the Governor’s office away from a fellow Republican and tough SOB, Frank Murkowski, she tore into the Republican’s “Corrupt <snip>s Club” (CBC) and sent them packing. Many of them are now residing in State housing and wearing orange jump suits. The Democrats reacted by skipping around the yard, throwing confetti and singing “la la la la” (well, you know how they are). Name another governor in this country that has ever done anything similar. But while you’re thinking, I’ll continue.

2- Now with the CBC gone, there were fewer Alaskan politicians to protect the huge, giant oil companies here. So, she constructed and enacted a new system of splitting the oil profits called “ACES”. Exxon (the biggest corporation in the world) protested and Sarah told them “don’t let the door hit you in the stern on your way out.” They stayed, and Alaska residents went from being merely wealthy to being filthy rich. Of course the other huge international oil companies meekly fell in line. Again, give me the name of any other governor in the country that has done anything similar.

3- The other thing she did when she walked into the governor’s office is she got the list of State requests for federal funding for projects, known as “pork”. She went through the list, took 85% of them and placed them in the “when-hell-freezes-over” stack. She let locals know that if we need something built, we’ll pay for it ourselves. Maybe she figured she could use the money she got from selling the previous governor’s jet because it was extravagant. Maybe she could use the money she saved by dismissing the governor’s cook (remarking that she could cook for her own family), giving back the State vehicle issued to her, maintaining that she already had a car, and dismissing her State provided security force (never mentioning—I imagine—that she’s packing heat herself). I’m still waiting to hear the names of those other governors.

4- Now, even with her much-ridiculed “gosh and golly” mannerism, she also managed to put together a totally new approach to getting a natural gas pipeline built which will be the biggest private construction project in the history of North America. No one else could do it although they tried. If that doesn’t impress you, then you’re trying too hard to be unimpressed while watching her do things like this while baking up a batch of brownies with her other hand.

5- For 30 years, Exxon held a lease to do exploratory drilling at a place called Point Thompson. They made excuses the entire time why they couldn’t start drilling. In truth they were holding it like an investment. No governor for 30 years could make them get started. This summer, she told them she was revoking their lease and kicking them out. They protested and threatened court action. She shrugged and reminded them that she knew the way to the court house. Alaska won again.

6- President Obama wants the nation to be on 25% renewable resources for electricity by 2025. Sarah went to the legislature and submitted her plan for Alaska to be at 50% renewables by 2025. We are already at 25%. I can give you more specifics about things done, as opposed to style and persona . Everybody wants to be cool, sound cool, look cool. But that’s just a cover-up. I’m still waiting to hear from liberals the names of other governors who can match what mine has done in two and a half years. I won’t be holding my breath.

By the way, she was content to to return to AK after the national election and go to work, but the haters wouldn’t let her. Now these adolescent screechers are obviously not scuba divers. And no one ever told them what happens when you continually jab and pester a barracuda. Without warning, it will spin around and tear your face off. Shoulda known better."

http://marionsword.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!1B80DAF0A76159D5!451.entry


Friday, November 20, 2009

 

"The $100 Million Health Care Vote?

"The $100 Million Health Care Vote?

November 19, 2009 3:03 PM

ABC News' Jonathan Karl reports:

What does it take to get a wavering senator to vote for health care reform?

Here’s a case study.

On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.” 

The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.” 

I am told the section applies to exactly one state:  Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.

In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world:  Louisiana.  (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)

Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.

How much does it cost?  According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million. ......."


http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/11/the-100-million-health-care-vote.html

Thursday, November 19, 2009

 

YouTube - Plague or Plan? Ukraine's mystery disease 'burns out lungs'

You decide.

___________


Thursday, November 19, 2009

 

"Oh - Here Comes Cummings (Fed Audit)

Another awesome one from the Market Ticker site quoted exactly.

We need to get behind this and demand a full comprehensive  Congressional investigation of the unelected entity that Obama has given full rein to hold this nation hostage.

_______

Thursday, November 19. 2009

Posted by Karl Denninger

"Oh - Here Comes Cummings (Fed Audit)

This one is definitely worth a read folks.  http://www.denninger.net/pdf/cummings.pdf

It appears that Representative Cummings, along with a half-dozen other Representatives, have had enough of The Fed's games.

They are now calling for a FULL CONGRESSIONAL REVIEW of THE ENTIRE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM, including A FULL PUBLIC AUDIT.

To this I say:

It's about <snip> time.

(click for larger images)

GET ON THE PHONE NOW TO YOUR REP AND RAISE HELL.  MOMENTUM ON THIS IS BUILDING, AND IT IS UP TO **US** TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE."

http://market-ticker.org/archives/1645-Oh-Oh-Here-Comes-Cummings-Fed-Audit.html


Thursday, November 19, 2009

 

"Liberal" Consensus On Dumping Geithner?

Ysiree, close the barn door after the horses are out. 

__________

Thursday, November 19. 2009
Posted by Karl Denninger in Politics at 08:06

"Liberal" Consensus On Dumping Geithner?


http://market-ticker.org/archives/1642-Liberal-Consensus-On-Dumping-Geithner.html


Wednesday, November 18, 2009

 

Absolute must read new info "Deadly flu spreads across Ukraine

Please read every bit of information in this article about a viral pneumonia with a high mortality rate which is poised to spread around the globe like the 1918 flu.

Serious stuff .... my question is WHY is our own media not on top of this??????????????

_________

Charts, data, statistics, reports of aerosol spraying in Ukraine early in outbreak.

"Deadly flu spreads across Ukraine

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/deadly-flu-spreads-across-ukraine


Tuesday, November 17, 2009

 

"Going Rogue" -- "a good account"

Quoted from Powerlineblog.com  Bold emphasis second paragraph mine.

Watched the Oprah interview yesterday ... Sarah was awesome!

__________

"Going Rogue" -- "a good account" 

Powerlineblog.com November 16, 2009 Posted by Paul at 7:49 PM

According to the Washington Post "multiple former McCain [campaign] officials" are disputing, and indeed trashing, Sarah Palin's account of the campaign, as presented in her new book, Going Rogue, which is already a best-seller. Nearly all of these former campaign officials have chosen to remain anonymous.

But according to USA Today, one high-level campaign official has gone on the record to call Palin's book "a good account." That official is Senator John McCain. "

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024964.php


Tuesday, November 17, 2009

 

"Pneumonic plague, United States Patent 7572449, anything to do with the Ukraine?

Why is our corporate owned media NOT all over this??

________

 
"Pneumonic plague, United States Patent 7572449, anything to do with the Ukraine?
 
Source FTO South African News Blog
"Whether this has anything to do with whats going on in the Ukraine I am not sure but in August there was a patent filed for antibodies against Yersinia Pestis otherwise known as the pneumonic plague.

It was filed by Hill, James (Salisbury, GB) ,Williamson, Ethel Diane (Salisbury, GB)   and Titball, Richard William (Salisbury, GE)  and the assignee was The Secretary of State for Defense in Her Britannic Majesty's Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (GB).

A interesting part of the patent is this part:

"Mab 7.3 was administered −4 hours, +24 hours, +48 hours, or +96 hours relative to s.c. Y. pestis challenge. Protection was observed when antibody was given up to 48 hours post-infection. Also, a delayed time to death was observed in the +96 hours treatment group. One of +96 hours treatment group had died prior to antibody administration and the remainder displayed signs of plague indistinguishable from untreated control animals, suggesting that even when symptoms of plague are apparent antibody therapy can delay death. Mice were treated with Mab 7.3 at −4 hours, +24 hours, +48 hours or +60 hours relative to aerosol infection. Protection was seen in groups that received antibody 24 hours and 48 hours after challenge. All mice treated at +60 hours died, but a statistically significant delay in the TTD was observed, compared with untreated animals."

What is more interesting is why was this patent filed in August this year. Maybe its just coincidence but we felt like putting out there so people can decide for themselves."

http://fto.co.za/news/pneumonic-plague-united-states-patent-7572449-anything-do-ukraine-2009111715816.html

_________

"Million hit by 'plague worse than swine flu'

Sunday November 15,2009
By Greg Miskiw
Source Daily Express
Daily Express

"A DEADLY plague could sweep across Europe, doctors fear, after an outbreak of a virus in Ukraine plunged the country and its neighbours into a state of panic.

A <snip>tail of three flu viruses are reported to have mutated into a single pneumonic plague, which it is believed may be far more dangerous than swine flu. The death toll has reached 189 and more than 1 million people have been infected, most of them in the nine regions of Western Ukraine.

President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko has called in the World Health Organisation and a team of nine specialists are carrying out tests in Kiev and Lviv to identify the virus. Samples have been sent to London for analysis.

President Yushchenko said: “People are dying. The epidemic is killing doctors. This is absolutely inconceivable in the 21st Century.”

In a TV interview, the President added: “Unlike similar epidemics in other countries, three causes of serious viral infections came together simultaneously in Ukraine – two seasonal flus and the Californian flu

“Virologists conclude that this combination of infections may produce an even more aggressive new virus as a result of mutation.”

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has been touring hospitals where victims are being treated and presidential elections in January could be cancelled .

Four men and one woman have died from the flu in Lviv, said emergency hospital chief doctor Myron Borysevych. Two of the dead patients were in the 22-35 age group, with two others over 60. He diagnosed the disease as viral pneumonia.

“We have sent the analyses to Kiev. We don’t believe it’s H1N1 swine flu. Neither do we know what kind of pneumonia it is.”

Universities, schools and kindergartens have been closed, public meetings have been banned and theatres shut. Last week several border crossings in the country were also closed.
Last night reports emerged of profiteering over face masks, which have sold out since the outbreak. There are also incidents of anti-virus medication being sold for exorbitant prices. A spokesman for the World Health Organisation said: “We do not have a time scale for the results of the tests in London, although some preliminary results have been obtained. I cannot tell you what they are.

“We did not have enough of the virus samples so we will have to grow some more before we can come to a conclusive decision about its nature.”

Neighbouring Poland has called on the EU to take action, fearing the mystery virus may spread westwards.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has written to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and the Swedish Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, who holds the EU presidency, saying: “The character of this threat demands that rapid action be undertaken at the European Union level.”

Russia, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Romania, countries that border Ukraine, have already launched health checks on Ukrainians entering their territory.

Slovakia has closed two of five border crossings.

A doctor in Western Ukraine who did not want to be named, said:” We have carried out post mortems on two victims and found their lungs are as black as charcoal.

“They look like they have been burned. It’s terrifying.”

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/140492/Million-hit-by-plague-worse-than-swine-flu-


Sunday, November 15, 2009

 

"World leaders back delay to final climate deal

Guess they're waiting for solar flares to increase, blame it on humankind so they can tax everyone.  Strange they're not following that predictable 11 year cycle.

Plant trees (seedlings) to cool the planet .... everyone will win.

________

"World leaders back delay to final climate deal
Sun Nov 15, 2009 2:53pm GMT

By Caren Bohan

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders on Sunday supported delaying a legally binding climate pact until 2010 or even later, under a compromise deal for next month's Copenhagen summit. ....."

 

http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE5AE0FP20091115

Sunday, November 15, 2009

 

'No proof of Himalayan ice melting due to climate change'

Found this story on another site.

________


'No proof of Himalayan ice melting due to climate change'

TNN 10 November 2009, 02:19am IST
Source The Times Of India

"NEW DELHI: The environment ministry on Monday published a discussion paper stating that there was no conclusive evidence to prove that the  
Himalayan glaciers are melting due to climate change.

The report, released by Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh, however, made it clear that the views expressed by the author, Dr V K Raina, retired deputy director-general of the Geological Survey of India, are not that of the Union government and that it is meant to "stimulate discussion".

While releasing the report, Ramesh said that the discussion paper presents evidence that most glaciers are in the process of retreat while some Himalayan glaciers, such as the Siachen glacier, are actually advancing and some others are retreating at a rate lower than before, such as the Gangotri glacier.

The minister clarified that there was no doubt that the `health' of the glaciers was very poor and the situation was reaching alarming proportions but warned that there was little evidence to connect it to climate change or black carbon.

Dr Raina said, "None of our glaciers under monitoring are recording abnormal retreat."

He did qualify saying that there was not enough data to present any conclusive evidence to show linkages at the moment with long term data existing only for 20-30 glaciers and there was only one automated weather station in the entire Himalayas to record climatic data.

The report states, "The Himalayan glaciers, although shrinking in volume and constantly showing a retreating front, have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat, of the order that some glaciers in Alaska and Greenland are reported."

Raina pointed out that the Arctic glaciers were at sea surface level while Himalayan glaciers existed at a much greater height than most others. He explained that the dynamics of how climate change would impact them remained different.

The melting of Himalayan glaciers is popularly seen as a major threat to the northern Indian hydrological cycle and to the region's economy in case of global warming continuing unabated.

But, Ramesh said that the discussion paper "challenged conventional wisdom".

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, headed by Dr R K Pachauri, in its last report had, in contrast, warned that "glaciers in Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world" and that at current rate of depletion, "the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high" if the global temperatures rise unabated.

Dr Pachauri, when contacted by TOI for a response to the discussion paper, said, "I'd like to find out the secret source of this divine intervention... I don't understand the logic of this... I am puzzled where this magical science has come from... This is something indefensible."

When asked if the discussion paper could be taken into consideration in the on-going round of scientific review by IPCC, he said, "IPCC studies only peer-review science. Let someone publish the data in a decent credible publication. I am sure IPCC would then accept it, otherwise we can just throw it into the dustbin."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/No-proof-of-Himalayan-ice-melting-due-to-climate-change/articleshow/5213045.cms


Sunday, November 15, 2009

 

"Doctors learned why Ukrainians dying!

Not hearing much about this on tv.
_____________
// 13.11.2009 // 14:24 //

"Doctors learned why Ukrainians dying!

(updated at 06:25 pm)  SourceMIGnews.com.ua

"All victims of the virus in Bukovyna (22 people at the age of 20-40) died not from bilateral pneumonia, as was previously thought, but as a result of viral distress syndrome, i.e the total destruction of the lungs.

At first the cardio-pulmonary insufficiency comes, and consequently cardiogenic shock is developed, which causes cardiac standstill and death, told the chief of bureau of the Chernivtsi regional forensic examination, doctor of science, Professor Viktor Bachynsky, UNIAN reports.

"During a bilateral pneumonia some morphological picture is observed. As of data of deaths, there is no such morphological picture. The virus, which causes death, is very aggressive, it does not strike the trachea, but immediately gets into the lungs and causes heavy swelling and solid hemorrhage. Mixed types of parainfluenza and influenza A/N1N1 lead to this state. This is a very toxic strain, which has not yet answered to the treatment of the Ministry of Health", - said Viktor Bachinsky.

According to him, there is a need to change the treatment standards, because those which were used earlier, resulted in nothing – doctors failed to save all people infected with the virus in the reanimation. The belt ventilators did not help also.

For this reason a group of professors of Chernivtsi Medical University appealed to the Ministry of Health and National Security and Defense Council with a demand to review the standards of treatment of patients in Bukovyna. Scientists-morphologists sent to Kyiv reports, studies and analysis of critically ill patients and people who died of virus.

Viktor Bachinsky noted that the virus is extremely toxic, it is able to penetrate not only through respiratory apparatus but also through the eyes. Chernovtsy scientists recommend in any case use masks and even wear protective spectacles. An important condition to prevent deterioration of the situation is also the observance of quarantine regime.

06:19 p.m. Ministry of Health does not consider it is necessary to publish data on the number of confirmed cases of influenza pandemic in the laboratory. "Ukraine is in the A/N1N1 influenza pandemic, and now it does not matter how many of these cases will be detected, we should treat everybody equally," - said Deputy Minister of Health Vasyl Lazoryshynets at a briefing on Friday.

Vasyl Lazoryshynets also reminded that in Ukraine since the beginning of the epidemic 1,25 mn people became ill with pandemic influenza, influenza and acute respiratory diseases, including 61,000 people - over the past day, which is by 8,500 less than the previous day. 65,615 people are treated in hospital, including 392 - in the reanimation, 60 have artificial pulmonary ventilation.

Since the beginning of the epidemic in Ukraine 239 people died, including 26 people during the last day, most of them are in the Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Lviv and Ternopil Regions. He also said that according to the laboratory data, 14 people died of pandemic influenza, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

06:25 p.m. To date, swine flu in Ukraine is dominant, but not the only strain, said the head of mission of the World Health Organization in Ukraine Yukka Pukkila.

Yukka Pukkila said that the strain of pandemic virus is detected in 22 cases of 34 samples sent to the control laboratory, which collaborates with WHO in London.

At the same time, Yukka Pukkila stressed that, besides Californian flu in Ukraine there is a large number of varieties of acute respiratory viral diseases and many other viruses that infect the respiratory system, reports Liga."

http://mignews.com.ua/en/articles/378759.html


Saturday, November 14, 2009

 

"Everyone in Britain could be given a personal 'carbon allowance'

-
One of our local tv stations had a segment awhile back about the accuracy of temperatures broadcast as opposed to what they really were where you live.  Below is a pdf link which shows weather stations around the US some of which are positioned in urban settings close to buildings impacted by man made heating as opposed to actual ambient temperature of real area environment. 
 
These stations are where the numbers come from.
 
http://www.wsbtv.com/download/2009/1027/21437584.pdf
____
Referring back to an earlier blog post "Coming in December: World government
 
"..... climate-change treaty now being negotiated for adoption at the Copenhagen, Denmark, U.N. meeting in December. 
 
".......President Obama will sign the treaty. It will take more than his signature to make the treaty binding, however. It will take the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the Senate to ratify whatever comes out of Copenhagen. ....."
 
".....The only way to insure that this treaty will not by imposed upon every American is to change the majority in Congress to people who pledge to reject all forms of international control. There are only 53 weeks before voters will choose America's future. It's time to get started."
 
https://www.lotterypost.com/blogentry/34516/viewcomments
-
Now that you've checked to see where the global warming numbers are coming from and if you like the idea of the story below then by all means urge your senator to ratify the climate change treaty Obama is guaranteed to sign next month in Copenhagen.
 
Who's guaranteed to profit from carbon credit trading?  BANKERS

You decide.

_________
 
"Everyone in Britain could be given a personal 'carbon allowance'
 
Source Telegraph.co.uk
 
"Everyone in Britain should have an annual carbon ration and be penalised if they use too much fuel, the head of the Environment Agency will say.
 
Lord Smith of Finsbury believes that implementing individual carbon allowances for every person will be the most effective way of meeting the targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
 
It would involve people being issued with a unique number which they would hand over when purchasing products that contribute to their carbon footprint, such as fuel, airline tickets and electricity.
 
Like with a bank account, a statement would be sent out each month to help people keep track of what they are using.
 
If their "carbon account" hits zero, they would have to pay to get more credits.
 
Those who are frugal with their carbon usage will be able to sell their unused credits and make a profit.
 
Lord Smith will call for the scheme to be part of a "Green New Deal" to be introduced within 20 years when he addresses the agency's annual conference on Monday.
 
An Environment Agency spokesman said only those with "extravagant lifestyles" would be affected by the carbon allowances.
 
He said: "A lot of people who cycle will get money back. It will probably only be bankers and those with extravagant lifestyles who would lose out."
 
However, some have criticised the move as "Orwellian" and say it will have a detrimental impact on business.
 
Ruth Lea, an economist from Arbuthnot Banking Group, told the Daily Mail: "This is all about control of the individual and you begin to wonder whether this is what the green agenda has always been about.
 
It's Orwellian. This will be an enormous tax on business."
 
Under the Climate Change Act, Britain is obliged to cut its emissions by 80 per cent on 1990 levels by 2050. This means annual CO2 emissions per person will have to fall from about 9 tonnes to only 2 tonnes."
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/carbon/6527970/Everyone-in-Britain-could-be-given-a-personal-carbon-allowance.html

Friday, November 13, 2009

 

"NEWLY REVEALED DOCUMENTS Contradict NEA Chairman Landesman

"NEWLY REVEALED DOCUMENTS Contradict NEA Chairman Landesman

by Patrick Courrielche
Source BigHollywood.breitbart.com

“The former NEA Director of Communications acted unilaterally and without the approval or authorization of then-Acting Chairman Patrice Walker Powell.” – Rocco Landesman, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, on September 22, 2009

Chairman Landesman’s claim that Yosi Sergant, the former NEA Communications Director, acted “unilaterally” on the controversial August 10th conference call is not only beginning to erode, but new documents obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act show that another federal employee thought the arts effort was entering murky legal waters.

*****Document***  http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pcourrielche/2009/11/12/newly-released-emails-appear-to-contradict-nea-chair-landesmans-statement/ 

In an email dated July 30, 2009, Nellie Abernathy, a representative of the federal program United We Serve, sent an email to Sergant to inquire of his interest in attending a meeting regarding 9/11 events – the culmination day of the United We Serve campaign. In the email Abernathy states (emphasis added):

“Just got off the phone with [redacted]. They’re interested in helping produce some 9/11 events and will be in DC next week. Any chance you could join us for a meeting Tuesday morning? Or does this fall into that sketchy grey we might get arrested area?”

Sergant responded, “I’d love to.”

The subject of the email correspondence was entitled “rock the vote,” which presumably should have been redacted (blacked out) in the subject line given that the organization is a non-government group and the other subject lines in the email chain were redacted.

Readers following this story may recall that Rock the Vote was a presenter on the controversial August 10th conference call that encouraged an arts group that worked on Obama’s election campaign to create art on issues that were being vehemently debated nationally; including health care, energy, and the environment. As a presenter Bates stated the following, “We just wanted to give you one quick tangible example of things that can be done.” Bates then went on to explain how Rock the Vote was considering having an artist create an art installation from urban waste to engage young people “on the issue of a new environmental movement.”

Rock the Vote is a non-profit voter registration organization that is frequently involved in partisan political activity – a conflict that Abernathy appears to address in her email correspondence with Sergant. Eleven days after the August 10th conference call, Rock the Vote announced a health care design competition. The contest announcement read:

“We can’t stand by and listen to lies and deceit coming from those who are against reforming a broken system…We need designs that tell the country YES WE CARE! Young people demand health care now.”

The new FOIA documents also show that additional federal employees were aware of this arts effort, including another NEA employee by the name of Elizabeth Stark. Email correspondence between Abernathy, Sergant, and Stark show that a United We Serve meeting was arranged by Stark for Sergant.

Philip Martin, an outreach coordinator for United We Serve, also appears in the FOIA documents, showing that he was aware of Sergant’s efforts and was working with him on another arts outreach program in Philadelphia. The federal employees that were aware of this arts effort continue to grow and now include Yosi Sergant (NEA), Elizabeth Stark (NEA), Nellie Abernathy (United We Serve), Philip Martin (United We Serve), Buffy Wicks (White House Office of Public Engagement), and Kalpen Modi (White House Office of Public Engagement).

Chairman Landesman’s claim that Sergant acted “unilaterally” is becoming harder to swallow."

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pcourrielche/2009/11/12/newly-released-emails-appear-to-contradict-nea-chair-landesmans-statement/?


Tuesday, November 10, 2009

 

"Too Big To Fail, Too Big To Exist."

"Too Big To Exist

Source The Market Ticker

Posted by  Karl Denninger  Tuesday, November 10. 2009

"Senator Sanders has filed a bill called "Too Big To Fail, Too Big To Exist."

Unlike the 1900 page monstrosities, this one will take you just minutes to read.  It is two whole pages.

It should become law tomorrow.

There will be those who argue that this is "anti-capitalist." 

On the contrary; by refusing to force banks and other institutions to adhere to the fundamental principle of sound fractional lending - that is, insisting that for each dollar of unsecured lending outstanding at any instant in time the institution hold one dollar in actual capital we have extended the credit of the sovereign (in this case The United States) through allegedly-private institutions.

This is the sin upon which all the screaming for "bailouts" rest, for without violating this fundamental banking principle there would never be a need for a bailout, as each institution would always, at any instant in time, be able to cover every withdrawal through both asset sales at the market and excess capital held.

I therefore fully support Senator Sanders' bill and urge you to head to his petition site and sign it.   http://sanders.senate.gov/petition/?uid=c53f1aca-5881-403e-928b-a25980cb4e0c

Those who argue that banks and other firms should be able to grow as large as they like cannot get past the above italicized paragraph.  No firm is limited in size, but no firm should be able to leverage the government's credit for it's own private purposes, as we have seen that each and every time it is allowed these institutions use that leverage to screw the consumer and then force the taxpayer to bail out their bad lending decisions.

Senator Sanders has the right solution - one that allows firms that do not wish to be broken up to raise sufficient capital so that each dollar of unsecured lending is backed by one dollar of capital.

Such a firm, irrespective of size, would not be "too big to fail"; as such this bill would impose market discipline - not, as I'm sure detractors will argue, "socialism."

http://market-ticker.org/archives/1605-Too-Big-To-Exist.html


Sunday, November 8, 2009

 

Health Care Vote By ~ Name ~ House of Representatives on Nov 7, 2009

FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 887

(Democrats in roman; Republicans in italic; Independents underlined)
      H R 3962      RECORDED VOTE      7-Nov-2009      11:16 PM
      QUESTION:  On Passage
      BILL TITLE: Affordable Health Care for America Act

Ayes Noes PRES NV
Democratic 219 39    
Republican 1 176    
Independent        
TOTALS 220 215    



---- AYES    220 ---

Abercrombie
Ackerman
Andrews
Arcuri
Baca
Baldwin
Bean
Becerra
Berkley
Berman
Berry
Bishop (GA)
Bishop (NY)
Blumenauer
Boswell
Brady (PA)
Braley (IA)
Brown, Corrine
Butterfield
Cao
Capps
Capuano
Cardoza
Carnahan
Carney
Carson (IN)
Castor (FL)
Chu
Clarke
Clay
Cleaver
Clyburn
Cohen
Connolly (VA)
Conyers
Cooper
Costa
Costello
Courtney
Crowley
Cuellar
Cummings
Dahlkemper
Davis (CA)
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Dicks
Dingell
Doggett
Donnelly (IN)
Doyle
Driehaus
Edwards (MD)
Ellison
Ellsworth
Engel
Eshoo
Etheridge
Farr
Fattah
Filner
Foster
Frank (MA)
Fudge
Garamendi
Giffords
Gonzalez
Grayson
Green, Al
Green, Gene
Grijalva
Gutierrez
Hall (NY)
Halvorson
Hare
Harman
Hastings (FL)
Heinrich
Higgins
Hill
Himes
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Hirono
Hodes
Holt
Honda
Hoyer
Inslee
Israel
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Johnson (GA)
Johnson, E. B.
Kagen
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kennedy
Kildee
Kilpatrick (MI)
Kilroy
Kind
Kirkpatrick (AZ)
Klein (FL)
Langevin
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Lee (CA)
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
Loebsack
Lofgren, Zoe
Lowey
Luján
Lynch
Maffei
Maloney
Markey (MA)
Matsui
McCarthy (NY)
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
McNerney
Meek (FL)
Meeks (NY)
Michaud
Miller (NC)
Miller, George
Mitchell
Mollohan
Moore (KS)
Moore (WI)
Moran (VA)
Murphy (CT)
Murphy, Patrick
Murtha
Nadler (NY)
Napolitano
Neal (MA)
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Owens
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor (AZ)
Payne
Pelosi
Perlmutter
Perriello
Peters
Pingree (ME)
Polis (CO)
Pomeroy
Price (NC)
Quigley
Rahall
Rangel
Reyes
Richardson
Rodriguez
Rothman (NJ)
Roybal-Allard
Ruppersberger
Rush
Ryan (OH)
Salazar
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sanchez, Loretta
Sarbanes
Schakowsky
Schauer
Schiff
Schrader
Schwartz
Scott (GA)
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Sestak
Shea-Porter
Sherman
Sires
Slaughter
Smith (WA)
Snyder
Space
Speier
Spratt
Stark
Stupak
Sutton
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Titus
Tonko
Towns
Tsongas
Van Hollen
Velázquez
Visclosky
Walz
Wasserman Schultz
Waters
Watson
Watt
Waxman
Weiner
Welch
Wexler
Wilson (OH)
Woolsey
Wu
Yarmuth


---- NOES    215 ---

Aderholt
Adler (NJ)
Akin
Alexander
Altmire
Austria
Bachmann
Bachus
Baird
Barrett (SC)
Barrow
Bartlett
Barton (TX)
Biggert
Bilbray
Bilirakis
Bishop (UT)
Blackburn
Blunt
Boccieri
Boehner
Bonner
Bono Mack
Boozman
Boren
Boucher
Boustany
Boyd
Brady (TX)
Bright
Broun (GA)
Brown (SC)
Brown-Waite, Ginny
Buchanan
Burgess
Burton (IN)
Buyer
Calvert
Camp
Campbell
Cantor
Capito
Carter
Cassidy
Castle
Chaffetz
Chandler
Childers
Coble
Coffman (CO)
Cole
Conaway
Crenshaw
Culberson
Davis (AL)
Davis (KY)
Davis (TN)
Deal (GA)
Dent
Diaz-Balart, L.
Diaz-Balart, M.
Dreier
Duncan
Edwards (TX)
Ehlers
Emerson
Fallin
Flake
Fleming
Forbes
Fortenberry
Foxx
Franks (AZ)
Frelinghuysen
Gallegly
Garrett (NJ)
Gerlach
Gingrey (GA)
Gohmert
Goodlatte
Gordon (TN)
Granger
Graves
Griffith
Guthrie
Hall (TX)
Harper
Hastings (WA)
Heller
Hensarling
Herger
Herseth Sandlin
Hoekstra
Holden
Hunter
Inglis
Issa
Jenkins
Johnson (IL)
Johnson, Sam
Jones
Jordan (OH)
King (IA)
King (NY)
Kingston
Kirk
Kissell
Kline (MN)
Kosmas
Kratovil
Kucinich
Lamborn
Lance
Latham
LaTourette
Latta
Lee (NY)
Lewis (CA)
Linder
LoBiondo
Lucas
Luetkemeyer
Lummis
Lungren, Daniel E.
Mack
Manzullo
Marchant
Markey (CO)
Marshall
Massa
Matheson
McCarthy (CA)
McCaul
McClintock
McCotter
McHenry
McIntyre
McKeon
McMahon
McMorris Rodgers
Melancon
Mica
Miller (FL)
Miller (MI)
Miller, Gary
Minnick
Moran (KS)
Murphy (NY)
Murphy, Tim
Myrick
Neugebauer
Nunes
Nye
Olson
Paul
Paulsen
Pence
Peterson
Petri
Pitts
Platts
Poe (TX)
Posey
Price (GA)
Putnam
Radanovich
Rehberg
Reichert
Roe (TN)
Rogers (AL)
Rogers (KY)
Rogers (MI)
Rohrabacher
Rooney
Ros-Lehtinen
Roskam
Ross
Royce
Ryan (WI)
Scalise
Schmidt
Schock
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shadegg
Shimkus
Shuler
Shuster
Simpson
Skelton
Smith (NE)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Souder
Stearns
Sullivan
Tanner
Taylor
Teague
Terry
Thompson (PA)
Thornberry
Tiahrt
Tiberi
Turner
Upton
Walden
Wamp
Westmoreland
Whitfield
Wilson (SC)
Wittman
Wolf
Young (AK)
Young (FL)


http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll887.xml


Sunday, November 8, 2009

 

YouTube - The O'Jays - For The Love Of Money 1973

Dedicated to corrupt government officials, banksters and anyone else you'd like to tack onto the list.


Sunday, November 8, 2009

 

"ELEMENTARY EPIDEMIC: 11 Uncovered Videos Show School Children Performing Praises to Obama

Last video mentioned in this article has been removed from YouTube, however each video has transcripts beneath so you can see for yourself.
 
Read a few comments posted regarding this article.  One comment in particular differentiated between kids being taught to patriotically pledge allegiance to our flag ... as opposed to kids being indoctrinated into singing dear leader's praise. We need to know what the hey they're teaching our kids in government schools .... provided we care enough to find out.
 
Might want to consider paying close attention to "V" next episode.

Quote from the bottom of the article "Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls upon them makes an impression.” — Dr. Haim Ginott (teacher, child psychologist)"

________ 

"ELEMENTARY EPIDEMIC: 11 Uncovered Videos Show School Children Performing Praises to Obama

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/11/04/elementary-epidemic-11-uncovered-videos-show-school-children-performing-praises-to-obama/


Sunday, November 8, 2009

 

YouTube - Williams with Sowell - Government-Run Health Care

Interesting phrase used in the video "closet totalitarians."

 


Saturday, November 7, 2009

 

"Obama's Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting

Following Jarasan's blog post, apparently he's not the only one who's stunned by Obama's handling of the situation yesterday.  https://blogs.lotterypost.com/jarasan/2009/11/unbelievably-tactless-and-tragic.htm
You know it's bad when his hometown manstream media breaks ranks. 
________ 

"Obama's Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting

A bad week for Democrats compounded by an awful moment for Barack Obama.

By ROBERT A. GEORGE

Source NBCChicago.com

Updated 2:56 PM CST, Fri, Nov 6, 2009

"President Obama didn't wait long after Tuesday's devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships.

After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.

But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a "shout-out" to "Dr. Joe Medicine Crow -- that Congressional Medal of Honor winner."  Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?

Anyone at home aware of the major news story of the previous hours had to have been stunned. An incident like this requires a scrapping of the early light banter. The president should apologize for the tone of his remarks, explain what has happened, express sympathy for those slain and appeal for calm and patience until all the facts are in. That's the least that should occur. 

Indeed, an argument could be made that Obama should have canceled the Indian event, out of respect for people having been murdered at an Army post a few hours before. That would have prevented any sort of jarring emotional switch at the event. 

Did the president's team not realize what sort of image they were presenting to the country at this moment? The disconnect between what Americans at home knew had been going on -- and the initial words coming out of their president's mouth was jolting, if not disturbing.

It must have been disappointing for many politically aware Democrats, still reeling from the election two days before. The New Jersey gubernatorial vote had already demonstrated that the president and his political team couldn't produce a winning outcome in a state very friendly to Democrats (and where the president won by 15 points one year ago). And now this? Congressional Democrats must wonder if a White House that has burdened them with a too-heavy policy agenda over the last year has a strong enough political operation to help push that agenda through. 

If the president's communications apparatus can't inform -- and protect -- their boss during tense moments when the country needs to see a focused commander-in-chief and a compassionate head of state, it has disastrous consequences for that president's party and supporters. 

All the president's men (and women) fell down on the job Thursday.  And Democrats across the country have real reason to panic."

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/politics/A-Disconnected-President.html


Saturday, November 7, 2009

 

"Report: 237 millionaires in Congress

Less about wealth envy .... more of why they just don't 'get it' about the real world over which they're 'ruling'.  Seems if they ever did 'get it' $$$pecial intere$t$ helped them forget it real quick.

______________

 
"Report: 237 millionaires in Congress
Source Politico
By ERIKA LOVLEY | 11/6/09 12:14 PM EST

"Talk about bad timing.

As Washington reels from the news of 10.2 percent unemployment, the Center for Responsive Politics is out with a new report describing the wealth of members of Congress.

Among the highlights: Two-hundred-and-thirty-seven members of Congress are millionaires. That’s 44 percent of the body – compared to about 1 percent of Americans overall.

CRP says California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa is the richest lawmaker on Capitol Hill, with a net worth estimated at about $251 million. Next in line: Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), worth about $244.7 million; Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), worth about $214.5 million; Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), worth about $209.7 million; and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), worth about $208.8 million.

All told, at least seven lawmakers have net worths greater than $100 million, according to the Center’s 2008 figures.

“Many Americans probably have a sense that members of Congress aren’t hurting, even if their government salary alone is in the six figures, much more than most Americans make,” said CRP spokesman Dave Levinthal. “What we see through these figures is that many of them have riches well beyond that salary, supplemented with securities, stock holdings, property and other investments.”

The CRP numbers are somewhat rough estimates – lawmakers are required to report their financial information in broad ranges of figures, so it’s impossible to pin down their dollars with precision. The CRP uses the mid-point in the ranges to build its estimates.

Senators’ estimated median reportable worth sunk to about $1.79 million from $2.27 million in 2007. The House’s median income was significantly lower and also sank, bottoming out at $622,254 from $724,258 in 2007.

But CRP’s analysis suggests that some lawmakers did well for themselves between 2007 and 2008, even as many Americans lost jobs and saw their savings and their home values plummet.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gained about $9.2 million. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) gained about $3 million, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) had an estimated $2.6 million gain, and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) gained about $2.8 million.

Some lawmakers have profited from investments in companies that have received federal bailouts; dozens of lawmakers are invested in Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.

Among executive branch officials, CRP says the richest is Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary L. Schapiro, with a net worth estimated at $26 million.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is next, worth an estimated $21 million. President Barack Obama is the sixth-wealthiest, worth about an estimated $4 million. Vice President Joe Biden has often tagged himself as an original blue collar man. The CRP backs him up, putting his net worth at just $27,000.

He’s hardly the worst off.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), freshman Rep. Harry Teague (D-N.M.), Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), Rep. John Salazar (D-Colo.) and Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) each a net worth of less than zero, CRP says.

One caveat on those numbers: Federal financial disclosure laws don’t require members to list the value of their personal residences. That information could alter the net worth picture for many lawmakers.

Even so, Levinthal said, “It is clear that some members are struggling financially.

“Over a calendar year, one’s wealth can change drastically. Many peoples’ investments took a nose dive over night in the last year,” he said.

A number of lawmakers are estimated to have suffered double-digit percentage lossed in their net worth from 2007 to 2008. The biggest losers include Kerry, who lost a whopping $127.4 million; Warner lost about $28.1 million; Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) lost about $11.8 million; and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) lost about $10.1 million."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29235.html


Thursday, November 5, 2009

 

"Ukraine: Influenza or Pneumonic Plague? The situation is getting worse and worse

Prayers up for the Ukrainian people.

Pneumonic plague, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonic_plague

______


"Ukraine: Influenza or Pneumonic Plague? The situation is getting worse and worse

Source  Kavkazcenter.com
Publication time: 2 November 2009, 21:37

Ukrainian News Agency "Fraza" reported that, according to informed sources, "it has been confirmed 100 % Pneumonic Plague in Ukraine".

The Agency asserts that "the head physician of the medical institutions has sent out an informal disposal - not to sow panic, to refute the information about the plague, and to speak only of swine influenza".

It is also required to distribute masks at health facilities with 8 levels of protection and anti-plague protection costumes. There is also an informal order not to allow any visitors to see the patients.

According to the "Fraza" agency, "today in Ukraine pneumonic plague is going in parallel with swine flu. The plague has killed over 60 people, and about 14 from the flu.

Meanwhile, the press service of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine reported that there is only one death from "California" virus A/N1N1 in Ukraine.

"In Ukraine there are 22 cases recorded of the virus A/N1N1 disease and there is only one fatal consequence as a result. All other cases of death from influenza has only a speculative attitude to "California" virus," press service reports.

The situation with the epidemic of influenza is a complex and unpredictable because of the propensity of influenza A/H1N1 virus to mutation, said First Deputy Minister of Health Mr. Lazoryshynets on Monday, November 2.

"The situation is complicated and unpredictable. We found a strain of this virus in our laboratory ... This virus is dangerous because it can mutate, and we can get a very different kind of virus, which was in Latin America or in Mexico, now it is European ", - said Lazoryshynets at a press conference, the "Correspondent" magazine informs.

At a press conference Lazoryshynets also said that there are 22  officially confirmed cases of influenza A/H1N1 in Ukraine.

First Vice Prime Minister Oleksandr Turchinov previously stated that as of Monday morning, November 2, there are 64 registered deaths in Ukraine from flu and acute respiratory viral infections.

Meantime, according to official information the highest level of epidemiological risk is declared in Ivano-Frankivsk (Stanislav) area, from 2 November. This decision was made by Ivano-Frankivsk Regional emergency epidemiological commission at the extended session on November 2.

In accordance with the Commission, quarantine will last for all educational institutions in the area until 20 November, a commission to monitor the distribution of medicines is also made, which come in the region as humanitarian aid.

The commission agreed that health workers will provide individual first aid kit. There will be extra transport allocated to visit patients by the district doctors.

According to the Ministry of Health, today in Ukraine there are 255 000 registered cases of influenza and SARS, of whom 15 000 were hospitalized.

Ministry of Transport and Communications of Ukraine introduced a permanent monitoring of the situation on a clear implementation of the planned anti-epidemic measures in public transport.

A special monitoring group studied the transport department on November 2, how the anti-epidemiological measures were applied at the Kiev railway station, central bus station of the capital and the International airport "Borispol".

Polish epidemiologists November 3 arrive in Ukraine for obtaining specimens from patients with the Ukrainians. The experts will arrive in Lviv, where it is supposed to take 190 samples.

Polish epidemiologists are expected to arrive in Ukraine on November 3 to obtain samples from patients. The experts will arrive in Lviv, where 190 samples are to be taken.

Lithuanian Foreign Ministry on November 2 recommended to the residents of Lithuania to refrain from unnecessary trips to the Ukraine.

Department of Monitoring,
Kavkaz Center
http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2009/11/02/11155.shtml


Wednesday, November 4, 2009

 

YouTube - 1-6 BELL TOLLING for the Swine Flu (CAMPANAS por la gripe A) subtitled

Found on another site.  English subtitles, video in Spanish.  You decide.

_____________ 

"One of the more interesting emerging voices in the Church is Benedictine sister Teresa Forcades. Sr. Teresa was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1966. She has a doctorate in Public Health from the University of Barcelona with specialization in Internal Medicine (State University of New York). She also has a Masters in Divinity from Harvard University and a doctorate from the Facultad de Teología de Catalunya. She is the author of Crimes and Abuses of the Pharmaceutical Industry (Cristianisme i Justícia, 2006), La Trinitat, avui ("The Trinity, Today", Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2005), and La teologia feminista en la història ("Feminist Theology in History", Fragmenta Editorial, 2007). She has been a Benedictine nun and a member of the community of Sant Benet de Montserrat since 1997. "

http://www.examiner.com/x-10438-Human-Rights-Examiner~y2009m11d3-Who-is-Catholic-nun-Sr-Teresa-Forcades-and-what-does-she-say-about-H1N1-Human-Rights-info101?cid=exrss-Human-Rights-Examiner

__________

From sidebar:  "TERESA FORCADES, doctor in Public Health, reflects on the history, and gives scientific data, of A type flu and lists all the irregularities related to this subject.

She explains the consequences of the declaration of a PANDEMIC, the political consequences from this declaration and makes a proposal to keep calm. She calls for an urgent activation of all legal mechanism and the participation of all citizens in this matter.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

 

"Spanish Flu : Born Again Bioweapon?

Speculation by author, conspiracy theory?  You decide.

__________________


"Spanish Flu : Born Again Bioweapon?
October 2, 2009
George Ure
Source SteveQuayle.com

"The hardest daily decisions in most newsrooms is deciding which story to 'lead' with. In television, that would usually be the story with their the catchiest images to would hold people over through breaks while in print it's a combination of exclusivity, insight, quality of writing, and the bent of the publication (news, glitz, business, sports, etc.).

Since the focus here in on long wave economics - and how they come creeping through to form a control layer over much of human behavior - you'd think the decision to lead with something like the Sunday Financial Times article by ace economist/realist Nouriel Roubini where he explains the "Mother of all carry trades faces an inevitable bust" would be a simple call to make; that's definitely 'above the fold, page one material.

But, around here, decision-making is never so cut and dried. Life has become incredibly complicated since mid 2001 when I started writing about a 'predictive linguistics project run by Cliff High at www.halfpasthuman.com - although at the time, there was not HPH and Cliff was much more reclusive. Here lately, the linguistics have - since last spring - been pointing to an October 25/26 turn date which would lead to a period of extremely high building tensions from that 'turn date' until two or three weeks later, by which time we should all be able to look back over our shoulders and say "<snip>! That's what a turn date's all about..."

The hints are sketchy - but that's the nature of the technology. The event is supposed to be something on the order of 85% economic and 15% other and it arises from the GlobalPop portion of the modelspace, which means whatever it is, it should be more or less planet-wide and not just some series of events that puts the fear of God into some fraudsters and greedsters down on Wall Street (or in Washington, where they also seem drawn in sizeable numbers).

today, my bet - subject to change at whim - is that the 'swine' flu story will be "IT" in retrospect. Not only did president Obama issue the national state of emergency right on schedule, but there has been steadily building concern around the topic such the by the end of the week, the shutting down of most of Europe comes into view as a 'nonzero' possibility and with that would come the fulfillment of economic impacts.

Moreover, the whole 'swine flu' story is developing almost along two tracks in the public mind: One track follows the 'offishul' (sic) version which is that the 'swine' flu just arose ad hoc in a swine population in Mexico and spread to the USA and elsewhere. The second track notes that the evidence is thin on the swine part and that the dispersal and now coming of the killer version/bleeding lungs part of 'swine flu' to eastern Europe seems mighty awful suspiciously like a low-grade bio-war between East and West. But let's not get ahead of ourselves - this story will be incubating for another week or possibly longer.

The BIG story this morning, economic in nature, is that "Swine Flu Grips Ukraine". It's in the Wall Street Journal, after all, so it must have something to do with economics, right?

And indeed it does: Ukraine is something of a bread basket area to Russia populated by smart, hard-working people. Since independence in late summer 1991, Ukraine has been evolving into the 29th largest economy in the world on a mix of agriculture, aerospace, and manufacturing while being a critical chunk of real estate to the Russians since goods like natural gas from Russia to Europe through its borders.

As of this weekend, 53 people have died of swine flu, some by what's described as bleeding lungs which hark back to the 1918 Spanish Flu and cytokine storming where the body's defensive mechanisms got crazy and attack the host body itself.

Responding to the situation, the government is closing down schools, some businesses, banning large gatherings, and is trying to buy another 700,000 doses of Tamiflu from Roche. A stock to watch?

The thing we probably should watch over the next few days is how the neighboring countries fare. Already Hungary's health minister says the "Ukraine flu epidemic to create emergency in Hungary" as it may also do in Romanian, Moldova, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, Russia, and anyone pulling into port from he Black Sea or the Sea of Azov.

Now we go into deep background mode on this with an email I received from a particularly well informed reader who expects this will be one for the history books that should be watched closely:
"This story may be the most important of our lifetimes. I'm a retired Ph.D. biochemist FYI. I conjecture that much of the coming troubles the web bot project speaks of may well arise from this new flu variant. I note that the first cases appeared a few days ago, just the length of the incubation period from October 25th.
OK, a Mossad microbiologist warned two months ago that a new deadly flu bug was going to be released into Ukraine in two months. He got the place right, the bug right, and the time right.

The sequence of all 8 pieces of RNA in the virus that caused the "Spanish flu" pandemic of 1918-1919 is public knowledge. A long dead Inuit woman buried in the permafrost was dug up and the virus taken from her body a couple of years ago and the RNA pieces were sequenced. Quite simple to synthesize these 8 pieces with widely available commercial machines and reagents. Then transfect mammalian cells with the RNA genes to obtain the intact, fully functional, virus. Another quite well known technology. Then grow all you want in fertilized chicken eggs or a mammalian immortal cell line. More quite well known technologies.

What scares the sh*t out of me is that the bleeding in the lungs is exactly what killed a lot of folks in the 1918-19 pandemic. See the great book "The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history? ." People would literally fall dead walking across the street. The bleeding out of the lungs was most likely the result of a "cytokine storm" that so increased the vascular permeability in the air sacks that blood filled the lungs. The reason why the mortality in the 1918-1919 pandemic was concentrated in the 18-25 yo cohort was that they had the most active immune systems.

Now I've NO conjecture as to who may have let this loose or why. But I do know that the technology is widespread to replicate the 1918-1919 virus that killed 2-4 million Americans and about 50 million world wide. And folks only traveled by ship in 1918. And there is NO vaccine for this flu type.

Hopefully we will know in a couple of weeks the sequences of the 8 RNA pieces in the Ukraine virus. I'll bet the farm that it is a replicant of the "Spanish Flu." If so, the odds are totally infinitesimal that this was NOT a deliberate bioweapon release.

I note that long haul truckers will simply go home and park their rigs if this flu reaches the USA. And exactly what reason do we have to suppose that it will be confined to Ukraine? The average city has 3 days of food. Connect the dots... please...............

A credit is due here. the word "replicant" is from the great sci-fi movie "Blade Runner."

All of this is puts us on the scale of impact somewhere in the middle between inconvenient to bad on one end of the scale to horrific and Biblical at the far end. But the linguistics seem to be pointing to the most terrible of all yet to come with temporal hints around the time of the Whistler Olympics (late February to mid March) for another round of dispersal.

The nonzero probabilities keep adding up and at some point, even the most skeptical human has to reach the point of non-coincidence and conclude what's for now only a possibility: Namely that the factions of the PowersThatBe are at war with one-another and we - humans down here at the worker bee level - are the unwilling cannon fodder for the coming year or longer."

http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/09_Disease/091102.born.again.bioweapon.html


Monday, November 2, 2009

 

Solution to Afghanistan Quagmire

This is a joke which may offend some.  You may have to have lived in the south to 'get it'.  Big Grin

________________

The Pentagon announced TODAY the formation of a new 500-man elite fighting unit called the United States Redneck Special Forces (USRSF)

These boys will be dropped off in Afghanistan and have been given only the following facts about terrorists:

1. The season opened today.
2. There is no limit.
3. They taste just like chicken.
4. They don't like beer, pickups, country music or Jesus.
5. They are directly responsible for the death of Dale Earnhardt.

The Pentagon expects the problem in Afghanistan to be over by Friday.


Monday, November 2, 2009

 

"NATO forces turn to warlords

Oct 31, 2009
 
"NATO forces turn to warlords
By Gareth Porter
Source Asia Times Online
 
"WASHINGTON - The revelation by the New York Times on Wednesday that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has long been on the payroll of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg of heavy dependence by US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) counter-insurgency forces on Afghan warlords for security, according to a recently published report and investigations by Australian and Canadian journalists.
 
United States and other NATO military contingents operating in the provinces of Afghanistan's predominantly Pashtun south and east have been hiring private militias controlled by Afghan warlords, according to these sources, to provide security for their forward operating bases, other bases and to guard convoys.
 
General Stanley McChrystal, the US's chief in Afghanistan, has acknowledged that US and NATO ties with warlords have been a cause of popular Afghan alienation from foreign military forces. But the policy is not likely to be reversed anytime soon, because US and NATO officials still have no alternative to the security services the warlords provide.
 
A report published by the Center on International Cooperation at New York University (NYU) in September notes that US and NATO contingents have frequently hired security providers that are covertly owned by warlords who have "ready-made" private militias which compete with state institutions for power.
 
The report cites examples of major warlords or their relatives or allies who have been contracted for security services in four provinces.
 
In Uruzgan province, both US and Australian special forces have contracted a private army commanded by Colonel Matiullah Khan, called Kandak Amniante Uruzgan, with 2,000 armed men, to provide security services on which their bases there depend. That case was reported in detail in April 2008 by two reporters for The Australian, Mark Dodd and Jeremy Kelly.
 
Khan's security force protects NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) convoys on the main road from Kandahar to Tarin Kowt, where more than 1,000 Australian troops are based at Camp Holland, according to the article.
 
Khan gets US$340,000 per month - nearly $4.1 million annually - for getting two convoys from Kandahar to Tarin Kowt safely each month. Khan, now police chief in Uruzgan province, evidently got his private army from his uncle, Jan Mohammad Khan, a commander who helped defeat the Taliban in Kandahar in 2001 and was then rewarded by President Karzai by being named governor of Uruzgan in 2002.
 
The Australian Defense Force claimed to The Australian that Khan was paid by the Afghan Ministry of Interior to provide security on the main highways of Uruzgan province. The Australian military had previously refused to confirm or deny Australian payments to Khan.
 
CanWest News Service's Mike Blanchfield and Andrew Mayeda reported in November 2007 that the Canadian military had hired a "General Gulalai" to provide security for an undisclosed forward operating base. Gulalai is a warlord in southern Afghanistan who drove the Taliban out of Kandahar in 2001.
 
The same reporters revealed that Colonel Haji Toorjan, a local warlord allied with Kandahar governor and major warlord Gul Agha Sherzai, was hired to provide security for Camp Nathan Smith in Kandahar City, where Canada's provincial construction team is located.
 
Blanchfield and Mayeda found that the Canadian military had given 29 contracts worth $1.14 million to a company identified as "Sherzai", suggesting strongly that the former governor of Kandahar, who had become governor of Nangarhar province, was the owner.
 
The Canadian military refused to confirm whether Gul Agha Sherzai is indeed the owner.
 
In Badakhshan province, General Nazri Mahmed, a warlord who is said to "control a significant portion of the province's lucrative opium industry", has the contract to provide security for the German Provincial Reconstruction Team, according to the NYU report.
 
The report suggests that the US and NATO contingents were spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually on contracts with Afghan security providers, most of which are local power brokers guilty of human-rights abuses.
 
In addition to Ahmed Wali Karzai, it names Hashmat Karzai, another brother of President Karzai, and Hamid Wardak, the son of Defense Minister Rahim Wardak, as powerful figures who control private security firms that have gotten security contracts without registering with the government.
 
Two anonymous United Nations sources cited in the report estimate that 1,000 to 1,500 unregistered armed security groups have been "employed, trained, and armed by ISAF" and "Coalition Forces" for security services. As many as 120,000 armed individuals are estimated by the UN sources to belong to about 5,000 private militias in Afghanistan.
 
Most Afghan warlords are widely reviled, mainly because the private armies they continue to control carry out theft and violence against civilians without any accountability.
 
In his initial assessment last August, McChrystal referred to "public anger and alienation" toward ISAF, of which he is commander, as a result of the perception that ISAF is "complicit" in "widespread corruption and abuse of power".
 
That remark suggests that McChrystal, who had carried out the special forces' policy of relying on Afghan warlords for security in the past, was now expressing concern about its political consequences.
 
Jake Sherman, a co-author of the NYU report, was a United Nations political officer involved in the effort to disarm warlords from 2003 to 2005. He is skeptical that US policy ties with the warlords will end.
 
"I don't see how the US and other contingents could sustain forward operating bases without paying these guys," said Sherman in an interview with Inter Press Service (IPS).
 
Beyond their continuing dependence on the warlords for security services, Sherman sees another reason for keeping them on the payroll. If the US and NATO military commanders tried to cut their ties with the private militias, Sherman said the warlords "would actually become a security threat".
 
Sherman recalled that during his period working for the UN in northern Afghanistan, local police were hired to guard a World Food Program warehouse in Badakhshan. After a rocket attack on the warehouse, an investigation quickly turned up the fact that the police themselves had carried out the attack to pressure the UN to hire more guards.
 
The present US and NATO dependence on warlord armies is rooted in the policy of the George W Bush administration in the early years after the ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001.
 
The CIA put the commanders of the forces who had defeated the Taliban on the payroll and gave them weapons and communications equipment to help US counter-terrorism squads locate any al-Qaeda remnants in Afghanistan.
 
The commanders used the US support to consolidate their political control over different provinces or sub-provincial areas. Human Rights Watch observed in a June 2002 report on the new relationships forged between the United States and the warlords, "While the US government does not view this policy as actively supporting local warlords, the distinction is often lost on Afghan civilians who see coalition forces openly interacting with the warlords."
 
Larry Goodson of the National War College, who participated in the 2002 process called the loya jirga under which the first post-Taliban Afghan government was established, told IPS he had recommended from the beginning a "de-warlordization" process, in which "we took nasty, sleazy characters and turn them into less nasty, sleazy bosses".
 
But the warlords were kept on the payroll, Goodson recalls, mainly because the troops controlled by the former commanders were seen as "force multipliers", in a situation where foreign troops were in short supply.
 
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy."
 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ31Df01.html

Monday, November 2, 2009

 

"The Generals' Revolt

Interesting rumblings.

_________

"The Generals' Revolt

As Obama rethinks America's failed strategy in Afghanistan, he faces two insurgencies: the Taliban and the Pentagon

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30493567/the_generals_revolt


Sunday, November 1, 2009

 

"Pelosi Health Care Bill Blows a Kiss to Trial Lawyers

"Pelosi Health Care Bill Blows a Kiss to Trial Lawyers

by Capitol Confidential (Notation from Capitol Confidential page: "Capitol Confidential are anonymous sources in the halls of power at the federal, state, and local levels. Big Government double-checks their stories and provides them the cloak they need to reveal the truth.)
Source BigGovernment.com

"The health care bill recently unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi is over 1,900 pages for a reason. It is much easier to dispense goodies to favored interest groups if they are surrounded by a lot of legislative legalese. For example, check out this juicy morsel to the trial lawyers (page 1431-1433 of the bill):

Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.

So, you can’t try to seek alternatives to lawsuits if you’ve actually done something to implement alternatives to lawsuits. Brilliant! The trial lawyers must be very happy today!

While there is debate over the details, it is clear that medical malpractive lawsuits have some impact on driving health care costs higher. There are likely a number of procedures that are done simply as a defense against future possible litigation. Recall this from the Washington Post

“Lawmakers could save as much as $54 billion over the next decade by imposing an array of new limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, congressional budget analysts said today — a substantial sum that could help cover the cost of President Obama’s overhaul of the nation’s health system. New research shows that legal reforms would not only lower malpractice insurance premiums for medical providers, but would also spur providers to save money by ordering fewer tests and procedures aimed primarily at defending their decisions in court, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, wrote in a letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).”

Stay tuned. There are certainly many more terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad provisions in this massive bill."

http://biggovernment.com/2009/10/30/pelosi-health-care-bill-blows-a-kiss-to-trial-lawyers/#more-23042


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