Saturday, December 19, 2009

We Are Infiltrated From Within...when generals echo my words!

If video does not load click here.

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies in the heart of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear. The traitor is the plague..." Marcus Tullius Cicero, speech to the Roman Senate.

Those that rot the soul of our nation...
Barack Husein Obama
William Clinton
Hillary Clinton
Nancy Pelosi
Harry Reid
John Murtha
John Kerry
Al Franken
Charles Schumer
et al ad nauseum

Why a Common Currency Doesn't Work ...another 'must read' from Ellen Brown !!!

Source: truthout

EU/IMF Revolt: Greece, Iceland, Latvia May Lead the Way

by: Ellen Hodgson Brown J.D., t r u t h o u t News Analysis

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Europe's small, debt-strapped countries could follow the lead of Argentina and simply walk away from their debts. That would shift the burden to the creditor countries, which could solve the problem merely by a change in accounting rules.

Total financial collapse, once a problem only for developing countries, has now come to Europe. The International Monetary Fund is imposing its "austerity measures" on the outer circle of the European Union, with Greece, Iceland and Latvia the hardest hit. But these are not your ordinary third world debtor supplicants. Historically, the Vikings of Iceland repeatedly repulsed British invaders; Latvian tribes repulsed even the Vikings; and the Greeks conquered the whole Persian empire. If anyone can stand up to the IMF, these stalwart European warriors can.

Dozens of countries have defaulted on their debts in recent decades, the most recent being Dubai, which declared a debt moratorium on November 26, 2009. If the once lavishly-rich Arab emirate can default, more desperate countries can; and when the alternative is to destroy the local economy, it is hard to argue that they shouldn't. That is particularly true when (a) the creditors are largely responsible for the debtor's troubles, or (b) there are good grounds for arguing the debts are not owed. Greece's troubles originated when low interest rates that were inappropriate for Greece were maintained to rescue Germany from an economic slump. And Iceland and Latvia have been saddled with responsibility for private obligations to which they were not parties.

The Dysfunctional EU: Why a Common Currency Doesn't Work

Greece may be the first in the EU outer circle to revolt. According to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Sunday's Daily Telegraph, "Greece has become the first country on the distressed fringes of Europe's monetary union to defy Brussels and reject the Dark Age leech-cure of wage deflation." Prime Minister George Papandreou said on Friday:

"Salaried workers will not pay for this situation: we will not proceed with wage freezes or cuts. We did not come to power to tear down the social state."

Evans-Pritchard noted:

"Mr Papandreou has good reason to throw the gauntlet at Europe's feet. Greece is being told to adopt an IMF-style austerity package, without the devaluation so central to IMF plans. The prescription is ruinous and patently self-defeating."

The currency cannot be devalued because the same euro is used by all. That means that while the country's ability to repay is being crippled by austerity measures, there is no way to lower the cost of the debt. Evans-Pritchard concluded:

"The deeper truth that few in Euroland are willing to discuss is that EMU is inherently dysfunctional - for Greece, for Germany, for everybody."

Which is all the more reason that Iceland and Latvia, which are not yet EU members, might want to reconsider their positions.

As a condition of membership, Iceland is being required to endorse an agreement in which it would reimburse Dutch and British depositors who lost money in the collapse of IceSave, an offshore division of Iceland's leading private bank. Eva Joly, a Norwegian-French magistrate hired to investigate the Icelandic bank collapse, called it blackmail. She warned that succumbing to the EU's demands would drain Iceland of its resources and its people, who are being forced to emigrate to find work.

Latvia, a member of the EU, has not yet adopted the Euro, but is expected to do so. Meanwhile, the EU and IMF have told the government to borrow foreign currency to stabilize the exchange rate, in order to help borrowers pay mortgages taken out in foreign currencies from foreign banks. As a condition of IMF funding, the usual government cutbacks are also being required. Nils Muiznieks, head of the Advanced Social and Political Research Institute in Riga, Latvia, complained:

"The rest of the world is implementing stimulus packages ranging from anywhere between one percent and ten percent of GDP but at the same time, Latvia has been asked to make deep cuts in spending - a total of about 38 percent this year in the public sector - and raise taxes to meet budget shortfalls."

In November, the Latvian government adopted its harshest budget of recent years, with cuts of nearly 11 percent. The government had already raised taxes, slashed public spending and government wages and shut dozens of schools and hospitals. As a result, the national bank forecasts a 17.5 percent decline in the economy this year, just when it needs a productive economy to get back on its feet. In Iceland, the economy contracted by 7.2 percent during the third quarter, the biggest fall on record. As in other countries squeezed by neoliberal tourniquets on productivity, employment and output are being crippled, bringing these economies to their knees.

The cynical view is that that may have been the intent. Instead of helping post-Soviet nations develop self-reliant economies, wrote Marshall Auerback, "the West has viewed them as economic oysters to be broken up to indebt them in order to extract interest charges and capital gains, leaving them empty shells."

But the people are not submitting quietly to all this. In Latvia last week, while the Parliament debated what to do about the nation's debt, thousands of demonstrating students and teachers filled the streets, protesting the closing of a hundred schools and reductions in teacher salaries of up to 60 percent. Demonstrators held signs saying, "They have sold their souls to the devil" and "We are against poverty." In the Iceland Parliament, the IceSave debate had been going on for over 140 hours, a new record. A growing portion of the population opposes underwriting a debt they believe the government does not owe.

In a December 3 article in The Daily Mail titled "What Iceland Can Teach the Tories," Mary Ellen Synon wrote that ever since the Icelandic economy collapsed last year, "the empire builders of Brussels have been confident that the bankrupt and frightened Icelanders must finally be ready to exchange their independence for the 'stability' of EU membership." But last month, an opinion poll showed that 54 percent of all Icelanders oppose membership, with just 29 percent in favor. Synon wrote:

"The Icelanders may have been scared out of their wits last year, but they are now climbing out from under the ruins of their prosperity and have decided that the most valuable thing they have left is their independence. They are not willing to trade it, not even for the possibility of a bail-out by the European Central Bank."

Iceland, Latvia and Greece are all in a position to call the bluff of the IMF and EU. In an October 1 article called "Latvia - the Insanity Continues," Marshall Auerback maintained that Latvia's debt problem could be fixed over a weekend, by a list of measures including (1) not answering the phone when foreign creditors call the government; (2) declaring the banks insolvent, converting their external debt to equity, and having them reopen with full deposit insurance guaranteed in local currency; and (3) offering "a local currency minimum wage job that includes healthcare to anyone willing and able to work as was done in Argentina after the Kirchner regime repudiated the IMF's toxic package of debt repayment."

Evans-Pritchard suggested a similar remedy for Greece, which he said could break out of its death loop by following the lead of Argentina. It could "restore its currency, devalue, pass a law switching internal euro debt into [the local currency], and 'restructure' foreign contracts."

The Road Less Traveled: Saying No to the IMF

Standing up to the IMF is not a well-worn path, but Argentina forged the trail. In the face of dire predictions that the economy would collapse without foreign credit, in 2001, it defied its creditors and simply walked away from its debts. By the fall of 2004, three years after a record default on a debt of more than $100 billion, the country was well on the road to recovery; and it achieved this feat without foreign help. The economy grew by 8 percent for two consecutive years. Exports increased, the currency was stable, investors were returning and unemployment had eased. "This is a remarkable historical event, one that challenges 25 years of failed policies," said economist Mark Weisbrot in a 2004 interview quoted in The New York Times. "While other countries are just limping along, Argentina is experiencing very healthy growth with no sign that it is unsustainable, and they've done it without having to make any concessions to get foreign capital inflows."

Weisbrot is co-director of a Washington-based think tank called the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which put out a study in October 2009 of 41 IMF debtor countries. The study found that the austere policies imposed by the IMF, including cutting spending and tightening monetary policy, were more likely to damage than help those economies.

That was also the conclusion of a study released last February by Yonca Ă–zdemir from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, comparing IMF assistance in Argentina and Turkey. Both emerging markets faced severe economic crises in 2001, preceded by chronic fiscal deficits, insufficient export growth, high indebtedness, political instability and wealth inequality.
Where Argentina broke ranks with the IMF, however, Turkey followed its advice at every turn. The end result was that Argentina bounced back, while Turkey is still in financial crisis. Turkey's reliance on foreign investment has made it highly susceptible to the global economic downturn. Argentina chose instead to direct its investment inward, developing its domestic economy.

To find the money for this development, Argentina did not need foreign investors. It issued its own money and credit through its own central bank. Earlier, when the national currency collapsed completely in 1995 and again after 2000, Argentine local governments issued local bonds that traded as currency. Provinces paid their employees with paper receipts called "Debt-Canceling Bonds" that were in currency units equivalent to the Argentine peso. The bonds canceled the provinces' debts to their employees and could be spent in the community. The provinces had actually "monetized" their debts, turning their bonds into legal tender.

Argentina is a large country with more resources thanIceland, Latvia, or Greece, but new technologies are available that could make even small countries self-sufficient. See David Blume, "Alcohol Can Be a Gas."

Local Currency for Local Development

Issuing and lending currency is the sovereign right of governments, and it is a right that Iceland and Latvia will lose if they join the EU, which forbids member nations to borrow from their own central banks. Latvia and Iceland both have natural resources that could be developed if they had the credit to do it; and with sovereign control over their local currencies, they could get that credit simply by creating it on the books of their own publicly-owned banks.

In fact, there is nothing extraordinary in that proposal. All private banks get the credit they lend simply by creating it on their books. Contrary to popular belief, banks do not lend their own money or their depositors' money. As the US Federal Reserve attests, banks lend new money, created by double-entry bookkeeping as a deposit of the borrower on one side of the bank's books and as an asset of the bank on the other.

Besides thawing frozen credit pipes, credit created by governments has the advantage that it can be issued interest-free. Eliminating the cost of interest can cut production costs dramatically. According to a German study, interest composes 30 percent to 50 percent of everything we buy. Slashing interest costs can make projects such as low-cost housing, alternative energy development, and infrastructure construction not only sustainable but profitable for the government, while at the same time creating much-needed jobs.

Government-issued money to fund public projects has a long and successful history, going back at least to the early 18th century, when the American colony of Pennsylvania issued money that was both lent and spent by the local government into the economy. The result was an unprecedented period of prosperity, achieved without producing price inflation and without taxing the people.

The key is to use the newly-created money or credit for productive projects that increase goods and services, rather than for speculation or to pay off national debt in foreign currencies (the trap that Zimbabwe fell into). The national currency can be protected from speculators by imposing exchange controls, as Malaysia did in 1998; imposing capital controls, as Brazil and Taiwan are doing now; banning derivatives; and imposing a "Tobin tax," a small tax on trade in financial products.

Making the Creditors Whole

If the creditors are really interested in having their debts repaid, they will see the wisdom of letting the debtor nation build up its producing economy to give it something with which to pay. If the creditors are not really interested in repayment, but are using the debt as a tool to exploit the debtor country and strip it of its assets, the creditors' bluff needs to be called.

When the debtor nation refuses to pay, the burden shifts to the creditors to make themselves whole. British economist Michael Rowbotham suggested that, in the modern world of electronic money, this can be accomplished by creative banking regulators simply changing accounting rules. "Debt" today is created with accounting entries, and it can be reversed with accounting entries. Rowbotham outlines two ways the rules might be changed to liquidate impossible-to-repay debt:

"The first option is to remove the obligation on banks to maintain parity between assets and liabilities.... Thus, if a commercial bank held $10 billion worth of developing country debt bonds, after cancellation it would be permitted in perpetuity to have a $10 billion dollar deficit in its assets. This is a simple matter of record-keeping.

"The second option ... is to cancel the debt bonds, yet permit banks to retain them for purposes of accountancy. The debts would be cancelled so far as the developing nations were concerned, but still valid for the purposes of a bank's accounts. The bonds would then be held as permanent, non-negotiable assets, at face value."

If the banks were allowed either to carry unrepayable loans on their books or to accept payment in local currency, their assets and their solvency would be preserved. Everyone could shake hands and get back to work.

"Obama and Clinton are probably the most corrupt politicians this country has ever produced...but they are the creme-de-la-creme of corruptness..."

Comments

Ben Blankenship

Gerry: Why does all my email to you get returned by the postmasters? Whether it's the att address or the gerrycharlotte. etc one, it all gets bucked back. Help!

eay worsham

Another greast post, Rev. Phelps!

Norm

There are politicians in our country that have no conscience to speak of...although they disguise it for political reasons by claiming to be members of a particular religious sect.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are two such hypocrites. They both have attended churches for their own political advancement but have never shown any of signs of the faith they professed to believe. Obama, if he has any religion at all, is a Muslim irregardless of what he says openly. But he is a Muslim with Humanist beliefs. The Clintons are Humanists irregardless of what they profess.
One characteristic of both Obama and Clinton is that they never appoligise for anything...they are never wrong...they are Humanists. Obama and Clinton are probably the most corrupt politicians this country has ever produced...but they are the creme-de-la-creme of corruptness and like scum they rise to the surface.

Your article was excellent (as usual) and I whoelheartedly agree with your missionary and domestic evangelism ideas...when governments get in the way corruptness ALWAYS follows.

Mexico Is Fixing Their Problem... kill 1 criminal a day...if not they'll kill 17 all at once

Do you remember this story back in January 2009 ?

Juárez vigilantes vow to kill 1 criminal a day


A group calling itself the Juárez Citizens Command is threatening to strike back against lawlessness that has gripped the city for more than a year by killing one criminal a day until order is restored. Read the rest of this story here.
Well it looks as though they're catching up for lost time...
LA VOZ DE AZTLAN
Los Angeles, Alta California

JUAREZ: Civilian militia massacres
17 drug addicts at rehab center

A paramilitary civilian group formed in January called "Comando Ciudadano por Juárez" (CCJ) invaded a drug rehabilitation center in the Mexican border city and killed 17 of the patients. The military style assault took place Wednesday night and involved 12 black-clad gunmen with assault rifles and wearing ski masks.

The well armed civilian paramilitary organization is funded by wealthy Cd. Juarez businessmen and industrialists. The group announced its formation in January with a communique to the city's newspaper. The communique said, “Citizens tired with the level of impunity that exists in this city have formed the Juarez Citizens Command (CCJ) whose goal is to put an end to the criminal elements that have provoked terror among the citizens of the city." The communique promises to "eliminate one criminal every 24 hours."

The attack Wednesday night was against the Casa Aliviane Center that is a few blocks from the international bridge leading to downtown El Paso, Texas This is the third attack on an addiction treatment center in Cd. Juarez in the last 12 months. In June, five addicts were murdered in another drug addiction center and last summer eight more were massacred in yet another. Drug addicts are being blamed for the city's high crime rates. The Juarez Citizens Command (CCJ) has vowed to "cleanse" the city of all criminals.

The assault on the Casa Aliviane Center was particularly vicious. The gunmen stormed the center just after sunset and while the patients were praying. They were forced to kneel in a hallway and then shot repeatedly with assault rifles. Media reports in Juarez say that there was a "river of blood" flowing down the hallway, into the sidewalk and then down the gutter. (See photo)

The exact composition of the Juarez Citizens Command (CCJ) is unknown but some media reports imply that it includes some elements of the Mexican military. Some journalists speculate that the large number of killings of petty criminals and small time drug dealers turning up dead on the streets of the city is actually the work of the CCJ and not due to battles between the major drug cartels.

The emergence of "death squads" funded by Mexico's elite gives the so call "drug war" an entirely new character. It turns it into a "class war." The 17 young patients at the Casa Aliviane Center were extremely destitute. The families are now having to borrow money to bury their murdered family members. The Juarez Citizens Command (CCJ) has now turned the "drug war" into a violent class war between the "haves and the have-nots."

The 2008 Voters...are they about to find out what's going to hit them?

Click on image to enlarge.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Do Not Hump ...ok, but who would want to?

Click on picture to enlarge.
For explanation click here.

"...actions of the present US administration has many concerned Americans investigating their inalienable rights."

Source: RT

America's Forgotten Freedoms
A survey by the First Amendment Center in the US has reached the shocking conclusion that most American citizens don’t know the five basic freedoms enshrined in the constitution.

The study found that no more than 3% of Americans remember “petition” among the First Amendment’s five basic freedoms.

However, freedom of speech was remembered by the majority of respondents – 56%.

The others freedoms enshrined in the constitution appeared to have made little impression: freedom of religion was named by 15%; the same percentage remembered press freedom as a constitutional right while just 14% knew they had a right to assembly.

The number of respondents who remembered freedom of speech was the lowest in the history of the survey, conducted each year for the past eleven years.

What makes this year’s results more shocking is that 4 out of 10 people questioned could not name any freedom at all.

Whatever freedoms the constitution of the country may guarantee, it does not matter much since these rights are neither remembered nor needed as such.

The findings indicate that modern Americans do not think along the same lines as the Founders of the U.S.

Nowadays, it would seem, many Americans do not consider their basic rights and freedoms inalienable and are ready to delegate them to state or federal officials.

More than two centuries ago it did not take long for the Founders of the United States of America to realize the necessity of preserving individual freedoms in a system of individual states with a strong federal governmental centre.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

In 1791, just four years after the declaration in 1787 of the American Constitution, the states adopted the First Amendment together with the Bill of Rights to guarantee that the strong federal government would not trample on basic individual rights and freedoms.

Moreover, there are rights totally forgotten by the American society, meaning most Americans are not familiar with the freedoms guaranteed by the American Constitution.

Freedom of speech and religion are among the first but liberties introduced to the American Constitution by the Bill of Rights. Traditionally, most of the questioned Americans recalled them. But regarding freedom of the press, freedom to assemble and to petition – these seem to be lost in oblivion.

The annual State of the First Amendment survey, held by the First Amendment Center (http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/commentary.aspx?id=20533), questions adult Americans on their attitude towards the rights spelled out in the First Amendment. This year it found the following:

39% would extend to subscription cable and satellite television the government’s current authority to regulate content on over-the-air broadcast television.

54% would continue IRS regulations that bar religious leaders from openly endorsing political candidates from the pulpit without endangering the tax-exempt status of their organizations.

66% say the government should be able to require television broadcasters to offer an equal allotment of time to conservative and liberal broadcasters; 62% would apply that same requirement to newspapers, which never have had content regulated by the government.

38% would permit government to require broadcasters to report a specified amount of “positive news” in return for licenses to operate.

31% would not permit musicians to sing songs with lyrics that others might find offensive.

68% favor government restrictions on campaign contributions by private companies, and 55% favor such limits on amounts individuals can contribute to someone else’s campaign.

Thus, a large number of Americans concede that in specific cases the federal government can be involved or even control individual freedoms.

The most shocking conclusion of the survey was that most of Americans could not name the five basic freedoms enshrined in the constitution.

America’s forgotten freedoms:

comments

Julie Kipper

Every American should re-read the Constitution from time to time. If we do not stand up for our rights, they WILL dissapear. A key issue which has gotten way out of control is the restrictions that have been placed (and enforced) on people, limiting the individual rights to practice their religion. It astounds me that cases have gone to court attempting to prosecute individuals for praying before a meal at a school event. It matters not where they were or what type of function it was, such action is illegal, unconstitutional, and just plain wrong. We should remember that the very first permanent settlement in America began with the Seperatists (those wishing to worship God according to the Bible, rather than worshipping according to the laws in England at the time). While there were also those who had no such desire for this freedom on the same voyage, it was begun by Christians, for a Christian purpose. This fact is now absent from our school books because there are some who do not believe the same as the Seperatists did. Does that mean that because I believe that slavery is wrong, it did not happen? Of course not. Does that mean that because I believe that women should be treated as equal to men, that it has always been so? That's just silly. Just because there are some athiests who do not believe in God, does not mean that He does not exist. Nor does it mean that the framers of our Constitution were also athiests. Many were devout Christians, no matter how much the athiests dislike the fact. Truth is absolute. Proof and evidence is available in plenty. The world is not flat, as many went to their graves believing.

suzanne russell
I am sorry but not surprised by the results of the survey in "Russia Today". However, I do think that concerns about the agenda and actions of the present US administration as of today has many concerned Americans investigating their inalienable rights.

James McEnanly

I am surprised by two things. First, that this article is published in "Russia Today", rather than an American outlet, and second, that so many Americans are willing to hand over to the government that which is inalienable.

Copenhagen "...there is only one thing you need to know. It is all a lie. "

December 18, 2009

It’s All a Lie: Copenhagen and Global Warming

As delegates in Copenhagen wrap up the greatest fraud perpetrated worldwide in the modern era, there is only one thing you need to know. It is all a lie.
It was a lie from the first moment a scientist like James Hansen told Congress on June 23, 1988 that the planet was going to be roasted by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and it was a lie when Al Gore wrote Earth in the Balance and there were still more lies in his Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.
A British court banned the documentary from being shown in their schools unless a long list of disclaimers was read to the students before his lies were inflicted on them. American students were not so fortunate. Indeed, as I have said many times before, global warming has been a form of child abuse, causing needless anxiety and fear for countless children on whom it was inflicted.
But how could such a lie be perpetrated on such a vast stage and for so long? My answer to you is “the Soviet Union.” From its inception in 1917 when the czarist monarchy was overthrown and Marxist theory, Communism, was imposed on Russia, whole generations were forced to suffer under this huge lie that the state would provide everything for everybody.
It is such a popular lie that it has been resurrected in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. It returned the Sandinistas to power in Nicaragua. In the last century, millions died under the Communist banner, but that lie never seems to die.
Little wonder then that, when Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s communist dictator addressed the conference, Andrew Bolt of Australia’s Herald-Sun reported that he received “a rousing round of applause.” He was followed by Zimbabwe’s despicable president, Robert Mugabe, who decried “these capitalist gods of carbon burp and belch their dangerous emissions.”
A conference that celebrates such communist blather betrays its true intent. No American President should participate in such a naked display of contempt for capitalism.
A really Big Lie told often enough acquires the verisimilitude of truth. Global warming, however, was dependent on a different kind of truth, one subject to vigorous review and challenge; it is scientific truth and no matter how many lies were told by the global warming scientists, there were others who stood their ground and challenged them.
By itself, the Big Lie cannot exist solely in a political framework like the United Nations or any one of the nations, including our own, that wasted billions based on it. It has to have the support of the media, both our own and those around the world.
Journalists are not scientists and they are subject to what scientists tell them unless they do some fairly easy investigation of their own. They didn’t! Instead, journalists at influential newspapers like The New York Times repeated and amplified every global warming lie and they continue to this day.
The true science, not the stuff conjured up on computer models, always refuted the global warming theory. That’s because it was widely known to honest climatologists, meteorologists, and others. It was always known that carbon dioxide (CO2) was a miniscule part of the Earth’s atmosphere, barely 0.038 percent. Of that amount, man-made CO2 emissions constitute less than 0.00022 percent! Some will argue these figures, but they always remain within these very tiny parameters.
Carbon dioxide has nothing to do with global warming or as it is now called, climate change.
Nor has the Earth been rapidly warming. The last warming cycle began around 1850 as a respond to a Little Ice Age that began in 1300. The Earth warmed about one degree Fahrenheit. By 1998, it began to cool again!
So, when President Obama shows up in Copenhagen to attend the liar’s competition called the United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP-15, anything and everything that is said about global warming, fossil fuels, CO2, et cetera, will be a lie.
Al Gore has been at the conference and managed to stumble around like a punch-drunk boxer saying really stupid things like the Arctic will completely melt away any day now or that the center of the Earth is millions of degrees hot. But Gore is a stranger to the truth because, as you may recall, he’s a politician who served in Congress and as Vice President.
If George W. Bush is remembered for anything, it will be that he saved the nation from a “President Gore.”
At the heart of the Big Lie is, of course, MONEY! There are millions to be made selling bogus “carbon credits” for the use of energy. That’s what the administration’s “Cap-and-Trade” scam is all about.
Billions were wasted on “climate research” over the past twenty years and now they are being wasted on “clean energy” research which we’re told is needed to replace “dirty” fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. It too is all a lie.
Solar and wind power can never and will never replace or even rival the power that so-called fossil fuels provide. Combined, solar and wind provide barely one percent of all the electricity used daily in the nation. Biofuels are another bad idea.
Listen, if you can, to what’s going on in Copenhagen and remember, they are lying.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Pro-Life Counselor Says She was Threatened with Gun by Off-Duty Officer

Source: LifeSiteNews.com

Interview: Pro-Life Counselor Says She was Threatened with Gun by Off-Duty Officer

By Kathleen Gilbert

AURORA, Illinois, December 17, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A sidewalk counselor with the Pro-Life Action League has filed a report against an off-duty Chicago police officer, whom she says pulled a gun on her when she approached him and his female companion before they entered Aurora's Planned Parenthood clinic Wednesday morning.

Rachelle Crile of Naperville said that the incident occurred around 9 am, after she had gone back into her car to warm up from witnessing outside the abortion facility. There, she says, she noticed a man and woman in another vehicle pulling up and parking nearby.

Since the couple had not entered the Planned Parenthood parking lot, she says, she was unsure whether to approach with pro-life literature - but decided to give it a try after a brief prayer.

"I didn't want to be sitting there a couple spots away and then see them drive over there, and I could have offered them something that could possibly change their lives and save her from the horror of abortion, and save the child," Crile told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) Wednesday evening.

As she approached with literature, she said she saw the driver: "He had a gun, and he lifted it up, pointing it at me, looking at me," said Crile. "Obviously he was trying to send me a message."

Crile said she raised her arms and backed away to her car, and the driver and his female passenger entered the Planned Parenthood building.

Aurora Police spokesman Dan Ferrelli told the Naperville Sun there were no charges issued because the driver's story conflicted with Crile's, but claimed both Aurora and Chicago police were investigating the matter. The off-duty officer claimed he had flashed his badge at Crile, not a gun.

Police refused to release the officer's name to Crile or reporters.

Rachelle said on Wednesday evening that she was still shaken by the event. "I would know the difference between a gun and a badge," she said. "Why would I be scared of a badge?" Crile said she planned to pursue charges with the DuPage County State's Attorney's Office.

"As far as my future sidewalk counseling, I will get back out there, but, you know, it's obviously something that you'd have to think about," she said.

Eric Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League said that, while the League has had issues with individuals among the Chicago police force before, Wednesday's incident was unique.

"We've had threats, we've had cars swerving at people, we've even had arrests for some of that kind of stuff, but we've never had anything like this before, a gun being pulled on somebody," Scheidler told LSN.

Scheidler said Crile began training in sidewalk counseling in September, and called her "a very unassuming, very humble, sweet person, the least threatening person I think you can imagine." He called it "particularly troubling" that the incident happened with Crile.

"That's always a concern with something like this happening, that people would be afraid to get involved, and sometimes it does have a negative impact on involvement," he said. "But other times, it makes people feel like getting more involved. You never know."

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

100 Reasons Why Climate Change Is Natural

Source: UK News

CLIMATE CHANGE IS NATURAL: 100 REASONS WHY

Story Image


Climate change campaigners: 100 reasons why climate change is natural and not man-made

Tuesday December 15,2009

HERE are the 100 reasons, released in a dossier issued by the European Foundation, why climate change is natural and not man-made:

1) There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.

** EXPRESS NEWS: 100 REASONS WHY GLOBAL WARMING IS NATURAL**

2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

3) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.

4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.

5) Throughout the Earth’s history, temperatures have often been warmer than now and CO2 levels have often been higher – more than ten times as high.

6) Significant changes in
climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time.

7) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.

8) The IPCC theory is driven by just 60 scientists and favourable reviewers not the 4,000 usually cited.

9) Leaked e-mails from British climate scientists – in a scandal known as “Climate-gate” - suggest that that has been manipulated to exaggerate global warming

10) A large body of scientific research suggests that the sun is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.

11) Politicians and activiists claim rising sea levels are a direct cause of global warming but sea levels rates have been increasing steadily since the last ice age 10,000 ago

12) Philip Stott, Emeritus Professor of Biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London says climate change is too complicated to be caused by just one factor, whether CO2 or clouds

13) Peter Lilley MP said last month that “fewer people in Britain than in any other country believe in the importance of global warming. That is despite the fact that our Government and our political class—predominantly—are more committed to it than their counterparts in any other country in the world”.

14) In pursuit of the global warming rhetoric, wind farms will do very little to nothing to reduce CO2 emissions

15) Professor Plimer, Professor of Geology and Earth Sciences at the University of Adelaide, stated that the idea of taking a single trace gas in the atmosphere, accusing it and finding it guilty of total responsibility for climate change, is an “absurdity”

16) A Harvard University astrophysicist and geophysicist, Willie Soon, said he is “embarrassed and puzzled” by the shallow science in papers that support the proposition that the earth faces a climate crisis caused by global warming.

17) The science of what determines the earth’s temperature is in fact far from settled or understood.

18) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas, unlike water vapour which is tied to climate concerns, and which we can’t even pretend to control

19) A petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the political and media portrayal of global warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992. Today, more than 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, from 106 countries have signed it.

20) It is claimed the average global temperature increased at a dangerously fast rate in the 20th century but the recent rate of average global temperature rise has been between 1 and 2 degrees C per century - within natural rates

21) Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw, Poland says the earth’s temperature has more to do with cloud cover and water vapor than CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

22) There is strong evidence from solar studies which suggests that the Earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades

23) It is myth that receding glaciers are proof of global warming as glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for many centuries

24) It is a falsehood that the earth’s poles are warming because that is natural variation and while the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer we also see that the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder

25) The IPCC claims climate driven “impacts on biodiversity are significant and of key relevance” but those claims are simply not supported by scientific research

26) The IPCC threat of climate change to the world’s species does not make sense as wild species are at least one million years old, which means they have all been through hundreds of climate cycles

27) Research goes strongly against claims that CO2-induced global warming would cause catastrophic disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets.

28) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels are our best hope of raising crop yields to feed an ever-growing population

29) The biggest climate change ever experienced on earth took place around 700 million years ago

30) The slight increase in temperature which has been observed since 1900 is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term natural climate cycles

31) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels of some so-called “greenhouse gases” may be contributing to higher oxygen levels and global cooling, not warming

32) Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures

33) Today’s CO2 concentration of around 385 ppm is very low compared to most of the earth’s history – we actually live in a carbon-deficient atmosphere

34) It is a myth that CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas because greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume, and CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere

35) It is a myth that computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming because computer models can be made to “verify” anything

36) There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes

37) One statement deleted from a UN report in 1996 stated that “none of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases”

38) The world “warmed” by 0.07 +/- 0.07 degrees C from 1999 to 2008, not the 0.20 degrees C expected by the IPCC

39) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says “it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense” but there has been no increase in the intensity or frequency of tropical cyclones globally

40) Rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere can be shown not only to have a negligible effect on the Earth’s many ecosystems, but in some cases to be a positive help to many organisms

41) Researchers who compare and contrast climate change impact on civilizations found warm periods are beneficial to mankind and cold periods harmful

42) The Met Office asserts we are in the hottest decade since records began but this is precisely what the world should expect if the climate is cyclical

43) Rising CO2 levels increase plant growth and make plants more resistant to drought and pests

44) The historical increase in the air’s CO2 content has improved human nutrition by raising crop yields during the past 150 years

45) The increase of the air’s CO2 content has probably helped lengthen human lifespans since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution

46) The IPCC alleges that “climate change currently contributes to the global burden of disease and premature deaths” but the evidence shows that higher temperatures and rising CO2 levels has helped global populations

47) In May of 2004, the Russian Academy of Sciences published a report concluding that the Kyoto Protocol has no scientific grounding at all.

48) The “Climate-gate” scandal pointed to a expensive public campaign of disinformation and the denigration of scientists who opposed the belief that CO2 emissions were causing climate change

49) The head of Britain’s climate change watchdog has predicted households will need to spend up to £15,000 on a full energy efficiency makeover if the Government is to meet its ambitious targets for cutting carbon emissions.

50) Wind power is unlikely to be the answer to our energy needs. The wind power industry argues that there are “no direct subsidies” but it involves a total subsidy of as much as £60 per MWh which falls directly on electricity consumers. This burden will grow in line with attempts to achieve Wind power targets, according to a recent OFGEM report.

51) Wind farms are not an efficient way to produce energy. The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) accepts a figure of 75 per cent back-up power is required.

52) Global temperatures are below the low end of IPCC predictions not at “at the top end of IPCC estimates”

53) Climate alarmists have raised the concern over acidification of the oceans but Tom Segalstad from Oslo University in Norway , and others, have noted that the composition of ocean water – including CO2, calcium, and water – can act as a buffering agent in the acidification of the oceans.

54) The UN’s IPCC computer models of human-caused global warming predict the emergence of a “hotspot” in the upper troposphere over the tropics. Former researcher in the Australian Department of Climate Change, David Evans, said there is no evidence of such a hotspot

55) The argument that climate change is a of result of global warming caused by human activity is the argument of flat Earthers.

56) The manner in which US President Barack Obama sidestepped Congress to order emission cuts shows how undemocratic and irrational the entire international decision-making process has become with regards to emission-target setting.

57) William Kininmonth, a former head of the National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation, wrote “the likely extent of global temperature rise from a doubling of CO2 is less than 1C. Such warming is well within the envelope of variation experienced during the past 10,000 years and insignificant in the context of glacial cycles during the past million years, when Earth has been predominantly very cold and covered by extensive ice sheets.”

58) Canada has shown the world targets derived from the existing Kyoto commitments were always unrealistic and did not work for the country.

59) In the lead up to the Copenhagen summit, David Davis MP said of previous climate summits, at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and Kyoto in 1997 that many had promised greater cuts, but “neither happened”, but we are continuing along the same lines.

60) The UK ’s environmental policy has a long-term price tag of about £55 billion, before taking into account the impact on its economic growth.

61) The UN’s panel on climate change warned that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035. J. Graham Cogley a professor at Ontario Trent University, claims this inaccurate stating the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.

62) Under existing Kyoto obligations the EU has attempted to claim success, while actually increasing emissions by 13 per cent, according to Lord Lawson. In addition the EU has pursued this scheme by purchasing “offsets” from countries such as China paying them billions of dollars to destroy atmospheric pollutants, such as CFC-23, which were manufactured purely in order to be destroyed.

63) It is claimed that the average global temperature was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times but sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years according to Penn State University researcher Michael Mann. There is no convincing empirical evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20th century changes in average global temperature were unusual or unnatural.

64) Michael Mann of Penn State University has actually shown that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age did in fact exist, which contrasts with his earlier work which produced the “hockey stick graph” which showed a constant temperature over the past thousand years or so followed by a recent dramatic upturn.

65) The globe’s current approach to climate change in which major industrialised countries agree to nonsensical targets for their CO2 emissions by a given date, as it has been under the Kyoto system, is very expensive.

66) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had emailed one another about using a “trick” for the sake of concealing a “decline” in temperatures when looking at the history of the Earth’s temperature.

67) Global temperatures have not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years and have actually been falling for nine years. The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed a scientific team had expressed dismay at the fact global warming was contrary to their predictions and admitted their inability to explain it was “a travesty”.

68) The IPCC predicts that a warmer planet will lead to more extreme weather, including drought, flooding, storms, snow, and wildfires. But over the last century, during which the IPCC claims the world experienced more rapid warming than any time in the past two millennia, the world did not experience significantly greater trends in any of these extreme weather events.

69) In explaining the average temperature standstill we are currently experiencing, the Met Office Hadley Centre ran a series of computer climate predictions and found in many of the computer runs there were decade-long standstills but none for 15 years – so it expects global warming to resume swiftly.

70) Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote: “The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the Earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. Such hysteria (over global warming) simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth.”

71) Despite the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s status as the flagship of the fight against climate change it has been a failure.

72) The first phase of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which ran from 2005 to 2007 was a failure. Huge over-allocation of permits to pollute led to a collapse in the price of carbon from €33 to just €0.20 per tonne meaning the system did not reduce emissions at all.

73) The EU trading scheme, to manage carbon emissions has completely failed and actually allows European businesses to duck out of making their emissions reductions at home by offsetting, which means paying for cuts to be made overseas instead.

74) To date “cap and trade” carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions.

75) In the United States , the cap-and-trade is an approach designed to control carbon emissions and will impose huge costs upon American citizens via a carbon tax on all goods and services produced in the United States. The average family of four can expect to pay an additional $1700, or £1,043, more each year. It is predicted that the United States will lose more than 2 million jobs as the result of cap-and-trade schemes.

76) Dr Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has indicated that out of the 21 climate models tracked by the IPCC the differences in warming exhibited by those models is mostly the result of different strengths of positive cloud feedback – and that increasing CO2 is insufficient to explain global-average warming in the last 50 to 100 years.

77) Why should politicians devote our scarce resources in a globally competitive world to a false and ill-defined problem, while ignoring the real problems the entire planet faces, such as: poverty, hunger, disease or terrorism.

78) A proper analysis of ice core records from the past 650,000 years demonstrates that temperature increases have come before, and not resulted from, increases in CO2 by hundreds of years.

79) Since the cause of global warming is mostly natural, then there is in actual fact very little we can do about it. (We are still not able to control the sun).

80) A substantial number of the panel of 2,500 climate scientists on the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change, which created a statement on scientific unanimity on climate change and man-made global warming, were found to have serious concerns.

81) The UK’s Met Office has been forced this year to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by revelations about the data.

82) Politicians and activists push for renewable energy sources such as wind turbines under the rhetoric of climate change, but it is essentially about money – under the system of Renewable Obligations. Much of the money is paid for by consumers in electricity bills. It amounts to £1 billion a year.

83) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors.

84) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase science for political purposes.

85) Ice-core data clearly show that temperatures change centuries before concentrations of atmospheric CO2 change. Thus, there appears to be little evidence for insisting that changes in concentrations of CO2 are the cause of past temperature and climate change.

86) There are no experimentally verified processes explaining how CO2 concentrations can fall in a few centuries without falling temperatures – in fact it is changing temperatures which cause changes in CO2 concentrations, which is consistent with experiments that show CO2 is the atmospheric gas most readily absorbed by water.

87) The Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy contains a massive increase in electricity generation by wind power costing around £4 billion a year over the next twenty years. The benefits will be only £4 to £5 billion overall (not per annum). So costs will outnumber benefits by a range of between eleven and seventeen times.

88) Whilst CO2 levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout history, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and the growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years.

89) It is a myth that CO2 is a pollutant, because nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere and human beings could not live in 100% nitrogen either: CO2 is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is and CO2 is essential to life.

90) Politicians and climate activists make claims to rising sea levels but certain members in the IPCC chose an area to measure in Hong Kong that is subsiding. They used the record reading of 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level.

91) The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.

92) If one factors in non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements show little, if any, global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).

93) US President Barack Obama pledged to cut emissions by 2050 to equal those of 1910 when there were 92 million Americans. In 2050, there will be 420 million Americans, so Obama’s promise means that emissions per head will be approximately what they were in 1875. It simply will not happen.

94) The European Union has already agreed to cut emissions by 20 percent to 2020, compared with 1990 levels, and is willing to increase the target to 30 percent. However, these are unachievable and the EU has already massively failed with its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), as EU emissions actually rose by 0.8 percent from 2005 to 2006 and are known to be well above the Kyoto goal.

95) Australia has stated it wants to slash greenhouse emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, but the pledges were so unpopular that the country’s Senate has voted against the carbon trading Bill, and the Opposition’s Party leader has now been ousted by a climate change sceptic.

96) Canada plans to reduce emissions by 20 percent compared with 2006 levels by 2020, representing approximately a 3 percent cut from 1990 levels but it simultaneously defends its Alberta tar sands emissions and its record as one of the world’s highest per-capita emissions setters.

97) India plans to reduce the ratio of emissions to production by 20-25 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2020, but all Government officials insist that since India has to grow for its development and poverty alleviation, it has to emit, because the economy is driven by carbon.

98) The Leipzig Declaration in 1996, was signed by 110 scientists who said: “We – along with many of our fellow citizens – are apprehensive about the climate treaty conference scheduled for Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997” and “based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions.”

99) A US Oregon Petition Project stated “We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of CO2, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

100) A report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change concluded “We find no support for the IPCC’s claim that climate observations during the twentieth century are either unprecedented or provide evidence of an anthropogenic effect on climate.”