Excursions in the field 36

Theodore Shoebat has an article at Front Page making an important point: that Islam and Environmentalism are both collectivist ideologies, both of them anti-humanist and both of them deplorable. With most of what he says I agree.

Where I disagree with him is in his conclusion: that it is therefore better to be Christian.

Christianity has been a collectivist, totalitarian movement, and (I suspect) would be again if it could. While it is less oppressive than other ideologies in our time, its doctrines are no more true. And its morality, if not inhumane, is inhuman; if not anti-humanist, anti-human. Who can love everyone else? Does everyone deserve to be loved? Is forgiveness just? Was it perhaps the setting of unrealistic ethical goals that made the churches, both Catholic and Protestant, so cruel in their powerful past?

I expressed my opinions and quite a few disagreed with me, some so strongly that they condemned me to Hell.

The argument can be found in the Comments on the Shoebat article here.

Perhaps some of our readers may feel moved to join in – preferably on our own Comments page, but if under the Shoebat article, please let us know and give us the link.

 

Jillian Becker   January 20, 2013

The environmentalists’ tyrannical drive against civilization 334

Environmentalism is a religion with a collectivist ideology. Its aim is to undo civilization, thin out the numbers of people on the earth, and return them to the short, hard, primitive life of the savage.

Environmentalists are in power. The Left embraces them because socialists and greens share collectivist longings. Their power, of course, will be much reduced when they have far fewer people to tyrannize over, but they don’t seem to have thought of that.

Environmentalism is as imbecile, and as crippling of human potential, as every other religious tyranny. 

This is from an article by David Spady at Townhall:

Something’s amiss at the Department of Interior. Eight government scientists were recently fired or reassigned after voicing concerns to their superiors about faulty environmental science used for policy decisions. Which begs the question, “Are some government agencies manipulating science to advance political agendas?”

As the rest of the article makes clear, the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

… In in some government agencies, scientists who question the veracity and validity of scientific evidence used to formulate environmental regulations and policies are shunned, kept quiet, and purged. …

Intransigent purveyors of “green” propaganda know their greatest enemy is truth. One of the most famous propaganda experts was Germany’s Joseph Goebbels, who taught that if a lie is repeated often enough it will eventually be accepted as truth. Goebbels also knew that truth has to be suppressed if it contradicts the objectives of the propaganda. Goebbels wrote, “It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Over the past three decades, [the US] government has unleashed an unprecedented wave of environmental rules and regulations that affect nearly every aspect of American life, and for the most part the public has tolerated it. Public embrace of environmental propaganda and fear mongering about the apocalyptic consequences of mankind’s abuse of the planet have elevated environmentalism to a status above national security. The public is now more likely to give up rights and freedoms for the cause of saving the planet than for security reasons. 

Rural America has long been a target of environmentalists. Government agencies such as the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and the DOI (Department of Interior) have been hijacked by extreme elements of environmentalism and rural America is feeling the heat. When environmental protocol is pitted against the welfare of a rural community, these agencies almost exclusively side with the environmental cause, and adverse consequences to the human element are considered last, if at all. 

The Department of Interior refers to itself as the nation’s landlord. It controls almost 30% of the nation’s 2.27 billion acres of land and its natural resources, and as a regulatory agency, it creates policies to govern how public land and these resources are used. Under the leadership of Secretary Ken Salazar the agency has engaged in an aggressive crusade to obstruct and undermine the use of natural resources, restrict human access to public lands, and increase its influence over private property. Decisions made by the agency are presumed to be based on sound scientific analysis, but often times policy is driving the science, rather than science driving environmental policy. This has led to harmful decisions and a violation of the public trust.

A case in point is the story of DOI science adviser and scientific integrity officer, Dr. Paul Houser, who found out that by simply doing his job can be hazardous to one’s career. Dr. Houser is an expert in hydrology who was hired by DOI’s Bureau of Reclamation to evaluate scientific data used in the department’s decision making process. He was assigned several Western State projects including a scheme to remove four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in Northern California—the largest dam removal project in U.S. history. When a summary of science posted on the web to support DOI’s claim for removal of the dams omitted several crucial factors from expert panel reports, Dr. Houser brought his concerns to his superiors. He was repeatedly told to refrain from sharing his concerns through electronic communication, which could be subject to Freedom of Information Act discovery.  

Dr. Houser learned firsthand that policy was driving the science, rather than the other way around, when he was told by his superiors at DOI, “Secretary Salazar wants to remove those dams. So your actions here aren’t helpful.”

According to the DOI the premise for Klamath River dams removal is to restore Coho salmon spawning habitat above the dams. However, official DOI documents reveal scientific concerns that dam removal may, in fact, result in species decline based on millions of tons of toxic sediment build up behind the dams that will make its way to the ocean. Water temperature increases without the dams could also negatively impact the salmon. These studies were ignored.

So the objective is not to save the salmon. It is to use the salmon as an excuse for destroying the dams. What then is the real reason for wanting this destruction?

Concerns about the human toll and impact to local Klamath Basin communities were also brushed aside. Those most interested in the well-being of the environment they live and work in, were given a backseat to special interests thousands of miles away.  

What special interests would those be?

The Klamath hydroelectric dams provide clean inexpensive energy to thousands of local residents who will be forced to pay much higher premiums if the dams are removed because California has strict new laws for use of renewable energy. The town of Happy Camp sits on the banks of the Klamath River and could be wiped out with seasonal flooding without the dams. Once Coho salmon are introduced into the upper Klamath, farmers and ranchers will be faced with water use restrictions and invasive government regulation of private land. The economic impact will be devastating, property values will depreciate and the agriculture community, often operating on slim profit margins, will be subjected to the fate of the once vibrant logging industry which fell victim to the spotted owl crusades.

Last year, Dr. Houser raised these concerns and was subsequently fired by the DOI. “I put my concerns forward and immediately thereafter I was pushed out of the organization,” he stated. The agency sent a clear message to the rest of their employees and scientists – Salazar’s dam busting agenda cannot be subject to any internal scientific scrutiny. Goebbels would be proud. Truth must be repressed when it contradicts the objective.  

Dr. Houser did the right thing. He did his job. His integrity as a scientist was more important than a paycheck. But he remains concerned about his colleagues in DOI, “There are a lot of good scientists that work for the government but they are scared, they are scared that what happened to me might happen to them. This is an issue (about) the honesty and transparency of government and an issue for other scientists in government who want to speak out.” A few weeks ago Dr. Houser settled a wrongful discharge case with the DOI. Terms of his settlement are not public.

Now, seven more DOI scientists working on the Klamath Project have filed a complaint with PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) claiming they have been reassigned or terminated for disagreement with the integrity of the science used to support dam removal. They have charged DOI’s Bureau of Reclamation’s management with “coercive manipulation, sublimating science to political priorities, censorship, and scientific misconduct.”

What are those political priorities?

To control people? Why? In order to save the earth? Or are they using the cause of “saving the earth” in order to control people? Do any of them know? And why are we letting them do it?

*

This is from the local newspaper of a city in California (whose City Council is also an enthusiastic implementer of Agenda 21*):

The city’s renewable-energy program continues to be the gold standard of the green movement, with a participation rate of about 21 percent – the highest in the nation.

If that means 21% of the city’s population, this is what just 21% is imposing on the rest:

This year, [the city’s] battle against global warming will hit one of its most significant milestones yet when the city adopts a plan for making its entire electricity operation “carbon neutral”. The term … means that the city’s electricity portfolio would have net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by purchasing from clean power sources and buying offsets for standard “brown” electricity. In November the City Council  approved an official definition of “carbon neutral” …

Words will mean what they want them to mean …

… and in December, the Utilities Advisory Commission signed off on a staff plan to reach the rare and prestigious plateau this year.

They’re high on their success, quite unable to see how lunatic it is.

[The city will] join an elite cadre of cities leading the fight against climate change through emission-free electricity.

They will still be using mostly “brown” electricity – about 70% according to their own pie-chart – but because of the “offsets” they can pretend that they are using “emission-free electricity” only.

Of course, like all idealisms, this pretense has its price tag. All those offsets must cost a packet! The consumers will be paying more for their power.

But only a teenie-tiny eenie-weenie bittie-bit, they plead:

If things go as planned, the Utilities Department estimates that the city’s leap to carbon neutrality will cost the average ratepayer between $2.60 and $4.2o more per year.

Sure. You can trust them on that, can’t you?

One councillor dared to dissent:

“I’m concerned that the reason why it’s so cheap is because the benefit is so small,” [he] said.

We hope he has a gun for self-protection, that insurgent.

* Putting Agenda 21 in our search slot will take readers to full descriptions of this spreading blight.

Home sweet closet 129

Dr Ileana Johnson Paugh – whose articles on this subject we often quote – brings our information up to date on how the pernicious Agenda 21 is making headway in America:

The one world government elites stand to make billions from the global warming/climate change scam. That is why they are not going to give up. Too many billions have already been invested to implement a society dependent on an omnipotent government that claims to control nature – they are not going to give up that easily or any time soon.

The fact that we are forced to pay, cap, swap, and trade carbon taxes on the open market does nothing to affect the level of pollution that takes place in [a very small portion of] the world. It is so arrogant to believe that humans can control the fury of Mother Nature when it is ready to unleash its ire.

Although scientists have debunked global warming and have proven that the globe has actually cooled in the last 16 years, our Secretary of State still promotes the myth of global warming. …

Climate alarmists have been meeting at Doha* to renew their vows made long ago at Kyoto to reduce the world to poverty. Though they don’t of course put it quite like that, that’s what it amounts to. Their stated intention is to “negotiate a complete transformation of the economic structure of the world.”

The United Nation’s multifaceted assault on every human activity and its end goal to control and destroy capitalism to the benefit of the one world communist governance includes the U.N. Agenda 21 with its hallmark of Sustainable Development, Green Growth, Green Cities, Solar Energy, Wind Energy, alternative food and plant derived energy, Green everything from cradle to grave.

I have watched this complex Agenda 21 octopus encroach everything across the globe stealthily, with little resistance from the population. Why would anyone oppose such a kind and gentle goal of greening everything? Who does not want a green planet or clean air and water? Who does not want to recycle inputs in order to maximize the use of raw materials? The problem is that the goal is more nefarious than people are led to believe if they only took the time to read and inform themselves.

The United Nations is concerned about the size of our cars, our homes, our property, our farms, our wealth, the size of our “socially unjust” use of energy and resources, our recreational areas, the size of our hunting and fishing grounds, and the size and rights to our living space in general vis-à-vis a needy planet whose wildlife needs more space and wilderness devoid of humans. …

To conserve space and reduce human habitation to city dwelling in high rise and/or crowded spaces, the liberal architects and developers have come up with a new green idea – the 150-200 square foot home in an alley, the new “American dream.” Americans don’t know yet that this is what they want – they must be first convinced, indoctrinated, or coerced that this exactly how they want to live in the future.

The Northeast Washington neighborhood of Stronghold (close to the Capitol) is building a cluster of Lilliputian houses. Emily Wax, of the Washington Post, describes such homes as a dream of “compact bathrooms and cozy sleeping lofts that add up to living spaces that are smaller than the walk-in closets in a suburban McMansion.”

There is no secret that proponents of Green Growth and Agenda 21 hate suburban sprawl and wish to ban further building of homes in suburbia because it is unsustainable growth. They would love to move everyone into high-rises downtown within walking distance of everything, abandoning the land to the state.

Diminutive homes that can be bought with wheels were first designed by Tumbleweed Tiny House Co. in Santa Rosa, California in 2000. According to Wax, “their increasing popularity could be seen as a denunciation of conspicuous consumption.”

“Conspicuous consumption” has long been the phrase favored by communists to describe people living comfortably, owning property, and generally spending the money they have earned in whatever ways they like.

I have not met one person yet who was eager to live in a space the size of a prison cell unless forced to.

Boneyard Studios preferred the Smurf-sized houses to be built in a community connected to a neighborhood but zoning laws do not allow residential dwellings on alley lots unless they are at least 30 feet wide. No problem, it is time for D.C. to change its zoning laws and make them progressive.

The tiny homes sell for $20,000 to $50,000. Who can afford a real house when the economy has been driven into a downward spiral in the last four years and it is harder and harder to qualify for a real mortgage loan when you’ve been living in your parents’ basement unemployed? …

What are the best selling points of a “tiny” house? They are easy to clean, mobile, “save a ton of money on heating and AC,” and the price is right. Besides, the generational trend gurus instruct us that our love affair with a real house ended when progressives took over the economy and turned it into a disaster.

Saving money on heating and cooling, of course, features prominently into the playbook of Agenda 21 supporters who would prefer to roll back the clock to pre-industrial America in terms of energy use and living conditions, preferably to pioneer days. …

Affordable-housing promoters hope that “tiny” homes will replace the much maligned trailer parks and low-income housing – well, at least until a hurricane or straight line winds decide to make land in D.C.

Most living units will accomodate one person only. Families must be broken up, the bearing of children discouraged (though copulation promoted with “free” contraceptives). Life in these tiny spaces will of necessity be austere. As austere as in a prison cell. Little room for even essential belongings. No room to entertain friends. Almost none for books, recorded music or movies, photographs, pictures, any pet bigger than a fish, collections or hobbies. To stretch your legs you’ll have to go out into the public arena. That’s the idea, of course: privacy must be extremely limited; your activities must be visible, communal, controllable.

No dystopia yet conceived by any fiction writer, no actual communist society in all history, matches up to this nightmare.

Its only redeeming feature is that it will be so stagnant a society that it will perish through sterility and death – unless human instincts not entirely crushed will drive the regimented beings to rebellion and the overthrow of their enslavers.

Better recognize what’s coming now, and resist it, than enter that hell on earth.

 

* Lord Monckton was thrown out after telling the conference that there has been no global warming for the last 16 years – which is true.

PS. The UN must be destroyed.

The state is imposing a religion 58

Environmentalism does not posit the existence of a superhuman being, though some of its acolytes personify the earth as Gaia – the Greek name for an ancient earth goddess – and worship of the earth is implicit in the cult. But it is a religion, as much arising out of superstition, propounding an orthodoxy and demanding strict adherence to it with threats of penalty for disobedience, as any other religion. And it is being imposed on the United States in defiance of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

These are extracts from an article by Paul Driessen at Townhall:

Climate alarmists are meeting in Doha, Qatar, to hammer out a new international treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires this year. The US Environmental Protection Agency is poised to unleash its first wave of carbon dioxide regulations. And Congress is teaming up with the White House to legislate taxes on hydrocarbon use and CO2 emissions  

This serious triple threat to our energy, economy, jobs, living standards, health and welfare is justified by assertions that the actions will stabilize Earth’s climate and prevent a litany of global warming horrors.

Our planet’s climate has never been stable, and never will be. There is no empirical evidence that carbon dioxide drives climate change, or that greenhouse gases have supplanted the complex and interrelated natural forces that have produced big and little ice ages, floods and droughts, stormy and quiescent periods throughout the ages.

Even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen from 280 parts per million before 1880 to 391 ppm (0.0391%) today, average global temperatures have flat-lined for 16 years; hurricane and tornado frequency and intensity have fallen to new lows; Antarctic sea ice continues to expand, while Arctic ice caps were reduced, not by warming, but by huge storms; and the rate of sea level rise remains steady.

While alarmists insist that Hurricane Sandy was “unprecedented” and proof that “climate change is real,” it is just one of many major storms that have battered New York and eastern Canada over the years.

Moreover, every ton of painful, economy-crippling US carbon dioxide reductions would be offset by 100 tons from India, China and elsewhere, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations would continue to climb.

But these inconvenient truths are irrelevant to climate campaigners, who are using “dangerous manmade climate change” as the best pretext ever devised to control energy use and economies. They simply hypothesize, model and assert that every observed weather and climate phenomenon is due to human CO2 emissions. Warmer or colder, wetter or drier, more ice or less, more storms, fewer storms, occasional big storms – if not now, someday, sooner or later. It’s exactly what climate alarmists predicted.

This is not science. It is political science, rooted in a loathing of hydrocarbons, economic growth and humanity.

It is ideological, religious – the only state-sanctioned, state-supported religion permitted today.

And like the super pontiffs of every other religion, its high priests grow rich by exploiting the superstition of the believers. Fortunes are being made out of the myth of manmade global warming.

Well-connected political cronies take hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for “green energy” and “global warming prevention” programs, funnel it to soon-to-be-bankrupt companies, keep a few million for themselves, and launder a few hundred thousand back to the politicians who brokered the deals. Obama campaign bundlers … received more than $21,000 of corporate welfare for each dollar they donated to the Obama reelection campaign. Big Green environmentalist groups also garner countless millions in taxpayer lucre.

The consequences for average workers [of Doha, EPA, and the carbon tax] and their families are dire. … The effects [of even one] will be disastrous. If all three are imposed … the impacts will be utterly devastating.

Ignoring these facts, extensive other evidence for natural climate change, and the numerous scientists who reject their manmade climate catastrophe claims, advocates of a new Doha climate treaty, EPA “CO2 endangerment” rules, and “carbon taxes” insist these actions are needed to avoid ecological calamities.

They are adamant in contending that carbon taxes will somehow benefit the economy, create jobs and balance out-of-control spending. One is reminded of Will Rogers insightful quip: “Suppose you were an idiot – and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

Every one of these actions is intended to increase the cost of the hydrocarbon energy that powers our economy. But raising the cost of transportation fuels, electricity, lighting, heating, air conditioning, and thus of food, materials and equipment will severely impact the bottom line for factories, utilities, offices, farms, shops, airlines, shippers, hospitals, schools …

And even , as the writer points out, government itself.

The poorest families may get rebates for their increased energy costs … institutions will not. They will be forced to reduce wages and benefits, hire fewer full-time employees, lay people off, outsource operations to countries where energy costs are lower, or even close their doors.

Only government will never close its doors, sad to say.

Taxes paid by companies and employees will dwindle. Instead of paying taxes, newly jobless workers will collect unemployment and welfare – from shrinking government coffers. … [Shrinking because] these anti-hydrocarbon policies also mean the US Treasury will be deprived of hundreds of billions in lease bonuses, royalties, taxes and other revenues that it would realize from the development of our nation’s vast oil, natural gas and coal deposits. Instead, the United States will be forced to pay billions more for imported oil, often from dictatorial, unethical, environmentally reckless countries.

Environmentalism will impoverish all nations.

New hydrocarbon energy restrictions and green energy demands will deprive Third World families and communities of abundant, reliable, affordable energy, obstruct human rights progress, and keep entire nations impoverished. They will kill millions more from lung infections (from burning wood and dung), intestinal diseases (from contaminated water), malaria and other diseases of poverty and eco-imperialism.

“Eco-imperialism” is a word that should become common currency.

There are always people – too many of them – who want to rule the lives of others. They like to find big excuses for imposing their will on the rest of us. Today the most powerful of these types are the environmentalists. They’ve found the biggest excuse ever. A force majeure. If we don’t do as they say, the earth will burn up and  … what? All living things will perish? The new eschatology.

Within a hundred years of Christianity being made the state religion by the Emperor Theodosius in 380, Rome fell (476), and the western Roman Empire came to an end. The Christian ethos was against fighting to preserve civilization. A thousand years of darkness descended on Europe.

Will it take a hundred years for  – let’s coin a word for this new religion – Gaianity to reduce the declining West to poverty and stagnation, ripe for Islam to conquer?

We must not let it happen.

When will they ever learn? 87

Although the Koran is believed by Muslims to contain all the knowledge a man could ever need, the Obama administration is spending ample tax-dollars coaching Muslims in science and technology.

As far as we can discover, it is the only religious group at home or abroad to be given this expensive attention.

But then, Islam has earned its reward from Americans, hasn’t it?

Here’s the information quoted in full from a US Government Fact Sheet:

Science and Technology Engagement With the Muslim World

Progress in Realizing the President’s Vision of Enhanced Science and Technology (S&T)
Partnership in the Muslim World

 

1. Science Envoys: Three of America’s most prominent scientists traveled and engaged with counterparts in Morocco, Egypt, Indonesia, and other countries.

2. OPIC Fund: The OPIC Global Technology and Innovation Fund attracted almost $2 billion in private investment to support technological development projects to be implemented in Muslim communities around the world.

3. Center of Excellence on Water: USAID and State Department began the creation of a Middle East Water Center after extensive consultations across the region.

The program pursues the shibboleths of the left:

4. Center of Excellence on Climate Change: USAID and the State Department began the creation of an Asia Regional Climate Change Center after extensive consultations across the region, with an anticipated initial focus on water-scarcity issues.

Here’s one specially worth noting:

5. Gulf Nuclear Energy Infrastructure Institute: This newly established institute — a collaborative effort involving the State Department, Department of Energy (DOE), Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, UAE Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation, Sandia National Laboratory, and Texas A&M University’s Nuclear Security Science & Policy Institute — will work with Gulf States through regional workshops and follow-up bilateral training to assist those states that decide to pursue nuclear energy with the tools to do so in a safe, secure, and safeguarded manner.

It all sounds wonderfully friendly and cozy, this communion with the religion that is dedicated to our destruction:

6. Entrepreneurship Summit: This summit brought together successful business and social entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, development bankers, and other business experts to discuss ideas and share experiences with a view toward creating support networks that will help promote development in Muslim communities.

7. Expanded Science Corps: Secretary of State Clinton committed to expanding the number of Environment, Science, Technology, and Health (ESTH) officers at embassies, with new positions already being filled in the Middle Easter and North Africa (MENA).

But she grudges every penny spent on protection for our diplomats in the Islamic Middle East. (See all our recent posts on the murder of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans in Libya.)

8. Regional R&D Collaboration: The State Department launched six new Middle East Regional Cooperation projects to fund applied research and S&T cooperation involving institutions in Jordan, West Bank/Gaza, Tunisia, and Israel on topics in agriculture, environmental protection and global and regional health.

Cooperation projects? Jordan, “West Bank/Gaza”, Tunisia with Israel?  Well, good luck with that.

9. Bilateral R&D Collaboration: The United States and Indonesia concluded a new S&T Agreement and the United States provided a doubling of financial support for S&T agreements with Egypt and Pakistan.

10. Frontiers of Science Program: The U.S. National Academy of Sciences expanded this program to support linkages between young scientists in the United States and Southeast Asia, with planned expansion to additional regions as well.

11. MENA POWER 2010: The U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) sponsored a Middle East and North Africa technology and projects forum to match MENA policymakers and project stakeholders in the electric power sector with U.S. providers of equipment and service solutions.

For such vital “investment”, the heavily-indebted United States borrows or prints money.

Lots more moola is to be lavished on solar panels (and windmills?)  in Islamic states – “green energy” being another bee in Obama’s bonnet:

12. Energy:

  • Memorandum of Understanding for Clean Energy Cooperation: DOE partnered with UAE’s multi-billion-dollar Masdar City clean energy initiative, with delegates and DOE officials outlining an initial work plan.
  • Memorandum of Understanding for Cooperation: Secretary Chu signed this MOU during his visit to the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, in Riyadh, to facilitate partnerships with DOE national laboratories, U.S. universities and scientific institutions.
  • Feasibility Studies: USTDA supported extensive feasibility studies throughout the region to determine potential capabilities for geothermal energy, solar energy, and smart grid technology.

13. Information Communication Technology:

  • Iraq Science and Technology Virtual Science Library project was officially transferred to Iraqi government control and administration. 7500 users are now registered, 95% of the university population is participating, 1,000,000 articles have been downloaded to date, and publications by Iraqi authors are increasing apace and expected to reach about 300 this year.
  • NSF supported a host of electronic networking programs, including implementation of a multi-million-dollar broad-band internet linkage to Egypt and Pakistan, and provided support to involve Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, France, and nearly all countries in North Africa in a network for research on new materials for renewable energy. Maghreb Digital Library. The State Department supported the establishment of a Digital Library for the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania) to support development in S&T, increase access to digitized scientific data and research, and encourage partnership and networking.
US cash to France? In a program of outreach to Muslims? What does that tell us about France, and which section of the French population Obama is interested in?

14. Health:

  • Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) jointly hosted a Health Dialogue with Ministers of Health from the OIC member states in Geneva on the margins of the World Health Assembly. Concrete steps were outlined for enhanced collaboration.
  • The National Institutes of Health conducted training in tobacco control, injury and trauma, bioethics [?] and genetics. This included meetings among twelve regional nations across MENA and SE Asia, leading to the creation of new programs in medical schools in the participating nations.

15. Water: The U.S. Geological Survey supported extensive training in collection and analysis of water samples, workshops on water contamination, training on the establishment of digital water resources data systems, and consultation on the establishment of water quality laboratories across the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia.

16. Space: NASA signed agreements with several nations for future collaboration on space programs. NASA now has agreements with 30 of the world’s more than 50 Muslim-majority nations.

17. Pollution: The Environmental Protection Agency has teamed up with Indonesia and Jordan to create programs aimed at decreasing air pollution in both nations. Breathe Easy Jakarta and Jordan’s Environmental Rangers are just two of the programs implemented to increase public participation and enforcement and accountability in the fight against pollution.

And lots more is in the pipeline. Unless, that is, Mitt Romney becomes president and cancels this massive transfer of US borrowed wealth to Islamic states.

Top 10 Activities in the Year Ahead

1. Global Engagement Fund: S&T collaboration is an important part of the new $100M Global Engagement Fund submitted to Congress for FY2011.

2. US-Egypt Year of Science 2011: This year-long enterprise will celebrate US Egypt engagement in science, promote interest among Egyptian youth in science-related careers and research, and promote digital engagement among the Egyptian science community with US peers and institutions.

3. New Science Envoys: The Administration will name three new envoys, with plans to travel to Central Asia, East and West Africa, and Southeast Asia.

4. Science, Technology, and Innovation Conference 2011: This conference will include representatives from Muslim communities around the world in cooperation with Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) and other key stakeholders.

5. White House/OSTP Digital Knowledge Networking Event: This major international event will bring together ICT leaders from public and private foundations involved in electronic knowledge sharing, technology, education, and development, along with other experts, to move from idea to realization of a significant increase in on-line knowledge-sharing in science and technology.

6. Middle East Energy Efficiency Center: DOE, State, and USAID will launch an effort in the Middle East to promote and enhance regional cooperation in science and technology, focusing on six energy-efficiency initiatives.

7. Challenges & Awards: EPA/USAID will launch a challenge to drive innovation for water technologies serving international and domestic constituencies.

8. Forest Conservation: The Department of Interior will work with several nations to preserve nature reserves and protect endangered species.

9. Eye on the Earth – Abu Dhabi 2010: EPA will co-sponsor this event to address the establishment of a global environmental information network.

10. Joint Ocean Exploration: NOAA’s research vessel Okeanos Explorer and the Indonesian research vessel Baruna Jaya will make a pioneering joint mission to the “Coral Triangle” in the Indo-Pacific region in the summer of 2011.

Note that in all this there is no mention of any project to promote the education of women in the Muslim world. We do not advocate the spending of US tax dollars on women’s education in Afghanistan (for instance), only suggesting that if the Obama administration is concerned with improving knowledge in Islam, they might raise the subject in some of their get-togethers with their Muslim buddies.

A prize for failing, murdering, or doing nothing 195

Just as the bankrupt EU (with any luck) is about to self-destruct, some thick Norwegians decide to give it a Nobel Prize.

There’s nothing unusual about the Prize being awarded to the Least Deserving. They gave it to the Grandfather of Contemporary Political Terrorism, Yasser Arafat. They gave it (instead of a more suitable Chicken Little prize not yet instituted) to the climate-threat hoaxster, Al Gore. They gave it to Barack Obama for doing nothing at all.

This is from an editorial in the IBD:

This year’s Peace Prize goes to the EU for its “successful struggle for peace and reconciliation and for democracy and human rights.” This isn’t the committee’s worst choice. But it’s one of them.

Barack Obama, Al Gore, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Yasser Arafat and Mikhail Gorbachev were all worse choices.

So picking the EU, which is having a hard time holding itself together, isn’t the most asinine decision the committee has made. But it could have done better.

If transforming most of Europe “from a continent of wars to a continent of peace” is the standard, the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize should have gone to the United States. This country has been more effective at keeping peace in Europe than any other entity.

America has had a strong military presence in Europe since World War II. The U.S. has subsidized European security with troops on the ground, jets in the air and trillions spent.

With money that would have otherwise been used for defense freed up for other purposes, Western European nations set about building their now-bankrupt welfare states. While America bought guns for Europe, Europe bought butter for itself.

The five-member Nobel Peace Prize Committee, based in Oslo, has itself become a joke. Maybe it’s time to give the Nobel Peace Prize responsibilities to a less frivolous group.

Re-Volting waste 99

This is from Fox News:

A Michigan hybrid battery plant built with $150 million in taxpayer funds is putting workers on furlough before a single battery has been produced. …

Workers at the Compact Power manufacturing facilities in Holland, Mich., run by LG Chem, have been placed on rotating furloughs, working only three weeks per month based on lack of demand for lithium-ion cells.

The facility, which was opened in July 2010 with a groundbreaking attended by Obama, has yet to produce a single battery for the Chevrolet Volt, the troubled electric car from General Motors. The plant’s batteries also were intended to be used in Ford’s electric Focus.

Production of the taxpayer-subsidized Volt has been plagued by work stoppages, and the effect has trickled down to companies and plants that build parts for it – including the batteries.

“Considering the lack of demand for electric vehicles, despite billions of dollars from the Obama administration that were supposed to stimulate it, it’s not surprising what has happened with LG Chem. Just because a ton of money is poured into a product does not mean that people will buy it,” [said] Paul Chesser, an associate fellow with the National Legal and Policy Center.

Or, to put it another way – you can’t buck the market. As Friedrich Hayek says.

The 650,000-square-foot, $300 million facility was slated to produce 15,000 batteries per year, while creating hundreds of new jobs. But to date, only 200 workers are employed at the plant by by the South Korean company. Batteries for the Chevy Volts that have been produced have been made by an LG plant in South Korea.

The factory was partly funded by a $150 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. LG also received sizeable tax breaks from the local government, saving nearly $50 million in property taxes over 15 years and another $2.5 million annually in business taxes. Landing the factory was hailed as a coup when shovels first hit the ground.

“You are leading the way in showing how manufacturing jobs are coming right back here to the United States of America,” Obama told workers at the ground-breaking ceremony. …

Chesser said no amount of government subsidies can counter the practical problems posed by plug-in cars.

“Electric car batteries do not perform much better than they did 100 years ago,” he said. “Research has not conquered the battery storage issue, and therefore the electric transportation ‘stimulus’ did not boost the ‘technology of the future,’ but instead a century-old technology as far as performance and capability goes.”

He added that the LG Chem plant’s problems show that the unpopularity of electric cars despite heavy taxpayer subsidies has had more widespread negative effects than most realize.

“Billions of dollars were put into Volt research, and Ford received $5.9 billion in stimulus loans to retrofit plants to produce [electric vehicles],” Chesser said. “The battery companies like LG Chem that were supposed to service them have no customers to speak of. Their existence was solely based on access to taxpayer money.

“Had it been private investors rather than government bureaucrats making the decision, there either would have been a reality check about the industry, or only those who made individual decisions to invest would have lost their money, not taxpayers.”

Obama picks losers. As Mitt Romney says.

 

(Hat-tip for the Fox report, our reader and commenter Robert Yarber)

 

The Boy Who Cried Warming 83

Jesse Jones, the writer of the movie The Boy Who Cried Warming, sends us this message:

There is a new force in the world of Global Warming, and unlike proposed Cap and Trade Legislation, this one is FREE! A documentary film encompassing all the public misinformation on Climate Change (hence the one and a half hour running time), The Boy Who Cried Warming is now available online for audiences to enjoy at this website …  Support our grassroots campaign through word of mouth. Help spread the word!

We strongly recommend the film. It is riveting. The arguments against the hypothesis – or rather the apodictic declaration – that earth’s warming is because of human activity are very clearly explained. And the conclusion is that the reasons why the environmentalist ideologues make their false claim are: to raise revenue with the  sale of indulgences for carbon output, and to extend government control over our lives.

Fascinating snippets we particularly noted:

Carbon dioxode rises do not drive rises in temperature. On the contrary, they follow temperature rises by some 300 to 8oo years. The temperature drops suddenly, but the carbon dioxide (always a very small part of the atmosphere) remains at the same level for some 30,ooo years.

In ancient times people tried to prevent destructive weather by propitiating supernatural powers with human sacrifice, and that is what the Manmade Global Warming priests are doing again now, trying to make us sacrifice our advanced way of life to “save the planet”.

Here’ s the trailer. We hope it whets your appetite to watch the whole film.

Posted under Climate, Commentary, Environmentalism, Science, Videos by Jillian Becker on Wednesday, September 26, 2012

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The death of nations 318

Environmentalists, collectivists, communists, barbarians, lunatics – it doesn’t matter which of those words you use to designate them, they are all synonymous in this case – really are taking over control of the world.

Here is the Wildlife Project map showing their plans for the future of America:

We have taken the map and the following quotations from Dr Ileana Johnson Paugh, who writes authoritatively at Canada Free Press:

The map was produced by Dr. Michael Coffman, editor of Discerning the Times Digest and NewsBytes and CEO of Sovereignty International, to stop the ratification of the international treaty on Convention on Biological Diversity one hour before the scheduled cloture and ratification vote.

Which, however, it failed to do.

The mandate of the Convention of Biological Diversity draws buffer zones, core reserves and corridors to protect biodiversity. Areas in green will allow housing. Areas in yellow will be buffer zones, highly regulated with no homes and possible hiking. Red areas will be core reserves and corridors off-limits to human access and human habitation. …

After numerous United Nations conferences around the globe spanning decades and a concerted effort by third world governments led by individuals like Maurice Strong and Gro Harlem Brundtland … the UN Agenda 21 became reality at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

This conference produced three documents: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (an international treaty), the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (an international treaty), and UN Agenda 21 (not a treaty but a “soft law”).

President Herbert Walker Bush signed along with 178 countries but refused to sign the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity because it required transfer of technology without recognition of proprietary rights. However, President Bush said, “It is the sacred principles enshrined in the UN Charter to which the American people will henceforth pledge their allegiance.” I am sure the American people were very surprised or perhaps totally unaware that a U.S. President would pledge allegiance to a foreign body instead of the U.S. Constitution.

UN Agenda 21 is a “soft law” document, not ratified by Congress. Parts of it have been incorporated into other laws passed because Congressmen do not read the bills they pass or do not understand the full scope of the UN Agenda 21. The 40-chapter document limits the behavior and freedoms of individuals and firms, involving every facet of human life.

UN Agenda 21 makes suggestions and recommendations that are adapted into law at the state and local levels through comprehensive land use plans which are voted on and included by the board of supervisors into local zoning codes. Citizens do not understand its damaging ramifications to their private property, the ability to make a living, to use their land, grow food in their gardens, sell their produce freely, and engage in agriculture.  …

UN Agenda 21 goals include but are not limited to:

• Redistribution of population according to resources

• Government control of land use in order to achieve equitable distribution of resources

• Land use control through zoning and planning

• Government control of “excessive” profits from land use [our quotation marks here]

• Urban and rural land control through public land ownership

• Developing rights must be held by public authorities via “regionalist” authorities

President Bill Clinton facilitated President Herbert Walker Bush’s initial commitment by signing an executive order which created the President’s Council on Sustainable Development to translate UN Agenda 21 into U.S. public policy under the guise of ecosystem management.

One World Governance in the name of protecting the environment, racial justice, and social justice/equity is a communist system that redistributes wealth and promotes universal health care as a human right.

“Racial justice” means affirmative action, and affirmative action means race discrimination. Like “social justice”, it is a euphemism for redistribution of goods, material and abstract, from those who have legally acquired them through their own efforts to those who haven’t. In short, injustice.

Harvey Rubin, the Vice Chair of ICLEI [International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives], proclaimed his vision of a communistic sustainable world in which “Individual rights must take a back seat to the collective.”

You’ve earned your wealth? Give it up. You have some particular skill or talent? Suppress it. You hate being in crowds? Too bad. You want to have a child? Sorry, no. You are old and becoming a drain on the communal resources? Die. You don’t agree with Harvey Rubin? Off with you to a re-education camp.

One World Governance will control:

• Energy production, delivery, distribution, and consumption

• Food growth and production …

• Education control via a curriculum centered on environment and Mother Earth and global citizenship …

• Water through irrigation denial in agriculture, home use, recreation activities; destruction of dams and reservoirs; abolishing hydroelectric generation use of water as a contributor to the now discredited theory that greenhouse gases cause global warming

• Land control through abolishing of private property

• Finances (one world currency to replace the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency)

• De-population (restructuring the family unit and reducing population to “manageable levels” through sterilization and eugenics)

• No borders/no sovereignty

• No national language and culture (a multi-cultural hodgepodge devoid of a nation’s history, and shameless promotion of global citizenship)

• Mobility restriction to 5 minutes-walk/bike from work, school, shopping

• Longer distance travel through rail use

• Homestead by stacking people in high-rise tenements in order to designate formerly privately owned land for wildlife habitat

The One World Governance of the UN Agenda 21 requires that every societal decision be based on the environmental impact on global land use, global education, and global population control and reduction. They have deemed “not sustainable” most human activities that form our modern civilization: private property, fossil fuels, consumerism, farming, irrigation, commercial agriculture, pesticides, herbicides, farmlands, grazing of livestock, paved roads, golf courses, ski lodges, logging, dams, reservoirs, fences, power lines, suburban living, and the family unit.

“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work air conditioning, and suburban housing are not sustainable.” (Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the UN’s Earth Summit, 1992)

“We must make this place an insecure and inhospitable place for Capitalists and their projects – we must reclaim the roads and plowed lands, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land.” (Dave Foreman, Earth First) …

There is never a shortage of new converts – the educational system is deliberately dumbing down our students in order to accept the Sustainable Development goals. “Generally, more highly educated people, who have higher incomes, consume more resources than poorly educated people, who tend to have lower incomes. In this case, more education increases the threat to sustainability.”

The few human beings who will be allowed to live for a short time will be kept in a state of environmentally-friendly ignorance. There will need to be book-burning on a massive scale. There’s nothing worth knowing anyway:

In some states, the curriculum includes “constructivism,” a teaching method by which “students construct [their own] understandings of reality and [realize] that objective reality is not knowable.” …

Math, for instance, beyond simple arithmetic, is completely superflous:

The New World Order teachers recommend Connected Mathematics because “Mathematics is man-made, is arbitrary, and good solutions are arrived at by consensus among those who are considered expert.” With the right consensus of experts, two plus two may not be four but five. …

The point to grasp is that Agenda 21 is being implemented right now.

Time to despair? 322

It seems at the moment that a majority of Americans want the Democrats with their socialist agenda and pro-Islam sentiment to rule them, and therefore to change everything that the United States has stood for from the beginning.

If Obama is re-elected, and has his way – which he will if both houses of Congress are given Democratic majorities – what will happen?

Let’s look at the worst plausible scenario.

Most Americans will be poorer. The national debt, vast as it is, will grow even bigger. Unemployment will increase. The value of the dollar will fall as inflation rises. More tens of thousands will be on food stamps (45.8 million are now).

Much private housing will be expropriated. Large numbers of people will be herded into government-supplied accommodation. How warm you may keep your room in winter and how cool in summer will be decided by local government. Car ownership will be discouraged by high gas prices, lack of parking facilities, and pressure on town-dwellers to use bicycles and commuters to use public transport. The countryside will be returned to wilderness. Roads will be destroyed. (All this in line with Agenda 21. Put “Agenda 21” in our search slot for corroboration.)

“Free Speech” will be severely restricted and so cease to be free. This is happening already with the Obama administration trying to stop criticism of Islam.

Your guns will be confiscated.

Sharia law will be applied in courts across the land and take precedence over the Constitution.

What you may eat in restaurants, schools and hospitals, and what food stores may sell, will be decided by Michelle Obama (assisted by New York’s Mayor Bloomberg). (See our post The orderers, June 5, 2012.)

Obamacare will prevail. The treatment you may have or be refused when you are ill will be decided by bureaucrats. If you are old and ill your survival will be arbitrated by a death-panel, whatever euphemism of a name it goes under. You have only to look at the British National Health Service to see the horrid future of health care in America. (Put “death-panels” and “NHS” into our search slot to find the grisly details.)

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be turned into the equivalent of the KGB. It is almost there now.

There will be no more free elections.

China, Russia, North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran will all become more powerful as America is deliberately weakened militarily. What will that mean? Let your imaginations soar.

World government by that collection of corrupt and savage despotisms, the United Nations, will be established with the enthusiastic help of the American government.

Innovation will cease as freedom goes. The great experiment in freedom that was America, its prosperity and its power, will be over. There will be no turning back.

And all that is just first-thought – but bitterly informed – prediction.

Readers’ gloomy predictions are invited. And expressions of despair.

*

The Republican Party is allowing this to happen. It seems to have lost the plot. The last election was the turning point when it insanely put up John McCain as it’s presidential candidate. With such a feeble alternative to a candidate who offered the electorate a chance to feel good by voting for him chiefly because he was black (a thoroughly racist reason), the ideology of collectivism triumphed. Now that so many people have been reduced to dependence on the state is it likely they will vote away their free ride through life?

Of course, socialism does not work. The system will collapse as it always has because it must. And the country will come to ruin, like Greece. But apparently more than half the voters of America are unaware of this terrifying fact, or else they don’t give a damn.

Why aren’t the Republicans telling the voters in the strongest terms that this is what will happen?

It’s a real question.  We’d like to know why.

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