Thursday, July 10, 2008
Stealing Freedom: Congressional 'Media Reform'
"Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue."A week or so ago, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stated she supported the return of the 'Fairness Doctrine'. Now that the Democrats have conservative talk radio in their sights again, new proposals will be more carefully crafted, full of convoluted language in an attempt to hide the substance of the legislation in long pages of distracters and patriotic phrasing.--Bill Ruder, campaign consultant , Kennedy Administration
Who will define the "public trust" and the "public interest?" It is apparent the leftists in congress bet they will.
If they succeed, media reform will inevitably morph from an attack on talk radio to an assault on cable, to new print "standards," and to broadcast "guidelines." It is all about control and the totalitarian instincts the socialist left gravitates to. This is not a slippery slope, it is a roller coaster ride to censorship and if the left defines the rules, the freedom of speech we enjoy now will be a thing of the past, buried in regulation, litigation and outright intimidation...
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Wounded Afghan Children Get Compassionate Care
Army Spc. Karla Tyson shows “Elmo,” an Afghan child injured in a roadside bomb blast, how to pull individual Matchbox cars out of the set just given to him at the American Hospital at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan.
Elmo, whose body is covered in blisters and burns, has had several skin grafts and is awaiting more. But his eyes sparkle whenever he receives visitors who bring him gifts...
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Good News in Iraq
Moderate liberal pundit Mickey Kaus has a rule of the thumb about news from Iraq. If only foreign newspapers print it, the news must be good.
The New York Times mentioned in a story June 21 that Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, was "in the midst of a major security operation." So what happened?
The Times of London had an answer Sunday:
"American and Iraqi forces are driving al Qaida in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror."... Al Qaida was making its "last stand" in Mosul, and now is done, finished, kaput, said The Times. [snip]
Not a word about this "spectacular victory" appeared in the Washington Post or the New York Times Sunday, or on the evening network newscasts. The New York Times did run a story on the front page Monday about an "epic battle," but it was about a tennis match somewhere...
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The 550 Tons of Yellowcake
That yellowcake stockpile pre-dated 1991, and had been under the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency "safeguard" from then until 2003. That was mentioned in the AP article and I mentioned it in the update to my article the day it was published. In fact, American Thinker contributors Douglas Hanson and Rick Moran had written about that yellowcake stockpile years ago here, here and here. Douglas Hanson reported four years ago:
"Professor Norman Dombey, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Sussex, England, has confirmed that Saddam Hussein had more than enough yellowcake uranium to make over 100 nuclear weapons."The recent AP story was not news with respect to the existence of this stockpile in Iraq to those who follow such things closely. But I'm sure many readers had never been aware of this large stockpile of yellowcake in Iraq at all. This new AP story, and perhaps my article, helped get that information out. As Investor's Business Daily more recently put it ,
"Seems to us this should be big news," but "the mainstream media find it inconveniently contradicts the story they have been telling you for years..."READ MORE
Nearer to the Bomb
Iran is testing an improved third generation of indigenously co-developed enrichment centrifuges, the IR-3 series, demonstrating its technical mastery of the technology. It has 320 tons of uranium hexafluoride gas to feed its centrifuges, enough for almost 100 bombs, but not for even a fraction of one reactor refueling operation... [snip]
The IAEA has also recently reported that it has questions that Iran refuses to answer:
Why is Iran using high explosives to implode a hemispherical shell of heavy metal? The only known use for such tests is to perfect a lightweight nuclear bomb.... the advanced centrifuges will enable the Iranians to build about twice as many nuclear weapons a year with the current infrastructure than they otherwise could have done. If they add 6,000 machines to today's 3,000, the bomb-building potential is more than doubled again, but the peaceful utility of the plant is zero... [snip]
Why is Iran developing the kinds of detonators needed in an atomic weapon?
Why is Iran designing, or redesigning, a ballistic missile warhead so that it can contain a nuclear weapon?
Iran's right to nuclear fuel cycle technology ended when it began violating its safeguards agreement almost 20 years ago. And it is apparent that the real purpose of Iranian enrichment is to provide fuel for weapons, not reactors.
Peter D. Zimmerman, a nuclear physicist, is emeritus professor of science and security at King's College London
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Gates: Iran missile test proves Tehran is a threat
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert Gates says Iran's missile test bolsters the U.S. argument that Tehran is a threat.
It also disproves Russia's case against the need for a missile defense system in Europe.
Gates says the U.S. has said for some time that there is a real threat Iran could develop long-range missiles to use against Europe. He says Tehran's launch of several missiles Wednesday proves that point...
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Women 'vow to raise kids for holy war'
Islamabad - Hundreds of Islamist women gathered at the radical Red Mosque in Pakistani capital today and vowed to raise their children for holy war, days after a suicide bomber killed 18 people after a similar rally. Chanting slogans of ''jihad is our way'', burqa-clad women, some with babies, listened to fiery speeches from the daughter of the mosque's jailed cleric...
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Western society's war within
Britain provides an instructive lesson on the interaction between increasingly radicalised sections of the Muslim diaspora community and its Western host society. The same way that the claim of racism has been used to shut down any debate on cultural identity, immigration and social cohesion, so is Islamophobia increasingly used to silence dissent. To merely raise certain issues is to give offence... [snip]
In January last year, Britain's Channel 4 television broadcast a documentary on jihadi incitement in mosques throughout England. The material revealed by this undercover investigative report showed one Saudi-trained imam calling for British Muslims to "dismantle democracy" by "living as a state within a state" until they are "strong enough to take it over".
After the program was aired, British authorities wasted no time springing into action. The West Midlands Police lodged criminal charges, not against the extremist imams but against the TV network...[snip]
... Earlier this year, an officer from the Wiltshire Police ordered a motorist to remove England's flag of St George from his automobile because it was "racist towards immigrants" ... Stand-up comedian Ben Elton recently asserted that fear of "provoking the radical elements of Islam" caused the BBC to censor jokes about Muslim clerics. "There's no doubt about it," Elton said, "the BBC will let vicar gags pass but they would not let imam gags pass." [snip]
This comes on the heels of a legion of other examples of often pre-emptive surrenders to yet unvoiced radical demands, such as some British banks withdrawing toy piggy banks or public institutions turning Christmas into an amorphous Winter Festival, all for the fear of offending Muslim sensibilities... [snip]
The essential question we face is not about the rule of law but about which law is to rule. We must be culturally self-confident enough to assert that the monopoly status of common law and democracy in Australia is entirely non-negotiable.
As Peter Costello said not so long ago: "If a person wants to live under sharia law, there are countries where they may feel at ease, but not Australia.
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New German Citizenship Questions Flunk Cultural Sensitivity Test
[HT:MD]
A Turkish immigrant group feel the new citizen tests, which will be required starting Sept. 1, 2008 for anyone wanting German nationality, reflect cultural biases.
Turkish Community Chairman Kenan Kolat said the 310 multiple-choice questions published by the Interior Ministry tested not only knowledge of Germany but "to some extent also attitudes."
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G8
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G-8 Calls for Zimbabwe Sanctions
Today, the leaders of the world's richest countries proposed a set of completely ineffectual sanctions against Robert Mugabe's dictatorship in Zimbabwe while the dictator's neighbors and friends in Africa pleaded with the summit goers to leave well enough alone in Zimbabwe... [snip]
That's the trouble with these dictators. All they can see is something similar happening to them some day. You can be sure they don't want the UN, the G-8, the Big Five, or the Gargantuan Three to be telling them how to go about murdering their own people. They are perfectly capable of doing it themselves...
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The G1
“This is a crisis in legitimacy and world leadership,” said a senior French official. Nation after nation are questioning the international institutions that are supposed to underpin modern society. There is a World Bank, World Trade Organization, and World Heritage Committee, but none of them seems to function... [snip]
There are dozens of international organizations, and adding one more-or reforming any or all of them-is not the answer. Authoritarian nations and totalitarian rogues are getting stronger. The answer is not so much integrating these states into multilateral organizations but insisting that they change themselves.
Until these nations are rendered harmless, there will be a need for a G1. At this crucial moment, the United States is the only force that can keep the current international system together. The issue is whether Americans have the resolve, skill, and strength to redirect history one more time.
The story of the 21st century, for better or worse, will be written in the next several years in North America.
[with the exception of China and India, all other rogue nations - including Russia - have gotten stronger because of the collective-monopoly we ourselves handed them re: oil - what the world runs on.]
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Global Temperature Report: June 2008
A La Nina Pacific Ocean cooling event continues to drive tropical and global temperatures: Globally, June 2008 was the coolest June since 1999, according to Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
While the La Nina is a tropical event, cool temperatures covered a large portion of the globe. Among the past 30 Junes, June 2008 was the third coldest south of the Antarctic Circle, fourth coolest in the Southern Hemisphere and fifth coolest in the tropics. The Antarctic continent saw its third coldest June in 30 years...
[this is weather, not climate - just remember that next El Nino]
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Scientific Discovery: Plants Love Carbon Dioxide
Believe it or not, Agence France-Press reported Tuesday that crops love all this extra CO2 (emphasis added):
Hmmm. So, what happens when you do what Al Gore wants and reduce the amount of CO2 plants are subjected to?Increasing exposure to carbon dioxide appears to boost crop yields, Hans-Joachim Weigel of the Johann Heinrich von Thuenen Institute for rural areas, forestry and fisheries in the central city of Brunswick told AFP.
"Output increased by about 10 percent for barley, beets and wheat" when the plants were subjected to higher levels of carbon dioxide, Weigel said.
Strangely, global warming obsessed media aren't interested in that answer.
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Alleviate world hunger produce more clean carbon dioxide
What is your carbon footprint? That is the wrong question to ask.
A more meaningful question is--How much carbon dioxide does it take to grow the wheat required to produce a loaf of bread? Or--How much carbon dioxide does it take to grow the corn for the chicken feed required to produce a dozen eggs?
Far from being a pollutant, man, along with every animal on land, fish in the sea, and bird in the air is totally dependent on atmospheric carbon dioxide for the food supply... [snip]
Our mainstream media uses every opportunity to hype the hoax of man made global warming by repeated reporting of data and events that appear to support it, and ignoring those that contradict ... [snip]
People on the left claim global warming is real, a threat to the continued existence of mankind, and the debate as to its cause is over. Although none of this is true, it nevertheless is what four of my grandchildren were taught in school!(Editor’s Note: To many in the know, Dirck T. Hartmann, who worked on the Apollo Space Program and many other significant NASA projects, is a gifted scientist/engineer/physicist. Now the 87-year-old feels compelled to answer the questions of Man Made Global Warming and does so with factual substance, truth and knowledge. What he has to say is clear and concise and should be read by everyone.)
[Highly Recommended > ]
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Animal advocates terrorize scientists
Rage against... medical studies
BERKELEY, Calif. ... nine protesters gathered in front of the home of a toxicology professor, their faces covered with scarves and hoods despite the warm spring weather. One scrawled "killer" in chalk on the scientist's doorstep, while another hurled insults through a bullhorn and announced, "Your neighbor kills animals." Someone shattered a window... [snip]"It used to be everyone was worried about their laboratories being broken into and their data being destroyed, their animals being taken away," said Jeffrey Kordower, head of the Society for Neuroscience's animal research committee. "What they've decided to do now is make things more personal."
Accompanying the attacks is increasingly tough talk from activists such as Jerry Vlasak, a spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front press office. In an interview with the Associated Press, he said he is not encouraging anyone to commit homicide, but
"if you had to hurt somebody or intimidate them or kill them, it would be morally justifiable."
Louisiana Confounds the Science Thought Police
To the chagrin of the science thought police, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal has signed into law an act to protect teachers who want to encourage critical thinking about hot-button science issues such as global warming, human cloning, and yes, evolution and the origin of life.
Opponents allege that the Louisiana Science Education Act is “anti-science.” In reality, the opposition’s efforts to silence anyone who disagrees with them is the true affront to scientific inquiry.
Students need to know about the current scientific consensus on a given issue, but they also need to be able to evaluate critically the evidence on which that consensus rests. They need to learn about competing interpretations of the evidence offered by scientists, as well as anomalies that aren’t well explained by existing theories... [snip]
Real science is a lot more messy — and interesting — than a set of ideological talking points...
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Burglary Suspect Busted After Yard Sale
Police say an Ocala man was selling stolen property at a yard sale in the same neighborhood as the home he robbed.
Fred and Betty McAteers, who live in Ocklawaha, arrived at a home they own in Ocala on Monday to find that it had been burglarized. They returned Tuesday and walked around the neighborhood to see if anyone knew anything about the theft. During their walk, they saw their dresser sitting on the front lawn of an apartment building...
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