Showing posts with label Media Theatrics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media Theatrics. Show all posts

December 03, 2009

There's more to climate fraud than just tax hikes

Aletho News
December 3, 2009

By now we know that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory has been built on a mixture of hype and massaged data. Various carbon tax schemes have been put forward, even unprecedented proposals for a world wide taxation authority to be overseen by the UN. Does it follow that the primary agenda behind the fraud was the implementing these new taxes, or, were these proposed tax schemes secondary and part of a proclivity on the part of the state to seize any opportunity to enhance revenue?

In the three decades since AGW was made into a political tool by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party, tax laws have been "reformed" many times in Britain, as well as other Western nations dominated by the AGW meme. Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative Party were known for their opposition to social leveling through taxation. Reduction of public services, combined with hectoring the disadvantaged about self reliance, were hallmarks of British politics through the 1980's and beyond. In Europe and North America, today's overall level of taxation is not higher than that prevalent in 1979.

In Britain and the US, governments have been able to utilize the issuance of sovereign debt to increase military budgets while at the same time reducing capital gains and corporate tax rates creating an era of "borrow and spend" growth for the state sector. In the US, the higher income tax brackets have come down while middle class employees have seen increased social security deductions from their paychecks. These revenues were then "borrowed" by the general fund and in fact replaced the revenues lost due to the reduction of corporate taxes.

The burden of financing government spending has been increasingly shifted to the median wage earner and away from the investor and high income earner. Adoption of a tax collection system based on the consumption of energy would seem to fit into this general pattern, since working people spend a larger portion of their earnings on energy, and goods derived from energy, than do the wealthy. However, this outcome could be easily achieved by implementing a flat tax on income or a national sales tax. The rationale used to promote the flat tax is much simpler and would have been more likely to succeed than pushing the AGW carbon tax through fraudulent scaremongering. Right now a national sales tax would be politically far easier to implement in the US.

Since the 1970's we have seen capital controls lifted allowing for the free movement of capital through most of the world. New tax credits and deductions came into existence which were, in fact, incentives for multinational corporations to shift their operations from industrialized nations to the third world. Lower corporate tax rates could be found in the third world while profits were repatriated at favorable rates. This enabled the shifting of production, and later services, to the third world through tax policies. The Kyoto protocol looked suspiciously similar to these tax policies in that it also created an advantage for the deployment of capital in low wage nations.

A "free trade" regime without tariff barriers would allow for the hyper-exploitation of third world labor while at the same time driving down first world labor costs. But due to the combined competitive disadvantages of poor infrastructure, inexperienced workforces, and transport costs, as well as the necessity of writing off stranded production assets in the developed nations, corporations based in the advanced economies demanded that their governments finance the restructuring of the global economy. Lower labor costs just couldn't compensate for the disadvantages of moving to China or India, at least not until infrastructure was improved and workforces were trained. Without government assistance offshoring corporations would fail to compete in the marketplace with established industry at home. This motive, providing advantages to investment in the developing nations, is more plausible than the commonly assumed notion that the motive behind the AGW fraud was an excuse to raise taxes on consumers. There is a weakness in this proposition that is similar to the weakness described above regarding carbon taxes though, governments could have aided their corporations through tax advantages without all the complexity and risk involved in AGW fraud.

Yet, there is another motive that is much more certain than either of the above possibilities, even more certain than the profits that Goldman Sachs stood to gain from carbon credits trading schemes. To understand this motive we must return to the time when the AGW meme was first promoted. Three Mile Island had recently been shut down following a near melt down. Unknown quantities of radioactive material were released across a vast area of Pennsylvania. 2,400 lawsuits were filed for death or disease suffered by family members which were ultimately denied access to federal courts. In the US, applications for construction of new nuclear power plants had a zero chance of approval by local authorities. The nuclear industry had come to a standstill. At the same time national policy makers, in conjunction with the military industrial complex, wanted to maintain a dynamic nuclear industry that included ongoing mining, milling, enrichment, research and development as well as a large pool of personnel with nuclear expertise. In fact, Thatcher's situation was particularly strained in that she wanted to discharge tens of thousands of coal miners, replacing them with the politically poisonous nuclear power plants. This feat would require an overriding fear, something that calls for the public to acquiesce and reserve their strong objections. There would be no way to sell such policies to the public without resorting to a paradigm changing ruse, one that defines any dissidence as a danger to the safety of society. AGW would provide that cover. In fact, it is hard to imagine any other paradigm change that could have subverted the environmentalist opposition to the nuclear industry.

If the AGW theory could be planted within a co-opted or deceived environmental movement, general acceptance of the alarmism would be seen as a victory for the environment despite the fact that CO2 is not actually a pollutant. The din of propaganda would be constant until a state of emergency appeared imminent. Nuclear power plants would be presented as the way out while the absence of any solution for nuclear waste disposal would be ignored. The high financial cost of the nuclear facilities would be absorbed later by rate payers while the government would underwrite the investor's risks.

The AGW Svengali, Al Gore, is no stranger to promotion of the nuclear industry. Since the late 70's, he has been outspoken in support of new reactors, defending the aborted Clinch River Breeder Reactor, which was was scheduled to produce weapons grade plutonium, to the bitter end. Representation of nuclear interests is actually a Gore family tradition going back to the industry's foundation. Keith Harmon Snow reports:
A 1957 study by the Brookhaven National Laboratory estimated “the consequences of a very large reactor accident at a hypothetically small nuclear plant near a large city” at 43,000 injuries, 3,400 deaths and $7 billion in 1957 losses. Congress passed the “Gore Bill” of 1956, championed by then U.S. Senator Albert Gore (Sr.) of the pro-nuclear Gore dynasty. This became the Price Andersen Act -- reauthorized by Congress again in 2002 – shielding the industry from significant liability for any major nuclear accident. The 1989 Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Catastrophic Nuclear Power Accidents determined that private nuclear corporations would be unlikely to survive unless the federal government insured the industry against such “unexpected and unknown” potential liabilities as the Bhopal disaster (Union Carbide), Agent Orange (Dow) and the Dalkon Shield.
To better appreciate the imperative of maintaining the nuclear industry one must acknowledge the tenuous hold on power that the Western elites possess. The global mass of humanity have little interest in the perpetuation of the existing power structure. While it is possible for a minority to rule over the majority, without an overwhelming technological advantage, military dominance is too costly both in lives and finance. Weapons of mass destruction have provided the ultimate terror instrument necessary to check organized challenges to military supremacy. This was why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated. Pax Americana arose from the annihilation of non-combatants. The capability of mass murder is why some nations have seats on the UN Security Council with veto power while others have one vote in the General Assembly. Maintenance of this disparity in destructive power is essential to the continued dominance over the non-nuclear nations according to Peter Phillips:
The U.S. Government is blazing a trail of nuclear weapon revival leading to global nuclear dominance. A nuke-revival group, supported by people like Stephen Younger, Associate Director for Nuclear Weapons at Los Alamos, proposes a "mini-nuke" capable of burrowing into underground weapon supplies and unleashing a small, but contained nuclear explosion. This weapons advocacy group is comprised of nuclear scientists, Department of Energy (DoE) officials, right wing analysts, former government officials, and a congressionally appointed over-sight panel. The group wants to ensure that the U.S. continues to develop nuclear capacity into the next half century.
The US nuclear energy industry is overseen by the Department of Energy, which also oversees the nuclear weapons complex through the National Nuclear Security Administration. The reliable lifespan of the current nuclear arsenal is measured in decades. Due to the untested decay characteristics of plutonium it is possible that much of the present arsenal could become unserviceable with little advance warning. The existence of a robust nuclear industry is a prerequisite for new weapons production capability which may be the main factor in Energy Secretary Chu's strident support for a new generation of nuclear power plants.

AGW has been instrumental in the resurrection of nuclear power in the US and Britain. Seen in this light the AGW fraud is not surprising. The mass collusion of lies is actually a normal occurrence when "national security" is perceived to be involved. Institutions and foundations are can be relied upon to perform their roles. Entire industries conform to the dominant anticipated cap and trade system. Other nations have been co-opted or pressed into accepting the AGW meme. One only has to examine the warmongering lies about Iraqi WMDs or Iranian nuclear weapons programs to put the AGW fraud into perspective.

December 01, 2009

Rejecting Westocentrism

By BOUTHAINA SHAABAN
December 1, 2009

In a meeting with a distinguished group of female Philippines journalists (editors, op- ed writers, major TV hosts) in Manila last week, I found out that their questions about the Arab world, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the conditions in Palestine, Iraq and Iran, are based on information obtained from western media. I saw the surprise on their faces when I rephrased their questions from an Arab, or rather realistic, view of events on the ground, and as lived by the peoples of these countries. A short while after the beginning of the meeting, I discovered that the journalists, who cannot be described as hostile to Arab rights and causes, do not know anything about the Arab perspective of any of the issues covered by western media which base their coverage on the Israeli versions of reality, terminology and view of things.

The first question was how I would compare the condition of Arab women with the achievements of western women in terms of rights, independence and freedom. I was also asked whether all Arab women still wear all-covering gowns and about the ratio of men who marry more than one wife. When a well-known political editor asked about our position towards Iran’s nuclear activities and the problems the west is facing with Iran, I asked her whether she knew that Iran was a signatory of the NPT which allows it to possess nuclear knowledge and peaceful nuclear power, while Israel is not a signatory of the NPT, possesses over 200 nuclear heads, occupies Arab land by force and kills Palestinians and expels them from their villages and cities on a daily basis and builds settlements on the ruins of Palestinian homes, history and civilization.

There was no question about the Gaza blockade which has turned into a policy of genocide in the 21st century which, South African lawyers acknowledge, has become worse than the apartheid that prevailed in South Africa in the 20th century. Neither was there a question about the Goldstone report and the thousands of crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, nor on secret Israeli jails which have within their walls 3,000 Palestinians since 2000 and in which extremely serious crimes against Palestinian prisoners are committed under international silence. Lawyers and the ICRC are not even allowed to know where the prisons are. Israeli occupation troops use the most brutal methods of torture against prisoners, including physical abuse and rape. There were no questions about Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes on a daily basis, building settlements on the ruins of these homes and turning the Palestinians into refugees on and outside their land. There were no questions about the effects of the American occupation of Iraq which left over a million widows and more than two million orphans.

While I tried to answer questions with information and facts about Arab rights and the crimes committed by Israel since 1948 against Arabs as a result of a Zionist settler strategy, targeting intellectuals in Iraq and the disasters caused to the country as a result of brutal occupation, I acknowledged to the journalists that I do not blame them for the lack of facts in their questions because western media are the only conduit between east and west,

I wondered about what we all know about Afghanistan, for instance, and what is happening in it and in Pakistan except through western media. What do Arabs know about China, India and Russia; and what do these countries know about Arabs except through western media? In a moment of real dialogue, we agreed that this is the most dangerous thing about the international condition in the modern age. We also agreed that changing this reality should be a priority for countries of the east and the south.

For instance, can one imagine that the most popular books in the International Islamic Book Fair, held in New Delhi recently, were about divorce, terrorism and banking? If we take into account that most of these books have been written either in the United States or the United Kingdom, we realize the danger of reproducing the western evaluation and image of Islam and Muslims themselves, which means that they look at themselves, at their religion and culture in a western mirror.

What are we supposed to make of Barbie wearing the veil and chador on her 50th anniversary in a charity auction in Florence, Italy. The rationale of the exhibition was that it was essential for girls throughout the world to feel free to express their real image. The fact of the matter was enhancement of the image of the veil and chador as the only image for Muslim women, reducing them to an appearance considered by the west an evidence of injustice to women in the Muslim world and their inability to be effective, respectable members of their society.

Talking about the importance of cultural dialogue and the ignorance which characterizes people’s understanding of their civilizations and the events taking place on their land, Philippines specialists pointed out that Spanish colonialism which lasted over 300 years left no clear cultural influence which forces dependence on Spanish culture [apparently Catholicism was not considered], while American colonialism, which lasted only 50 years, left cultural, educational and institutional dependence which is difficult to break. It can be argued that neo-colonialism in the 21st century is cultural and western by nature, and that the Arabs, who, in the past, gave the world extremely important discoveries in all sciences are the most prominent victims of this colonialism. The Arabic language is being subjected to unprecedented neglect, and local intellectual production which expresses the Arab condition and Arab issues in an attractive manner is at its lowest level.

Regional groupings could be one of the effective responses to ‘westrocentrism’; and communication between these groupings in the future will be the real breakthrough out of westrocentrism and replacing it at least with a multi-polar world where countries of the world restore their status, sense of importance and their contribution to the progress and prosperity of humanity. ASEAN has lifted visa restrictions between its member states and opened up free trade and active economic, cultural and political exchange between its countries. Latin American countries are setting up a cultural, economic and political space resistant to American hegemony which used to consider the countries of Latin America its backyard. Most countries of the world are waking up from their fascination with the English language and are restoring the prestige of their local languages in education and the production of culture and knowledge. Look at Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, receiving Iran’s president despite western ire against this step which is a clear expression of self confidence and independence of western hegemony.

The question is: when will the Arabs see that their salvation lies in cherishing and protecting their language and producing science and knowledge in this language. And when will they see that creating a regional bloc with the Arabs as a major player is the only salvation of the Arab future and integration into the new world order in which the countries of Asia and Latin America are gaining real independence intellectually, scientifically, politically and economically.

There is no doubt that real independence lies in abandoning the western mirror in which we misconceive ourselves and, instead, in communicating with others who share our goal in order to produce a future in which all components of human civilization flourish far away from westrocentrism based on extermination of indigenous peoples, pillaging the wealth of the planet for the benefit of western countries and pushing the rest of humanity into the cycle of poverty and inactivity.

The thousand-mile-trip starts with one step; and the first step is to break this mirror and look instead in the color of the soil of our countries and the faces of our children, and expressing ourselves in our language and putting trust in our thought, causes and our capability to be real contributors to the prosperity of humanity and to the protecting of human freedom and dignity.

Bouthaina Shaaban is Political and Media Advisor at the Syrian Presidency, and former Minister of Expatriates. She is also a writer and professor at Damascus University since 1985. She has been the spokesperson for Syria and was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. She can be reached through nizar_kabibo@yahoo.com
Source

New Israeli military unit to fight enemies on Facebook, Twitter

Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu (Archive)
By Anshel Pfeffer and Gili Izikovich, Haaretz
01/12/2009

The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman's Office is to begin drafting computer experts with an eye toward establishing an Internet and new media department unit, Army Spokesman Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu said Monday.

Speaking at the Eilat Journalists Conference, Benayahu said the new department would focus on the Internet's social media networks mainly to reach an international audience directly rather than through the regular media.

The new unit, as well as an initiative by the Information and Diaspora Ministry to train people to represent Israel independently on the Internet and in other arenas, were presented Monday at the conference during a panel discussion on Israeli public relations abroad.

Responding to criticism of Israel's ability to face hostile entities on the Web, Benayahu said the new program would be able to deal with the problem. He said that from each group drafted to the Army Spokesman's Office, between eight to 10 young people who are experts in Web 2.0 - YouTube, Facebook and Twitter - to be identified before induction, would be assigned to the new department. The new recruits would be put to work in the new media unit after undergoing a general Army Spokesman's Unit training course.

Benayahu told Haaretz the new program would be up and running in a few months.

The Army Spokesman's Office began working in this area more than a year ago. During Operation Cast Lead it put up YouTube videos of attacks on targets in the Gaza Strip, to illustrate the care the IDF takes to avoid hitting civilians. One such clip showed how the pilot of an IDF helicopter diverted a missile that had been fired at a target when it was realized civilians had entered the target area.

The head of communications at the Army Spokesman's office, Col. Ofer Kol, said they wanted to reach "mainly an international audience that is less exposed to operational processes. Foreign media do more 'zooming-in' and so it's important to us to show the totality of IDF actions without a filter."

The IDF YouTube account got millions of hits during Operation Cast Lead, which led to the decision to expand activity at the site and other social network Web sites. The IDF hopes to show other sides of the army less familiar to the world, such as women's service.

The Spokesman's Office has also contacted bloggers who are known as opinion-makers and sent them information and pictures directly.

November 30, 2009

The crazy, irrational beliefs of Muslims

November 29, 2009

Tom Friedman, The New York Times, today:

Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced -- I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is.

Tom Friedman, The Charlie Rose Show, May 30, 2003:

ROSE: Now that the war is over, and there's some difficulty with the peace, was it worth doing?

FRIEDMAN: I think it was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie. I think that, looking back, I now certainly feel I understand more what the war was about . . . . What we needed to do was go over to that part of the world, I'm afraid, and burst that bubble. We needed to go over there basically, and take out a very big stick, right in the heart of that world, and burst that bubble. . . .

And what they needed to see was American boys and girls going from house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying: which part of this sentence do you understand? You don't think we care about our open society? . . . . Well, Suck. On. This. That, Charlie, was what this war was about.

We could have hit Saudi Arabia. It was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could. That's the real truth.

Tom Friedman, NPR's Talk of the Nation, September 23, 2003 (via NEXIS):

That's what I believe ultimately this war was about. And guess what? People there got the message, OK, in the neighborhood. This is a rough neighborhood, and sometimes it takes a 2-by-4 across the side of the head to get that message.

* * * * *

Tom Friedman can declare with a straight face that "anyone who shoots up innocent people is ... mentally imbalanced" without seeing how clearly that applies to himself and those who think like he does. It's that self-absorbed disconnect -- seeing Hasan's murder of American soldiers as an act of consummate evil and sickness while refusing to see our own acts in a similar light -- that shapes most of our warped political discourse. And note the morality on display here: Hasan attacks soldiers on a military base of a country that has spent the last decade screaming to the world that "we're at war!!," and that's a deranged and evil act, while Friedman cheers for an unprovoked war that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and displaced millions more -- all justified by sick power fantasies, lame Mafia dialogue, and cravings more appropriate for a porno film than a civilized foreign policy -- and he's the arbiter of Western reason and sanity.

But even worse is the glaring dishonesty driving everything Friedman writes here. Our perpetual war cheerleader today laments that there is a "Narrative" plaguing the Muslim world that is a "cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America." These crazy, stupid, irrational Muslims seem to believe "that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand 'American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy' to keep Muslims down," when the reality is that "U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny." They see devastating attacks launched by the U.S. and Israel collectively on six Muslim countries in the last decade (including Gaza) -- all of which Friedman (along with his fellow Muslim-condemning NYT colleague) supported, naturally -- and those Muslims simply refuse to understand why they deserved it and why it was all for their own Good. According to Friedman, these benighted Muslims simply refuse to see the truth: that our two post-9/11 wars were "primarily to destroy two tyrannical regimes -- the Taliban and the Baathists -- and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics."

Six months into the war, Friedman proudly proclaimed that "the real truth" was that we invaded Iraq to take out our "big stick" and tell them to "Suck On This," to take a 2-by-4 across their heads, and that we attacked them "because we could." In his 2003 explanation with Charlie Rose, did he even mention what he now claims was the war's "primary" purpose: "to destroy two tyrannical regimes ... and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics"? No. In a very rare moment of candor for this rank war-loving propagandist, he announced very clearly the real purpose of the war, only for him to now turn around and accuse Muslims of being blind and hateful because they heard his message loud and clear, and because they don't express enough gratitude for all the gracious Freedom Bombs we've dropped -- and continue to drop -- on their homes, their villages, their families, their children and their society. Apparently, they heard deranged, chest-beating bellowing like this from America's Top Foreign Policy Expert and took it seriously:

No, the axis-of-evil idea isn't thought through -- but that's what I like about it. It says to these countries and their terrorist pals: ''We know what you're cooking in your bathtubs. We don't know exactly what we're going to do about it, but if you think we are going to just sit back and take another dose from you, you're wrong. Meet Don Rumsfeld -- he's even crazier than you are.''

There is a lot about the Bush team's foreign policy I don't like, but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right. It is the only way we're going to get our turkey back.

It's certainly true that -- as all government leaders do -- Muslim tyrants and radical Islamists exploit foreign threats to distract attention from their own shortcomings and entrench themselves in power. Being able to depict the U.S. as a war-mongering and aggressive threat to the Muslim world is a benefit to oppressive Arab leaders as well as radical Muslim groups. But nobody fuels that message more than the Tom Friedmans of the world, whose hate-mongering words and bloodthirsty policies endow that message with more than a sufficient amount of truth.

Obama's "decision"

Left i on the news
November 30, 2009

President Obama and the media want the American people to think that Obama has been agonizing over the Afghanistan "decision," considering things carefully. No doubt there are some details that were in question. But a feature on CNN today put the lie to the whole story - troops in Afghanistan have already been working overtime, preparing huge new expansions of the bases and other infrastructure necessary to support the increase in troops.

The "agony" of the decision was just for the suckers in the cheap seats. Mainly the liberals still harboring illusions in Obama, and maybe the Nobel Prize Committee who could still revoke his "Peace" prize before they actually hand it to him.

Global Warming: "Fixing the Climate Data around the Policy"

by Michel Chossudovsky
November 30, 2009

More than 15,000 people will be gathering in Copenhagen for COP 15: the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Official delegations from 192 nations will mingle with the representatives of major multinational corporations, including Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, The representatives of environmental and civil society organizations will also be in attendance. Parties & Observers

Heads of state and heads of government are slated to be in appearance in the later part of the Summit event. (See The essentials in Copenhagen - COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009)

It is worth noting that key decisions and orientations on COP15 had already wrapped up at the World Business Summit on Climate Change (WBSCC) held in May in Copenhagen. The WBSCC brought together some of the World's most prominent business executives and World leaders including Al Gore and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. (The World Business Summit on Climate Change, includes webcast)

The results of these high level consultations were forwarded to the Danish government as well as to the governments of participating member states. A so-called summary report for policymakers was drafted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, on behalf the corporate executives participating in the event. This report has very little to do with environmental protection. It largely consists in proposing a profit driven agenda, which uses the global warming consensus as a justification.
(For details see
http://www.copenhagenclimatecouncil.com/world-business-summit.html)

"The underlying ambition of the Summit was to address the twin challenges of climate change and the economic crisis. Participants at the Summit considered how these risks can be turned into opportunity if business and governments work together, and what policies, incentives, and investments will most effectively stimulate low-carbon growth." (Copenhagen Climate Council)

The agenda of the Copenhagen Climate Summit (7-18 December 2009), is upheld both by the governments, the business executives and the NGO community as "one of the most significant gatherings in history. It is being called the most complex and vital agreement the world has ever seen."

CO2 emissions are heralded as the single and most important threat to the future of humanity.

The focus of the Summit is on strictly environmental issues. No mention of the word "war" --i.e. the US-NATO led war and its devastating environmental consequences.

No mention of the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons as an instrument of "peacemaking".

No mention, as part of an environmental debate, of the radioactive fallout resulting from the Pentagon's humanitarian nuclear bombs. Tactical nuclear weapons, according to scientific opinion commissioned by the Pentagon are "safe for the surrounding civilian population".

No mention of "weather warfare" or "environmental modification techniques" (ENMOD) and climatic warfare.

No mention in the debate on climate change of the US Air Force 2025 project entitled "Owning the Weather" for military use. (See FAS, AF2025 v3c15-1 | Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning... | (Ch 1) see also SPACE.com -- U.S. Military Wants to Own the Weather)

Despite a vast body of scientific knowledge, the issue of deliberate climatic manipulations for military use is no longer part of the UN agenda on climate change. It was, however, part of the agenda of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. (See Michel Chossudovsky, Environmental Warfare and Climate Change, Global Research, 27 November 2005, See also Michel Chossudovsky, Weather Warfare: Beware the US military’s experiments with climatic warfare, The Ecologist, December 2007 )

CO2 is the logo, which describes the Worldwide crisis. No other variable is contemplated.

The words "poverty", "unemployment" and "disease" resulting from a global economic depression are not a matter of emphasis because authoritative financial sources state unequivocally: "the economic recession is over".

And the war in the Middle East and Central Asia is not a war but "a humanitarian operation directed against terrorists and rogue states."

The Real Crisis

The Copenhagen Summit not only serves powerful corporate interests which have a stake in the global multibillion dollar carbon trading scheme, it also serves to divert public attention from the devastation resulting from the "real crisis" underlying the process of economic globalization and a profit driven war without borders, which the Pentagon calls "the long war".

We are at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. War and economic depression constitute the real crisis, yet both the governments and the media have focused their attention on the environmental devastation resulting from CO2 emissions, which is upheld as the greatest threat to humanity.

The Multibillion Dollar Carbon Trading System

The carbon trading system is a multibillion money-making bonanza for the financial establishment. The stakes are extremely high and the various lobby groups on behalf of Wall Street have already positioned themselves.

According to a recent report, "the carbon market could become double the size of the vast oil market, according to the new breed of City players who trade greenhouse gas emissions through the EU's emissions trading scheme... The speed of that growth will depend on whether the Copenhagen summit gives a go-ahead for a low-carbon economy, but Ager says whatever happens schemes such as the ETS will expand around the globe." (Terry Macalister, Carbon trading could be worth twice that of oil in next decade, The Guardian, 28 November 2009)

The large financial conglomerates, involved in derivative trade, including JP Morgan Chase, Bank America Merrill Lynch, Barclay's, Citi Bank, Nomura, Société Générale, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are actively involved in carbon trading.( FACTBOX: Investment banks in carbon trading | Reuters, 14 September 2009)

The legitimacy of the carbon trading system rests on the legitimacy of Global Warming Consensus, which views CO2 emissions as the single threat to the environment. And for Wall Street the carbon trading system is a convenient and secure money-making safety-net, allowing for the transfer of billions of dollars into the pockets of a handful of conglomerates.

"Every major financial house in New York and London has set up carbon trading operations. Very big numbers are dancing in their heads, and they need them to replace the "wealth" that evaporated in the housing bust. Louis Redshaw, head of environmental markets at Barclays Capital, told the New York Times, "Carbon will be the world's biggest market over all." Barclays thinks the current $60 billion carbon market could grow to $1 trillion within a decade. Four years ago Redshaw, a former electricity trader, couldn't get anyone to talk to him about carbon." (Mark Braly, The Multibillion Dollar Carbon Trading, RenewableEnergyWorld.com, 5 March 2008)

The Global Warming Data Base

Is the Global Warming Consensus based on reliable data?

There are indications that both the concepts and the data on temperature and greenhouse gas emissions including CO2 have been adjusted and shaped to fit the agenda of the UN Panel on Climate Change.

For several years, the claims of the UN Panel on Climate Change (UNPCC) including the data base have been questioned. (See Global Research's Climate Change Dossier: Archive of more than 100 articles)

Critical analysis of the climate change consensus has been conveyed in reports by several prominent scientists.

There has been, in this regard, a persistent attempt to silence the critics as conveyed in the writings of MIT meteorologist Richard S. Lindzen (See Richard Lindzen, Climate of Fear: Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence., Global Research, 7 April 2007)

Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libelled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis. (Ibid)

ClimateGate and the Emails' Scandal

In November 2009, barely a few weeks before the inauguration of the Copenhagen Summit, a vast data bank of over 3000 email exchanges between key Climate Change scientists and researchers was revealed.

While the emails does not prove that the entire data was falsified, they nonetheless point to scientific dishonesty and deceit on the part of several prominent scientists who are directly linked to the UNPCC.

The emails suggest that the data was shaped, with a view to supporting a predetermined policy agenda. "Fixing the climate data to fit the policy" is modus operandi as revealed in the email messages of top scientists, directly linked to the work of the UN Panel on Climate Change?

The British media has acknowledged that the scientists were intent upon manipulating the data on Climate Change as well as excluding the critics:

[the comments below the quotes are by The Telegraph].

From: Phil Jones. To: Many. Nov 16, 1999
"I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] 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."

Critics cite this as evidence that data was manipulated to mask the fact that global temperatures are falling. Prof Jones claims the meaning of "trick" has been misinterpreted

The IPCC is the UN body charged with monitoring climate change. The scientists did not want it to consider studies that challenge the view that global warming is genuine and man-made.

From: Kevin Trenberth (US National Center for Atmospheric Research). To: Michael Mann. Oct 12, 2009

"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't... Our observing system is inadequate"

Prof Trenberth appears to accept a key argument of global warming sceptics - that there is no evidence temperatures have increased over the past 10 years.

From: Phil Jones. To: Many. March 11, 2003
“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”

Prof Jones appears to be lobbying for the dismissal of the editor of Climate Research, a scientific journal that published papers downplaying climate change.

From Phil Jones. To: Michael Mann. Date: May 29, 2008
"Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise."

Climate change sceptics tried to use Freedom of Information laws to obtain raw climate data submitted to an IPCC report known as AR4. The scientists did not want their email exchanges about the data to be made public.

From: Michael Mann. To: Phil Jones and Gabi Hegerl (University of Edinburgh). Date: Aug 10, 2004
"Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future."

The scientists make no attempt to hide their disdain for climate change sceptics who request more information about their work

(University of East Anglia emails: the most contentious quotes - Telegraph, 23 November 2009).

The complete list of contentious emails can be consulted at Alleged CRU Emails - Searchable published by eastangliaemails.com:

What is significant is that the authors of the emails are directly involved in the UN Panel on Climate Change:

"[They are] the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.

Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history. (Prof. Christopher Booker, Climate Change: This is the Worst Scientific Scandal of our Generation, The Telegraph, 28 November 2009)

One of the contentious emails by Dr Jones (published by eastangliaemails.com) points to the deliberate manipulation of the data:

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
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.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 xxx xxxx xxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 xxx xxxx xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK

Source: Alleged CRU Emails - Searchable published by eastangliaemails.com

US Congressional Probe

Barely two weeks before the inauguration of the Copenhagen Summit, the US Congress is now probing "the Global Warming Emails":

"U.S. congress has begun investigating climate scientists whose emails and documents were hacked into to see if their global warming theories have misrepresented the truth behind the cause of climate change.

Investigators have begun "studying" the 1,079 e-mails and over 3,800 documents that hackers stole last week from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University in the U.K, Rep. Darrel Issa from California told the Wall Street Journal.

Some of the leaked e-mails and files - which were posted on sites like www.Wikileaks.org and www.EastAngliaEmails.com - show growing tensions between scientists and skeptics. Others are mundane announcements of upcoming conferences or research trips.

According to his website, Rep. James Inhofe from Oklahoma said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not."

The White House Science Adviser John Holdren has also come under investigation, after one of his emails written in 2003 to Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, was hacked.

"I'm happy to stand by my contribution to this exchange. I think anybody who reads what I wrote in its entirety will find it a serious and balanced treatment of the question of 'burden of proof' in situations where science germane to public policy is in dispute," Holdren said.

Meanwhile, The University of East Anglia said it will cooperate with police and proceed with its own internal investigation. The University posted a statement calling the disclosure "mischievous" and saying it is aiding the police in an investigation.

The statement also quotes Jones, CRU's director, explaining his November 1999 e-mail, which said: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Jones said that the word trick was used "colloquially as in a clever thing to do" and that it "is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward."

The leaked data comes just two weeks before the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen will begin on Dec. 7 -18, when 192 nations will meet to discuss a solution on how to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases worldwide. (International Business Times, November 24, 2009)

Meanwhile, the "international community" (supported by the mainstream media) has launched a counteroffensive, accusing the critics of waging a smear campaign:

The chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, stood by his panel’s 2007 findings last week. That study is the foundation for a global climate response, including carbon emission targets proposed this week by both the US and China.

So far, climate scientists say nothing in the leaked emails [that] takes away from the fact that the climate change evidence is solid. In fact, a new study in the journal Science shows the polar ice cap melting is happening at a faster rate than predicted just a few years ago.

In a teleconference call with reporters this week, one of the scientists whose emails were leaked, Pennsylvania State University paleoclimatologist Michael Mann, said that “regardless of how cherry-picked” the emails are, there is “absolutely nothing in any of the emails that calls into the question the deep level of consensus of climate change.”

...

This is a “smear campaign to distract the public,” added Mann, a coauthor of the Copenhagen Diagnosis, the report on climate change released this week ahead of the Copenhagen. “Those opposed to climate action, simply don’t have the science on their side,” he added.

Professor Trevor Davies of the East Anglia CRU called the stolen data the latest example of a campaign intended “to distract from reasoned debate” about global climate change ahead of the Copenhagen summit. (As Copenhagen summit nears, ‘Climategate’ dogs global warming debate | csmonitor.com, Christian Science Monitor, 28 November 2009, emphasis added)

But what is significant in this counteroffensive, is that the authenticity of the emails has not been challenged by the IPCC scientists.

The scientists are not saying "we did not do it". What they are saying is that the Global Warming Consensus holds irrespective of their actions to selectively manipulate the data as well as exclude the critics from the scientific debate on climate change.

What is the Stance of the Civil Society and Environmentalist Organizations

Civil society organisations are currently mobilizing with a view to pressuring the official governmental delegations:

"Two years ago, at a previous UN climate conference in Bali, all UN governments agreed on a timetable that would ensure a strong climate deal by the time of the Copenhagen conference. The implications of not achieving this goal are massive, and nearly unthinkable. Turn to our great partners film – the Age of Stupid – if you need to be convinced why.

The meeting – which should include major heads of state for the last three days, will attempt to reach a massively complex agreement on cutting carbon, providing finance for mitigation and adaptation, and supporting technology transfer from the North to the South.

This is a major milestone in history, and one where civil society must speak with one voice in calling for a fair, ambitious and binding deal. We are ready, but we need to let the leaders know the world is ready too. Are you? (COP-15 Copenhagen Climate Conference | TckTckTck)

Where do civil society activists stand in relation to the climate change email scandal?

Will these civil society organizations, many of which are funded by major foundations and governments continue to unreservedly endorse the Global Warming consensus?

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Greenpeace are among several key civil society organizations which are pushing the Copenhagen agenda. Their position is unchanged.

Most environmentalist organizations are demanding a reduction in CO2 emissions. For them, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the "bible". It cannot be challenged even if the climate data base which supports the Global Warming Consensus turns out to be questionable or contentious.

While the mainstream NGO lobby groups including Greenpeace and WWF continue to support the consensus, there is small but growing movement which challenges the legitimacy of the Copenhagen CO15 Summit agenda, while accusing the UNPCC of manipulating the data.

The Alternative Summit: KlimaForum09

The NGOs will be meeting in a parallel alternative summit, KlimaForum09, funded by the Danish government. More than 10,000 people a day are expected to attend the sessions of KlimatForum09

Major international NGOs and environmentalist groups will be in attendance including Friends of the Earth, Campaign against Climate Change among others.

Klimaforum09 is finalize a draft declaration which "will put forth a vision of a more socially just world society, [while] emphasizing the need to create substantial changes in the social and economic structures of society in order to meet the challenges of global warming and food sovereignty." (See Declaration · Klimaforum09)

It is unlikely that within the Alternative Summit, the Global Warming consensus including the multibillion dollar carbon trading system will be challenged in a meaningful fashion. (All events · Klimaforum09).

In many regards, the rhetoric of the KlimaForum09's Danish organizers ties in with that of the host government and the official summit. (Political Platform · Klimaforum09").

There can be no real activism unless the falsehoods and manipulations underlying the activities of the UNPCC including the multibillion profit driven carbon trading scheme, are fully revealed, debated and understood.

Source

Minarets: Ban Them, or Bomb Them?

By Matt Barganier, November 29, 2009

Well, the Swiss – or, more accurately, a majority of voters in democratic Switzerland – have gone and done something wrong and dumb, approving a referendum that bans the construction of minarets. Libertarian demerits are certainly in order. But one very wrong, very dumb thing the Swiss have not done is launch any wars of aggression against Muslim peoples, or anyone else, for that matter.

Which makes it all the more cringe-worthy to read this libel on Andrew Sullivan’s blog:

Good God. Why not synagogues? Or did a neighboring country try that already?

Wow. Straight to the Nazi jab, huh? Never let it be said that Harvard doesn’t make ‘em like they used to.

For the record, this is the same Andrew Sullivan who penned this epochal gem eight years ago:

[B]in Laden proves that the best form of persuasion in that part of the world is not rhetorical but military. Pummel them and they will respect you. Talk to them nicely and you’ll end up like Robert Fisk. Best of all, pummel them and then talk. The most persuasive piece of rhetoric yet unleashed in this conflict has been the daisy cutter bomb. It’s the only argument that much of this clearly depraved culture actually respects.

Expect more Swiss-bashing from some of the very people who have cheered on the most egregious abuses of Muslims. They’re extremely alert to the dangers of isolationism, you know.

Source

Photo credit - REUTERS/Michael Buholzer

The truth of UK's guilt over Iraq

"Until he calls upon UN weapons inspectors themselves to deliver testimony before his inquiry, Sir John Chilcot perpetuates the perception that Britain simply can't handle the truth"

By Scott Ritter
guardian.co.uk
November 27, 2009

With its troops no longer engaged in military operations inside Iraq, Great Britain has been liberated politically to conduct a postmortem of that conflict, including the sensitive issue of the primary justification used by then Prime Minister Tony Blair for going to war, namely Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.

The failure to find any WMD in Iraq following the March 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of that country by US and British troops continues to haunt those who were involved in making the decision for war. The issue of Iraqi WMD, and the role it played in influencing the decision for war, is at the centre of the ongoing Iraq war inquiry being conducted by Sir John Chilcot.

Among the more compelling testimonies provided to date has been that of Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to the US, who served in that capacity during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Meyer convincingly portrayed an environment where the decision by the US to invade Iraq, backed by Blair, precluded any process (such as viable UN weapons inspections) that sought to compel Iraq to prove it had no WMD. Rather, Great Britain and the US were left "scrambling" to find evidence of a "smoking gun" to prove Iraq indeed possessed the WMD it was accused of having.

In short, Saddam had been found guilty of possessing WMD, and his sentence had been passed down by Washington and London void of any hard evidence that such weapons, or even related programmes, even existed. The sentence meted out – regime termination – mandated such a massive deployment of troops and material that all but the wilfully blind or intentionally ignorant had to know by the early autumn of 2002 that war with Iraq was inevitable. One simply does not initiate the movement of hundreds of thousands of troops, thousands of armoured vehicles and aircraft, and dozens of ships on a whim or to reinforce an idle threat.

President George Bush was able to disguise his blatant militarism behind the false sincerity of his ally Blair and his own secretary of state, Colin Powell. The president's task was made far easier given the role of useful idiot played by much of the mainstream media in the US and Britain, where reporters and editors alike dutifully repeated both the hyped-up charges levied against Iraq and the false pretensions that a diplomatic solution was being sought.

The tragic final act of the farce directed by Bush and Blair was the theatre of war justification known as UN weapons inspections. Having played the WMD card so forcefully in an effort to justify war with Iraq, the US (and by extension, Britain) were compelled once again to revisit the issue of disarmament. But the reality was that disarming Iraq was the furthest thing from the mind of either Bush or Blair. The decision to use military force to overthrow Saddam was made by these two leaders independent of any proof that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Having found Iraq guilty, the last thing those who were positioning themselves for war wanted was to re-engage a process that not only had failed to uncover any evidence Iraq's retention of WMD in the past, but was actually positioned to produce fact-based evidence that would either contradict or significantly weaken the case for war already endorsed by Bush and Blair.

The US and Britain had both abandoned aggressive UN weapons inspections in the spring of 1998. UN weapons inspectors were able and willing to conduct intrusive no-notice inspections of any site inside Iraq, including those associated with the Iraqi president, if it furthered their mandate of disarmament. But the US viewed such inspections as useful only in so far as they either manufactured a crisis that produced justification for military intervention (as was the case with inspections in March and December 1998), or sustained the notion of continued Iraqi non-compliance so as to justify the continuation of economic sanctions. An inspection process that diluted arguments of Iraq's continued retention of WMD by failing to uncover any hard evidence that would sustain such allegations, or worse, sustain Iraq's contention that it had no such weaponry, was not in the interest of US policy objectives that sought regime change, and as such required the continuation of stringent economic sanctions linked to Iraq's disarmament obligation.

The British were never willing (or able) to confront meaningfully the American policy of abusing the legitimate inspection-based mandate of the UN inspectors. Instead, London sought to manage inspection-based confrontation by insisting that before any intrusive inspection could be carried out, it would have to be backed by high-quality intelligence. But even this position collapsed in the face of an American decision, made in April 1998, to stop supporting aggressive inspections altogether.

In the end, the British were left with the role of fabricating legitimacy for an American policy of terminating weapons inspections in Iraq, supplying dated intelligence of questionable veracity about a secret weapons cache being stored in the basement of a Ba'ath party headquarters in Baghdad, which was used to trigger an inspection the US hoped the Iraqis would balk at. When the Iraqis (as hoped) balked, the US ordered the inspectors out of Iraq, leading to the initiation of Operation Desert Fox, a 72-hour bombing campaign designed to ensure that Iraq would not allow the return of UN inspectors, effectively keeping UN sanctions "frozen" in place.

As of December 1998, both the US and Britain knew there was no "smoking gun" in Iraq that could prove that Saddam's government was retaining or reconstituting a WMD capability. Nothing transpired between that time and when the decision was made in 2002 to invade Iraq that fundamentally altered that basic picture.

But having decided on war using WMD as the justification, both the US and Great Britain began the process of fabricating a case after the fact. Lacking new intelligence data on Iraqi WMD, both nations resorted to either recycling old charges that had been disproved by UN inspectors in the past, or fabricating new charges that would not withstand even the most cursory of investigations.

The reintroduction of UN weapons inspectors into Iraq in November 2002 was counterproductive for those who were using WMD as an excuse for war. This was aptly demonstrated when, in the first weeks following their return to Iraq, the inspectors discredited almost all of the intelligence-based charges both the US and Britain had levelled against Iraq, while failing to uncover any evidence of the massive stockpile of WMD that Iraq had been accused of retaining.

The decision for war had been made independently of any viable intelligence information on Iraqi WMD. As such, the work of the UN weapons inspectors inside Iraq following their return in November 2002 was not a factor in influencing the lead-up to the actual invasion of Iraq. Having decided that Saddam was guilty of possessing WMD, the failure of the UN weapons inspectors to uncover evidence of such retention made their efforts not only irrelevant, but undesirable. The inconvenience of the UN weapons inspectors when it comes to the truth about the lead-up to the war with Iraq continues to this day.

The parade of British diplomats and officials appearing before the Chilcot hearings rightly point out the absolute lack of any "smoking gun" concerning Iraq and WMD. But until Chilcot receives testimony from those best positioned to speak about Iraq's WMD programmes, namely the UN weapons inspectors themselves, all the hearings will succeed in doing is sustain the false appearance of well-meaning British officials, stampeded into a war with Iraq by an overbearing American ally, looking in vain for a "smoking gun" that would justify their decision to invade. The evidence needed to undermine any WMD-based case for war, derived from the work of the UN weapons inspectors, was always available to those officials in a position to weigh in on this matter, but either never consulted or deliberately ignored.

There is a big difference between searching for a "smoking gun" and searching for the truth. By ignoring and/or undermining the work of the UN weapons inspectors in the lead-up to the war with Iraq, British officials demonstrated that they were not interested in the truth about Iraqi WMD, a fact that testimony provided by the likes of Sir Christopher Meyer alludes to, but falls short of actually stating.

The search for truth can be an inconvenient process, especially when it threatens to expose potentially illegal activities in the prosecution of an unpopular war. Until he calls upon UN weapons inspectors themselves to deliver testimony before his inquiry, Sir John Chilcot perpetuates the perception that Britain simply can't handle the truth when it comes to uncovering the level of official British culpability in the deliberate fabrication of a case for war against Iraq that everyone knew, or should have known, was false.

‘Arab women need not apply’

By Jonathan Cook
November 30, 2009

NAZARETH // Israel’s finance minister was accused last week of trying to deflect attention from discriminatory policies keeping many of the country’s Arab families in poverty by blaming their economic troubles on what he described as Arab society’s opposition to women working.

A recent report from Israel’s National Insurance Institute showed that half of all Arab families in Israel are classified as poor compared with just 14 per cent of Jewish families.

Yuval Steinitz, the finance minister, told a conference on employment discrimination this month that the failure of Arab women to participate in the workforce was damaging Israel’s economy. Eighteen per cent of Arab women work, and only half of them full time, compared with at least 55 per cent of Jewish women.

He attributed the low employment rate to "cultural obstacles, traditional frameworks and the belief that Arab women have to remain in their home towns", adding that such restrictions were characteristic of all Arab societies.

But researchers and women’s groups pointed out that employment of Arab women in Israel is lower than almost anywhere else in the Arab world, including such employment blackspots for women as Saudi Arabia and Oman.

"Most Arab women want to work, including a large number of female graduates, but the government has refused to tackle the many and severe obstacles that have been put in their way," said Sawsan Shukha of Women Against Violence, a Nazareth-based organisation.

That assessment was supported by a survey this month revealing that 83 per cent of Israeli businesses in the main professions – including advertising, law, banking, accountancy and the media – admitted being opposed to hiring Arab graduates, whether men or women.

Yousef Jabareen, an urban planner at the Technion technical university in Haifa, who has conducted one of the largest surveys on Arab women’s employment in Israel, said the problems Arab women faced were unique.

"In Israel they face a double discrimination, both because they are women and because they are Arabs," he said.

"The average in the Arab world [for female employment] is about 40 per cent. Only women in Gaza, the West Bank and Iraq – where there are exceptional circumstances – have lower rates of employment than Arab women in Israel. That gap needs explaining and the answers aren’t to be found where the minister is looking."

He said a wide range of factors hold Arab women back, many of them the result of discriminatory policies by successive governments to prevent the 1.3-million Arab minority, which comprises one-fifth of Israel’s population, from benefiting from economic development.

These included widespread discrimination in hiring policies by both private employers and the government; a long-standing failure to locate industrial zones and factories in Arab communities; a severe lack of state-supported childcare services compared with Jewish communities; a shortage of public transport in Arab areas that prevented women reaching places of work, and a lack of training courses aimed at Arab women.

According to a study by Women Against Violence, 40 per cent of Arab women with degrees are unable to find work.

When interviewed, Mr Jabareen said, 78 per cent of non-working women blamed their situation on a lack of job opportunities.

Maali Abu Roumi, 24, from the town of Tamra in northern Israel, has been looking for a job as a social worker since she finished training two years ago. She said cash-strapped Arab schools, unlike Jewish schools, could not afford to employ a social worker, and that Israel’s Arab minority lacked the equivalent of the welfare institutions and foundations funded by wealthy overseas Jews that offered work to many Jewish social workers.

"Most of the Jews I studied with have found work, while very few of the Arabs on my course have been employed," she said. "When a job comes up, it’s usually part time and there are dozens of applicants."

The Alternative Planning Centre, an Arab organisation that studies land use in Israel, reported in 2007 that only 3.5 per cent of the country’s industrial zones were in Arab communities. Most attracted such small businesses as workshops for car repairs or carpentry that offered few opportunities for women.

"Israel’s private sector is almost entirely closed to Arab women because of discriminatory practices by employers who prefer to employ Jews," Mr Jabareen said. He added that the government had failed to provide leadership: among governmental workers, less than two per cent were Arab women, despite repeated pledges by ministers to increase Arab recruitment.

Ms Shukha said: "The civil service is a major employer, but many of these jobs are in the centre of the country, in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, a long way from the north where most Arab citizens live."

She noted that there were no regular buses from Nazareth, the largest Arab town in the country, to Jerusalem. "The transport situation is even worse in the villages where most Arab women live."

In addition, she said, most could not travel long distances to find work because of the scarcity of child-care provision. Only 25 government-run daycare centres have been established for preschool children in Arab communities out of 1,600 operating across the country. Ms Shaukha also criticised the trade and industry ministry, saying that, although it had invested heavily in training for Jewish women, only six per cent of Arab women were attending courses, and then mostly for sewing and secretarial work.

Mr Jabareen said Arab men faced massive discrimination, too, but found work because they filled a need in the economy by doing hard manual labour that most Jews refused, often travelling long distances to work on construction sites. "Women simply don’t have that option," he said. "They cannot do that kind of work and they need to stay close to their communities because they have responsibilities in the home."

Source

November 27, 2009

"Settled"? It's not even "Science"

Wendy McElroy - November 26, 2009

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) proponent Kevin Trenberth says "It is incontrovertible" that the world is warming as a result of human actions.

Those are not the words of a scientist. By definition, the conclusions of science are always controvertible, and open to refutation or revision. That's how science works.

Scientific method demands three things of a theory: that it be verifiable, falsifiable, and predictive.

Verifiable: others must be able to duplicate your work and get the same results.
Falsifiable: there must be some way to prove your theory wrong.
Predictive: it must explain something that competing theories do not. Ideally, it should predict something new which can then be tested and confirmed. (The latter is not always possible in some sciences, e.g., paleontology.)

These are why, for example, Creationism can never be considered "scientific" -- it predicts nothing, really explains nothing ("God made it that way"), and can't be falsified.

Now let's compare AGW with another scientific media storm, cold fusion:

Cold fusion was a scientific theory. Its progenitors were zealous about sending details of their experiment world-wide. (There was some speculation that they spread this far and wide for fear of their research being classified by the U.S. government.) Other interested researchers could duplicate their work. It made a prediction (neutron emission) that could not otherwise be explained. And it was falsifiable -- other researchers duplicated their work, did not get the same results, and most importantly did not see any neutrons. Even though their theory was wrong, it was scientific.

The work of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), however, is not. First, their work is not verifiable, for the simple reason that they have refused to make available either their raw data or their computer models. Since their work is entirely based on computer modeling of data, you need both in order to verify it. For the same reason -- concealment -- their work can't be directly falsified. Their theory significantly fails to explain historically-known phenomena, and while it does offer a testable prediction (global warming), to the extent that that has been tested, it has fallen flat.

(One might argue that their work can be falsified, when their predictions fail. Unfortunately, when the temperature record doesn't match their model, they just revise the model to substitute the new temperature data as required. This is how Creationists respond to surprising new discoveries: "God made that, too.")

Can AGW be scientific? Sure. It begins with full publication of all data and computer models. (In fairness, some AGW researchers may do this; I'm speaking of the CRU.) Then it requires explaining something that competing theories cannot -- while leaving nothing inconvenient unexplained -- and making a prediction that can be tested. Finally, it requires a clear statement of what would prove AGW wrong -- something possible to test, not something which requires a time machine or interstellar travel -- and a willingness to accept the verdict.

The cold-fusion guys admitted that if there were no neutrons, there was no fusion. I've yet to hear an AGW proponent say that anything could disprove AGW. To them, it's "incontrovertible."

Get Ready for Another Whitewash

November 26, 2009 - By Gilad Atzmon

The Jerusalem Post reported today that Sir Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya criticized the appointment of two leading Jewish academics to the UK's Iraq Inquiry panel, stating it may upset the balance of the inquiry.

Miles said the two academics were Jewish and that Gilbert was an active Zionist. He also said they were both strong supporters of former prime minister Tony Blair and the Iraq war.

"It is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available," he added. "Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced."

The former ambassador also said that having two historians in a panel of five "seems a lot" and also questioned the Jewish academics' credentials.

"In December 2004 Sir Martin, while pointing out that the 'war on terror' was not a third world war, wrote that Bush and Blair 'may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill' - an eccentric opinion that would seem to rule him out as a member of the committee. Sir Lawrence is the reputed architect of the 'Blair doctrine' of humanitarian intervention, which was invoked in Kosovo and Afghanistan as well as Iraq,"

To read the full article:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1259010973336&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Deception Has Always Been the Name of Zionism’s Game

By Alan Hart - November 27th, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu described his offer to temporarily restrict construction of all-new Jewish settlements on the West Bank excluding Arab East Jerusalem as a “far-reaching and painful step”, which was part of a policy he hoped would give a new impetus to peace talks.

Netanyahu is not stupid. He knows that some of us know he is not remotely interested in peace on terms the Palestinians could accept. So what then is his real game plan of the moment? Simple. He is seeking to make peace with the Obama administration. And its response suggests that with the help of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress he’s got that matter firmly under control.

On 18 November President Obama himself expressed his dismay at Israel’s decision to approve 900 more housing units in East Jerusalem. He said it could lead to a “dangerous situation” because it made it harder for Israel to make peace in the region and “embitters the Palestinians.”

Eight days later the Obama administration says Netanyahu’s new offer, which stresses that there will be no restrictions, not even temporary ones, on new settlement development in East Jerusalem, will help “move forward” peace efforts.

What nonsense. It seems to me that the Obama administration doesn’t know whether it’s coming or going on the matter of how to deal with Netanyahu.

The response of senior Palestinian legislator Mustafa Barghouti was much more in tune with reality. “What Netanyahu announced today is one of his biggest attempts at deception in his history.”

It is, of course, a deception but nobody should be surprised. Not only has deception always been the name of Zionism’s game, it knows no other.

Its very first mission statement way back in 1897 was a deception. The previous year Zionism’s founding father, Theodore Herzl, had written and published Der Judenstaat, The Jewish State. It opened with these words: “The Jews who will it shall have a state of their own.” But as all of Zionism’s founding fathers gathered for their first Congress at Basel in Switzerland, Herzl was among the first to appreciate the need to drop the word state from all public policy pronouncements.

Thus it was that the first Congress of the World Zionist Organisation ended with a public statement that declared Zionism’s mission to be the striving “to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.”

The difference between “home” and “state” was great.

State would have signaled that what Zionism wanted (and was ruthlessly determined to get) was a sovereign entity, by definition one with full state powers backed by its own military. In other words, a sovereign, fully independent Jewish state would be one that could pose a threat to the rights and possibly even the existence of the Arabs of Palestine. At the time Zionism didn’t want the world, including most Jews of the world, to know that.

Home was a much softer, less disturbing term. It implied, and for propaganda purposes could be asserted to mean, that Zionism would be prepared to settle for an entity without sovereign powers and which therefore would not and could [not] pose any kind of threat to the Arabs.

The proof that Zionism’s founding father knew the substitution of “home” for “state” in the first mission statement was a deception is in his diary, which was not published (was kept secret) for 63 years. Herzl’s entry for 3 September 1897, as published in 1960, included this:

Were I to sum up the Basel Congress in a word – which I shall guard against pronouncing publicly – it would be this: At Basel I founded the Jewish state… Perhaps in five years, and certainly 50, everyone will know it… At Basel then, I created this abstraction which, as such, is invisible to the vast majority of people.

It wasn’t only the Arabs and the major powers Zionism didn’t want to scare by using the term state. All of its founding fathers were fully aware that most informed and thoughtful Jews everywhere were opposed to the idea of creating a sovereign Jewish state in the Arab heartland. They believed it to be morally wrong. They feared it would lead to unending conflict. And most of all they feared that if Zionism was allowed by the major powers to have its way, it would one day provoke anti-Semitism.

As it happened, that Jewish concern and those Jewish fears were washed away by the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, without which Zionism almost certainly would not have triumphed.

After its unilateral declaration of independence, the Zionist (not Jewish) state’s policy was to advance by creating facts on the ground. In effect its message to the world was, as it still is: “We know we should not have done this, but we’ve done it. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and globally as a researcher, author, and a correspondent for ITN and the BBC. Visit Alan's website.

Source

November 26, 2009

The reality behind the swine flu conspiracy

By Irina Galushko
RT
November 26, 2009

The message is clear – we are all going to die from swine flu. It spreads fast, it is dangerous, and it must be feared – says the World Health Organization.

But worry not – there is a way to save yourself. Just get a flu shot – and purchase a remedy for the deadly virus. Those are the instructions from the WHO.

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However, the WHO may find itself coughing up explanations, as more and more scientists and health researchers, and even journalists, are starting to question the organization’s motives behind raising the alert so quickly.

According to the Danish Daily Information newspaper, the WHO and pharmaceutical companies are suffering from the profit bug. Or, to put it simply, the chief health care organization in the world has teamed up with the drug makers to create a phantom monster – and to rake in cash by selling a remedy for it.

Plastered all over the front pages and headlines news, swine flu made its triumphant entrance into limelight, heralded as the next “in” virus, which threatened to bring an end to humanity as we know it.

Let's stop right there and talk numbers for a little bit.

So far, more than 3.5 million people have been reported to be infected with swine flu worldwide. More than 9,000 deaths have been confirmed.

In comparison: every year, up to one billion people get infected with seasonal flu, with up to 500 million deaths. These numbers come from the World Health Organization, but they never make headline news for some reason.

On June 11 of this year, the WHO declared swine flu a pandemic. But few know that, right before doing that, the Organization changed its definition, taking out the word “deadly” from it.

Aleksander Saversky, the chair of the Patient's Rights Protection League, was one of those who did pay attention. He says it is clear that the WHO dramatized the situation around the H1N1 virus. In an interview to RT, Saversky speculated that it is due to the WHO's close ties with the world's major pharmaceutical companies.

And recently, Danish journalists conducted their own research, which resulted in accusations that the WHO, and scientists who appear to be independent are, in fact, on pharmaceutical companies' payroll.

Saversky points out that the WHO declared the status of pandemic when only a few thousand people were infected with it – something that is highly illogical, he says, considering the hundred thousand more cases of seasonal flu never gets paid such high attention.

The virus was reported to be extremely deadly. Parallels were drawn to the Spanish Flu, which killed roughly 50 million people worldwide in the span of six months.

As panic spread, people rushed to clinics for Tamiflu – $145 a pop and by prescription only in the US – and for vaccinations, which range anywhere from $10 to $50. And despite the fact that many have lost their jobs in the financial crisis, and were left without health insurance, vaccinations and pharmaceutical sales skyrocketed. Nobody wants to die a grisly death from the supposedly new virus.

Aleksander Saversky warns the hullaballoo over swine flu is akin to the fable of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” He says that, because of this hype, the next time a truly dangerous virus comes about, no one will take any precautions. Fooled once already by swine flu, people will ignore the warnings and fall prey to a more dangerous – and deadly virus.

In fact, vaccinating people from swine flu during the seasonal flu outbreak, in Saversky’s opinion, is criminal. People end up having to battle two viruses at the same time, which puts an enormous strain on the immune system.

Saversky puts the blame on capitalism – pharmaceutical companies make billions on people's fears, combined with asymmetrical information dispersal (meaning that most people know very little substantial information about the virus, whereas the WHO, pharmaceutical companies and researchers know a lot more).

So, what's to be done to conquer the virus – and stop the WHO?

Saversky says there is one solution – for governments worldwide to step in and take matters into their own hands, by controlling healthcare and pharmaceutical production.

Until that happens, however, remember to check for all common flu symptoms. And should a general disinclination to work of any kind be among them, rest assured – it is most probably a run-of-the-mill case of the Monday Blues.