Image via Wikipediathe AtlanticAnti Bullying Laws and the Misguided Drive for Social Equality - Wendy Kaminer
Most Popular
Image via Wikipedia
- 1
- The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange
- Assange may or may not be grandiose, paranoid and delusional - terms that might be fairly applied at one time or another to most prominent investigative reporters of my acquaintance. But the fact that so many prominent old school journalists are attacking him with such unbridled force is a symptom of the failure of traditional reporting methods to penetrate a culture of official secrecy that has grown by leaps and bounds since 9/11, and threatens the functioning of a free press as a cornerstone of democracy.The true importance of Wikileaks -- and the key to understanding the motivations and behavior of its founder -- lies not in the contents of the latest document dump but in the technology that made it possible, which has already shown itself to be a potent weapon to undermine official lies and defend human rights. Since 1997, Assange has devoted a great deal of his time to inventing encryption systems that make it possible for human rights workers and others to protect and upload sensitive data. The importance of Assange's efforts to human rights workers in the field were recognized last year by Amnesty International, which gave him its Media Award for the Wikileaks investigation The Cry of Blood - Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances, which documented the killing and disappearance of 500 young men in Kenya by the police, with the apparent connivance of the country's political leadership.Yet the difficulties of documenting official murder in Kenya pale next to the task of penetrating the secret world that threatens to swallow up informed public discourse in this country about America's wars.
- ( It's only a 'threat', then ? I doubt that very much. The idiots disrupting comment threads are everywhere - and it is naive indeed to think that accidental. )
- 2
- The Mystery of John McCain
- 3
- Must-Read: NYT-Wikileaks on China and Google
- 4
- Lebanese Newspaper Publishes U.S. Cables Not Found on WikiLeaks
- 5
- The Year in Cones: 2010's Biggest Ice Cream Trends
- 6
- 30 Most Dynamic Cities in the World
- 7
- Orbital View: Crippling Snow in Britain
- 8
- How to Deal With a Crazy Dude Whose House is Full of Explosive Material
- 9
- John McCain: 'You Should Be Ashamed
KUHNER: Assassinate Assange
Web provocateur undermines war on terror, threatens American lives
( If he threatens the 'War on Terror' he is indeed priceless. I wonder what the penalty is for inciting to murder ? )
Most Read
Image via WikipediaEDITORIAL: Wave goodbye to Internet freedom- Senate blocks Obama's tax plan
- PRUDEN: Turn out the lights, the party's over
- Inside the Ring: Counterspies hunt Russian mole inside National Security Agency
- State, local lawmakers seek alternatives to TSA airport screenings
- Support erodes for deficit panel plan
- 'Obstructionists' hinder WikiLeaks probe
- MILLER: Writing in corruption
- Russia waged covert war on Georgia starting in '04
Image via WikipediaEight Years Later, Washington Post Still Defending The Saddam-Niger-Yellowcake Story
I’ve not seen the new film Fair Game, the story of how CIA agent Valerie Plame was outed by the Bush administration by way of discrediting her husband Joe Wilson’s public contradiction of one of the administration’s multiple false claims on Iraqi WMD, so I can’t speak to how much it does or doesn’t play with the truth of what happened. This, however, from the Washington Post’s editorial “review” of the film, is pretty clearly dishonest: ..... It’s not as if the Post’s editors are a disinterested party here, having played a key role themselves in pushing the case for the Iraq war. Hilariously, the editors write that “the film’s reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored.” I quite agree, though I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect greater respect for those established facts from the Washington Post than from a Hollywood movie. ( I have always been at least as interested in the fact that it irretrievably destroyed Brewster-Jennings' field operation collecting actual information for the CIA Middle East Nuclear Threat Desk which Val Plame { Wilson } ran. That is something to consider when evaluating the purported 'danger' posed by Iran today : the lies violating the Third Pillar of the NPT being an established scam that has run for decades. )Sivan Kartha: Getting the facts right on Kyoto
Image via WikipediaClimate change is caused not just by today’s carbon emissions, but by carbon accumulated in the atmosphere due to years of emissions. If you gauge emissions on a historical basis, developed countries are responsible for more than 75 percent.
If we talk of countries’ capability with respect to solving the climate problem, it is clear that the great majority of financial and technological wherewithal resides in the North. The developed world controls approximately three-quarters of the world’s GDP. If one takes into account that a much higher fraction of GDP goes toward meeting very basic needs, such as food, shelter, and medical care, then the North controls more like six-sevenths of the world’s discretionary GDP.( And we wonder why small countries ran for their lives at Copenhagen )
Climate, etc.
Reversing the direction of the positive feedback loop
There has been a particularly toxic positive feedback loop between climate science and policy and politics, whose direction has arguably been reversed as result of Climategate.
International efforts to deal with the climate change problem were launched in 1992 with the UNFCCC treaty.
Wait a minute, what climate change problem? In 1992, we had just completed the first IPCC assessment report, here was their conclusion: “The size of this warming is broadly consistent with predictions of climate models, but it is also of the same magnitude as natural climate variability. . . The unequivocal detection of the enhanced greenhouse effect from observations is not likely for a decade or more.” Nevertheless, the policy cart was put before the scientific horse, justified by the precautionary principle. Once the UNFCCC treaty was a done deal, the IPCC and its scientific conclusions were set on a track to become a self fulfilling prophecy.- At the heart of the IPCC is a cadre of scientists whose careers have been made by the IPCC. These scientists have used the IPCC to jump the normal meritocracy process by which scientists achieve influence over the politics of science and policy. Not only has this brought some relatively unknown, inexperienced and possibly dubious people into positions of influence, but these people become vested in protecting the IPCC, which has become central to their own career and legitimizes playing power politics with their expertise.
The Wikipedia defines indoctrination as:
Image via WikipediaEducation versus indoctrinationIndoctrination is the process of inculcating ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or a a professional methodology. It is often distinguished from education by the fact that the indoctrinated person is expected not to question or critically examine the doctrine they have learned.
No one out there seemed to be clued in to my entry behaviour. They seemed primarily involved in one of two things. First, disseminating not things that would help me think for myself, but convince me one way or the other. Second, things which I could perceived had educative value, but which were presented at too demanding a level. I was often referred to scienceofdoom, and all sides seemed to think that site is worthy. But it started at too high a level, and from my viewpoint rapidly went stratospheric. I needed something to bridge the gap between entry behaviour and that.- Testimony follow up
- Best of the greenhouse
- Climate model verification and validation
- Skeptical discussion
- Physics of the atmospheric greenhouse(?) effect
- Waving the Italian flag. Part I: uncertainty and pedigree
- Raising the level of the game: Part II
- Skeptics: make your best case
- Raising the level of the game
- The Principles of Reasoning. Part II: Solving the Problem of Induction
- Engaging the public on the climate change issue
- What have we learned from Climategate? Part II
- Principles of Reasoning. Part I: Abstraction
- What have we learned from Climategate?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment