PLEASE NOTE: The complete TWTW, including the full text of the numbered articles, can be downloaded in an easily printable form at this web site: http://www.sepp.org/the-week-that-was.cfm...

THIS WEEK: By Ken Haapala, Executive Vice President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)

Heartland Conference: International Conference on Climate Change, Real Science Real Choices

 The three-day Seventh International Conference on Climate Change, Real Science Real Choices, sponsored by the Heartland Institute ran from Monday morning to Wednesday afternoon. Even though the decision to hold the conference was not made until three months ago, it was well conducted. The late decision was probably one reason the attendance was about 300. SEPP was a co-sponsor of the event.

Václav Klaus: Of the many highlights, Monday's dinner speech by Václav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, was particularly memorable. President Klaus left the NATO conference, also being held in Chicago, to deliver his address. He thanked Heartland for holding the conference and keeping the global warming issue alive. He also thanked the bloggers who disseminate important information questioning the orthodoxy.

President Klaus emphasized that, as the globe fails to warm, global warming alarmists have become quieter; but, the idea of human-caused dangerous global warming is heavily engrained in the thinking of many in Europe, as it is in the US, even though the language has morphed into climate change. The basic faulty thinking, and science, still applies. Very simply, governments cannot stop global warming / climate change by controlling carbon dioxide emissions.

To President Klaus, global warming alarmists "have succeeded in establishing the religion of environmentalism as the official religion of Western society - a religion that demands a radical transformation of Western civilization. Skeptics must continue the ideological battles. As he has stated previously, the purpose of this entire issue is to control human behavior - human liberty. "The subtitle of my five years old book was "What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?" There is no doubt that it is all about freedom. We should keep that in mind." Please see Article # 1 or

http://www.klaus.cz/clanky/3104...

NASA 49: Another memorable highlight was the breakfast talk given by four representatives of the NASA 49 - former NASA astronauts, scientists, and senior administrators who sent a letter to Charles Bolden, the administrator of NASA, requesting that NASA stop making scientifically unsupported claims about science. "The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA's history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements." NASA responded, prompting a second letter from the NASA 49. The quote of the week is taken from that second letter. Apparently, the senior scientist of NASA is not made of "the right stuff." Perhaps he should be reminded of the Apollo mission motto: "In God we trust; all others bring data!" Please see Article # 2.

Scientific Consensus: As can be expected in any conference featuring independently-thinking scientists studying the physical causes of climate change, there was no general agreement on the causes of the 20th century warming. However, there was general agreement that the hypothesis of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is not supported by the physical science - i.e., that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is the principal cause, while all else is little more than background noise. About 50 supporters of IPCC science were personally invited, but none attended.

Some attendees thought that the principal causes are internal to the earth, such as changes in the ocean oscillation such as the thermohaline circulation (THC), or the Pacific Decadal (PDO), and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillations (AMO). To some the influence of CO2 is slight, to others it is fairly significant - a doubling of CO2 would lead to an increase in global temperatures of about 2 deg C.

Others presented their research suggesting the primary cause is external to the earth. One suggestion is that the primary cause may be the sun alone. Still others suggested the primary cause is high energy cosmic rays, modulated by the sun, hitting the atmosphere and creating changes in cloud cover.

The willingness to discuss and sharply question alternative hypotheses was a refreshing change to the all consuming IPCC hypothesis which simply cannot explain the earth's climate history or why there has been no warming trend for over a decade.

Collaboration: Several researchers mentioned that prior conferences have led to collaboration on research efforts that probably would not have occurred without the conferences. Given the "group think" that is common in a great deal of climate research, Heartland is providing a valuable service to the public.

Communicating with the Public: Several very useful suggestions for communicating with the public were made during the panel on communication. One suggestion was to request those who agree to spend one or two hours a week expressing their views with their friends and colleagues. A second suggestion was to start public talks off with a relevant question. One example is how much carbon dioxide is there in the atmosphere and how much do humans contribute. A second example is to show one of the photos of power plants emitting what appears to be dark smoke that commonly accompany stories on CO2 or global warming and ask what color is CO2. Of course, it is invisible and in the US the photos are taken under special lighting conditions or with special lenses.

The Heartland Controversy: Prior to the conference, the Heartland Institute posted a billboard that offended a number of skeptics. The billboard featured the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, emphasizing his belief in dangerous man-made global warming. After objections were raised, Heartland took down the billboard within 24 hours. [For the 50th reunion, the Harvard University Alumni Association directory had an entry by Kaczynski who is a 1962 graduate and listed his occupation as "prisoner" and entered "8 life sentences" under the "Awards" section.. ]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/harvard-...

What clearly comes from the conference and subsequent discussions is that public needs to become more aware that the science is not settled and that there are major issues with the IPCC hypothesis. Whether or not Heartland's tactic was appropriate is a personal matter. Whether or not it was effective is for Heartland to decide.

Protests: Starting Saturday, protestors of the NATO conference began hitting the streets of Chicago. Several stayed on to protest Heartland. A few conference attendees, including Lord Christopher Monckton and Marc Morano, walked to the protestors to engage them in a discussion. They refused. Monckton made quite a show at counting the protestors, all 47(?). At least some carried a sign to which all can agree: "Climate Change Is Real."

Conference Videos: Videos of the speeches and from the conference are being posted on the web site:

http://climateconferences.heartland.org/iccc7...

Extensive coverage by the Canada Sun News is found at:

http://blog.heartland.org/2012/05/excellent-s...

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EPA Testimony: On Thursday, the EPA held the only public hearings on its proposed new rules, "Carbon Pollution Standards on New Power Plants." One hearing was in Chicago and one was in Washington. The Washington hearing was packed with environmental groups, all claiming that coal-fired power plants should be closed down for reasons of public health. A man-of-the-cloth testified that the power plants of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) endanger the health of those living in nearby cities. One wonders if he has an understanding of public health conditions in the southern Appalachian Mountains before there was a TVA.

Though not expecting any positive results from the EPA, Ken Haapala represented SEPP. He pointed out that the proposed rules are based on the EPA's faulty finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, which is currently being litigated (Endangerment Finding). Further, the endangerment finding is based on predictions from computer models that have never been validated and verified; thus are speculative. The models are failing because they did not predict the current trend of no warming.

Submitted with the testimony is a table stating the level of understanding of the global temperature forcing factors considered by the IPCC models, from IPCC-AR4. According to the table, the level of understanding of 11 of the 16 forcing factors considered in the models is low to very low. Given the great uncertainty of the inputs to the models, no high level of certainty can be attributed to the products of the models.

Also, the testimony pointed out that the EPA Inspector General has found that EPA failed to perform an independent analysis of the science, as required under the Data Quality Act, and it even failed to consult its own Science Advisory Board. All three NIPCC reports were submitted for the record.

Almost surprisingly, one gentleman approached Haapala after his testimony. Apparently a retired Army colonel, this gentleman stated he had never heard anyone articulately question the science. During the ensuing discussion it became evident the man was fairly well read. This discussion underlined the importance of the work of Heartland and the need to communicate with the public.

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Number of the Week: $2.575 Billion US. Last week TWTW stated that a study from the Congressional Research Service to Senator Inhofe reported that United States government is spending $68.4 Billion on Climate Change Activities from Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 to FY 2012. Of this amount a total of $2.575 Billion is classified under "Global Climate Change Initiative (International)." The United States is a major source of funding for the IPCC and associated elaborate international conferences, such as the upcoming Rio+20.

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ARTICLES:
For the numbered articles below please see this week's TWTW at:
http://www.sepp.org...
The articles are at the end of the pdf.

1. Notes for the Heartland Institute Conference Speech
By Václav Klaus, President Czech Republic. May 21, 2012 [H/t WUWT]
http://www.klaus.cz/clanky/3104...

2. Letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden
By 41 former NASA astronauts, scientists and senior administrators. May 11, 2012
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/22/nasa-as...

3. Scientific Method and Climate Change
NZ Climate Truth Newsletter No 294
By Vincent Gray, May 25, 2012

4. The Market-Driven Energy Revolution
Prices more than policy are driving the U.S. boom in oil and natural gas production.
By Joel Kurtzman, WSJ, May 21, 2012
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270...

5. Franken-energy can't survive on its own
Dr. Charles Battig, Letter, Richmond Times Dispatch, May 23, 2012
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/letters-to...

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NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Climategate Continued
Climategate Continues
Will a penalty be called for Keith Briffa's excessively curved hockey stick?
By Andrew Montford & Harold Ambler, National Review, May 24, 2012 [H/t GWPF]
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/300877...
[SEPP Comment: A clear discussion of the withholding of data to hide the decline - tree ring data show no significant increase in temperatures during the latter part of the 20th century.]

Suppression of Scientific Inquiry
Why Scientists Have Squandered Public Trust
By Steven Hayward, Power Line, May 24, 2012 [H/t GWPF]
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/05...

Challenging the Orthodoxy
Deal with climate reality as it unfolds
Policymakers have quietly given up trying to cut ­carbon dioxide emissions
By Bob Carter, Financial Post, May 23, 2012 [H/t ICECAP]
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/05/23/d...

Lamb's science to the slaughter
By Verity Jones, ICECAP, May 22, 2012
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/lambs...
[SEPP Comment: A look into the capture of Climatic Research Unit by the "blame humans first" crowd.]

Climate Change of the IPCC is Daylight Robbery
By Tim Ball, A Different Perspective, May 23, 2012
http://drtimball.com/2012/climate-change-of-t...

Premonitions of the Fall (in temperature)
By David Archibald, WUWT, May 20, 2012
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/20/premoni...
[SEPP Comment: Climate change knowledge from the past - ignored in the present.]

Sceptic at the Herald [Sydney, AU]
By Des Moore, Quadrant, May 21, 2012
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-plane...
Each weekend the Sydney Morning Herald's News Review poses a question and invites answers from four people; most recently they asked a climate sceptic to take part.

Defending the Orthodoxy
1,000 years of climate data confirms Australia's warming
By Staff Writers, Melbourne, Australia (SPX), May 24, 2012
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/1000_years_...
[SEPP Comment: From the Little Ice Age?]

A viable clean-energy bill at last?
Editorial, Washington Post, May 19, 2012 [H/t Timothy Wise]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-viab...
[SEPP Comment: According to Senator Inhofe this shall not pass.]

Fracking is not the answer to energy crisis, UK Minister admits, as he orders shale gas survey
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem Energy Minister, has hit out at his Tory colleagues for suggesting that fracking for shale gas will solve Britain's fuel crisis.
By Louise Gray, Telegraph, UK, May 25, 2012 [H/t GWPF]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/92...
[SEPP Comment: Shale gas is a plot to undermine "investment" in off-shore wind power - an investment in an extremely expensive source of electricity that will produce meager returns to the public.]

The Heartland Affair
Climate Change Conference marks progress for realists
By Rick Moran, American Thinker, May 25, 2012 [H/t John Dunn]
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url...

The Climate Change Debate: Where Are We Now?
The Heartland Institute's climate change conference highlighted progress and issued challenges to the skeptical community.
By Rick Moran, PJMedia, May 24, 2012
http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-climate-change-de...

Questioning the Orthodoxy
Death ray: Global warming will kill over 150,000 by 2099
By Paul Bedard, Washington Examiner, May 24, 2012
http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/washin...

Questioning European Green
UK proposes energy market overhaul to boost nuclear
By Staff Writers, London (AFP), May 22, 2012
http://www.nuclearpowerdaily.com/reports/UK_p...

The Deepening Crisis of Europe's Climate Policy
By Benny Peiser, EUCLERS, May 17, 2012
http://thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/5741-b...

Power shift begins to move German industry
By Staff Writers, WNN, May 18, 2012
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP_Power_sh...

Leaked Strategy Paper: EU Plans To Phase Out Green Energy Subsidies
By Hendrik Kafsack, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 19, 2012
http://thegwpf.org/international-news/5761-le...
The economic cost of the expansion of renewable energy could become prohibitively expensive. Subsidies in the EU for solar and wind power should be phased out as quickly as possible. That is what the European Commission says in an internal draft strategy paper that EU Energy Commissioner, Günther Oettinger, will present in Brussels early next month.

Expanding the Orthodoxy
Andre Kuipers: world ambassador
By Staff Writers, Paris (ESA) May 19, 2012
http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Andre_Kuiper...
[SEPP Comment: World ambassador for the WWF. Is WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) a sovereign state?]

Can the US Military Afford More Biofuels?
By Geoffrey Styles, Energy Tribune, May 25, 2012
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/107...

Problems within the Orthodoxy
U.N. Stalemate Risks Unraveling Durban Climate Deal: EU
By Ben Garside and Nina Chestney, Reuters, May 22, 2012 [H/t Hugh Sharman]
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/22/us-...

China hits back at claims it is blocking climate talks
By Staff Writers, Bonn (AFP) May 24, 2012
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/China_hits_...

Climate talks risk sinking 'like Titanic'
By Nina Chestney, Reuters, May 25, 2012 [H/t GWPF]
http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/environm...
[SEPP Comment: Efforts for a Kyoto II appear to be failing. It is time to pull the plug.]

Funding Fights
No money for hard physics, but plenty for climate science
By Kenneth P. Green, American, May 23, 2012
http://blog.american.com/2012/05/no-money-for...

The "well funded" climate business - follow the money
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, May 19, 2012
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/19/the-wel...
[SEPP Comment: Good chart on US government funding from 1989 to 2009.]

Seeking a Common Ground
Time varying trend in global mean surface temperature
By Judith Curry, Climate Etc, May 23, 2012
http://judithcurry.com/2012/05/23/time-varyin...
[SEPP Comment: Curry's view of three competing hypotheses.]

Communicating Better to the Public - Exaggerate, or be Vague?
Pollution teams with thunderclouds to warm atmosphere
By Staff Writers, Richland WA (SPX), May 25, 2012
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Pollution_t...
[SEPP Comment: The article does not define pollution which may include naturally occurring dust.]

Climate scientists say they have solved riddle of rising sea
By Staff Writers, Paris (AFP), May 20, 2012
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Climate_sci...
[SEPP Comment: According to the article, the IPCC report on sea level rise did not consider ice melt from glaciers, Greenland and Antarctica.]

Changing Climate
Are The Tropics Expanding?
By David Whitehouse, The Observatory, May 24, 2012
http://thegwpf.org/the-observatory/5798-are-t...
[SEPP Comment: Questioning a pair of papers stating an expansion of the tropics is due to ozone and carbon black. Historically, the monsoon rains once fell upon the Sahara. Would it not be appropriate to assess the current explanation in light of climate history?]

New Paper "Recent Northern Hemisphere Tropical Expansion Primarily Driven By Black Carbon And Tropospheric Ozone" By Allen Et Al 2012
By Roger Pielke, Sr, Pielke Climate Science, May 21, 2012
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/05...

Study: Geologic methane seeping from thawing cryosphere
By Marmian Grimes, U. of Alaska, May 21, 2012 [H/t GWPF]
http://www.uafnews.com/headlines/study-geolog...

Changing Seas
Man-made sea level rises are due to global adjustments
By Frank Lansner, edited by Jo Nova, her blog, May 25, 2012
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/05/man-made-sea...

New Study by WHOI Scientists Provides Baseline Measurements of Carbon in Arctic Ocean
By Staff Writers, Woods Hole MA (SPX), May 25, 2012
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/New_Study_b...

Seagrasses Can Store as Much Carbon as Forests
By Staff Writers, Washington DC (SPX), May 24, 2012
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Seagrasses_...
[SEPP Comment: Not a surprise for divers in kelp beds.]

Agriculture Issues & Fear of Famine
Food security remains an important issue
By Martin Livermore, Scientific Alliance, May 24, 2012
http://www.scientific-alliance.org/scientific...
[SEPP Comment: Sustainable agriculture will be a theme at Rio + 20. How many in northern Europe and North America would be willing to be reduced to the diets of their great grandparents which was only foods produced locally? In the winter, the diet was meager - home canned goods and cold weather foods such as roots and cabbage. Forget fresh fruits and vegetables, a recent innovation thanks to transportation.]

Cap-and-Trade and Carbon Taxes
Cap and trade for U.S. water
Lubos Motl, Reference Frame, May 19, 2012
http://motls.blogspot.com/2012/05/cap-and-tra...

EPA and other Regulators on the March
FERC Issues Policy on Advising EPA on MATS Compliance Extensions
By Staff Writers, Power News, May 24, 2012
http://www.powermag.com/POWERnews/4684.html?h...

Will the Feds Kill America's Future Under a Tombstone of Senseless Regulations?
By Marita Noon, Energy Tribune, May 22, 2012
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/107...
[SEPP Comment: Some government regulators have pronounced that poison ivy is to be protected (personal experience).]

Energy Issues - Non-US
EU sanctions on Iran to benefit oil majors: Moody's
By Yadullah Hussain, Financial Post, May 22, 2012
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/05/22/...

How Big Oil Benefits From Global Warming Alarmism
By Larry Bell, Forbes, May 22, 2012
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/05...

As Canada mulls national energy strategy, Asia may look elsewhere for oil, gas
By Jameson Berkow, Financial Post, May 23, 2012
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/05/23/...
"The Chinese in particular have been kind of awe-struck in a negative way by how long it takes to build infrastructure in Canada,"
[SEPP Comment: It is not the time involved to build, but the time involved to get the governmental approvals to build.]

Energy Issues -- US
Obama wants the Electric Reliability Corporation to stop assessing electric reliability
By Alec Rawls, WUWT, May 22, 2012
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/22/obama-w...

America's Oil Boom Gets Louder In Alaska
Editorial, IBD, May 25, 2012
http://news.investors.com/article/612803/2012...

CO2 Fool's Errand
By Donn Dears, Power for USA, May 21, 2012
http://dddusmma.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/co2-...

Oil and Natural Gas - the Future or the Past?
Natural gas producers in survival mode
By Yadullah Hussain, Financial Post, May 22, 2012
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/05/18/...
[SEPP Comment: A graph showing the great disparity in natural gas prices around the world.]

Bakken 2? Oil Prosperity Comes to South Kansas; Could Be Largest Economic Impact in State History
By Mark Perry, Carpe Diem, May 24, 2012 [H/t Timothy Wise]
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2012/05/bakken-2-...

Oil boom strikes Kansas
By Blake Ellis, CNNMoney, May 23, 2012 [H/t Timothy Wise]
http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/23/pf/america-bo...

One Reason Why Oil Prices Will Remain Stable: U.S. Production Reached a 14-Year High in February
By Mark Perry, Carpe Diem, May 24, 2012 [H/t Timothy Wise]
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2012/05/why-oil-p...

Will LNG Exports Rescue the North American Natural Gas Market?
By Pavel Molchanov & Alex Morris, Energy Tribune, May 21, 2012
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/107...
[SEPP Comment: Four years ago the question was will LNG imports save the US natural gas market?]

Fracking: A Tale of Two States
By Sterling Burnett, National Review, May 23, 2012 [H/t Cooler Heads]
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/300...

Return of King Coal?
Coal is here to stay: Denial doesn't work
By Frank Clemente, Energy Facts Weekly, May 22, 2012
http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=29bc7d5d8...

Nuclear Energy and Fears
Politics and the Nation's Next Nuclear Plant (Georgia Power's boondoggle under construction)
By Jim Clarkson, Master Resource, May 23, 2012
http://www.masterresource.org/2012/05/politic...
[SEPP Comment: A provocative post on the first new nuclear plant under construction in over thirty years (Westinghouse AP1000). The post emphasizes the difference between a regulated utility and a company in a competitive market. A regulated utility does not necessarily have an incentive to reduce costs - there are no cost savings to be passed on to shareholders in the form of profits.]

Nuclear Industry Taking It on the Chin in States Across US
By Staff Writers, Washington DC (SPX), May 24, 2012
http://www.nuclearpowerdaily.com/reports/Nucl...

Alternative, Green ("Clean") Solar and Wind
U.S. Slaps Substantial Tariffs on Chinese PV Producers, Exporters
By Staff Writers, Power News, May 24, 2012
http://www.powermag.com/POWERnews/4679.html?h...
[SEPP Comment: More on the solar wars.]

China says US violates WTO on renewable energy
By Staff Writers, Beijing (AFP), May 24, 2012
http://www.solardaily.com/reports/China_says_...

Alternative, Green ("Clean") Energy -- Other
Billions For Climate, Not One More Cent For Defense
Editorial, IBD, May 18, 2012
http://news.investors.com/article/612092/2012...
[SEPP Comment: The actual cost of the biofuel is about $27 per gallon. It replaces a fuel that costs about $4 per gallon - the cost of the blend is about $16 per gallon.]

Alternative, Green ("Clean") Vehicles
Tesla to launch electric sedan in US on June 22
By Staff Writers, San Francisco (AFP), May 22, 2012
[SEPP Comment: On the base model the battery options raise the price from $49,900 to $59,900 to $69,900. A $49,900 auto is hardly an affordable car.]

Huge subsidies give American taxpayers high-voltage shocks
By Mark Perry, Sacramento Bee, May 24, 2012
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/24/4513475/huge...

Carbon Schemes
New research centre could hold key to £190bn of oil
By Frank Urquhart, Scotsman, May 24, 2012 [H/t GWPF]
http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/new-...
[SEPP Comment: The use of carbon dioxide to extract more oil from wells is established. But this appears to be a program of crippling development of new oil sources with highly questionable projects such as Carbon Capture and Storage.]

Review of Recent Scientific Articles by NIPCC
For a full list of articles see
http://www.NIPCCreport.org...

More Floods for Central Europe in a Warming World?
Reference: Stewart, M.M., Grosjean, M., Kuglitsch, F.G., Nussbaumer, S.U. and von Gunten, L. 2011. Reconstructions of late Holocene paleofloods and glacier length changes in the Upper Engadine, Switzerland (ca. 1450 BC-AD 420). Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 311: 215-223.
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2012/may/...

Trees and Shrubs at Their Poleward Limits in a Warming World
Reference: Capers, R.S. and Stone, A.D. 2011. After 33 years, trees more frequent and shrubs more abundant in northeast U.S. alpine community. Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research 43: 495-502.
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2012/may/...
[SEPP Comment: A significant portion of the greening may be due to carbon dioxide enrichment, not warming.]

The Fate of Amazonian Forests in a CO2-Enriched and Warmer World
Reference: Lapola, D.M., Oyama, M.D. and Nobre, C.A. 2009. Exploring the range of climate biome projections for tropical South America: The role of CO2 fertilization and seasonality. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 23: 10.1029/2008GB003357.
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2012/may/...

The Net Mass Balance of the Community of Karakoram Glaciers
Reference: Copland, L., Sylvestre, T., Bishop, M.P., Shroder, J.F., Seong, Y.B., Owen, L.A., Bush, A. and Kamp, U. 2011. Expanded and recently increased glacier surging in the Karakoram. Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research 43: 503-516.
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2012/may/...
[SEPP Comment: Positive mass ice balances drive glacier surges -the ice melt observers often fail to comment on the ice balance.]

Health, Energy, and Climate
Low-dose study finds no effects
By Staff Writers, WNN, May 16, 2012
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Low_dose...
Mice exposed to low-dose radiation for an extended period showed no signs of DNA damage, said a study from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that challenges existing radiation guidelines.
[SEPP Comment: Such studies go to the foundation of the EPA linear, no threshold model.]

Regulators' Anti-Chemical Smear Campaigns Will Breed An Unsafe World
By Angela Logomasini, Forbes, May 23, 2012 [H/t ACHS]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/05/...

Environmental Industry
Environmentalism and the Decline of the West
By Walter Starck, Quadrant, May 17, 2012
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-plane...
Most of the leading Western Nations are now experiencing ageing populations, declining industries, chronic trade imbalances, bloated government, punitive taxation, high levels of personal debt, unsustainable government deficits and a rapidly metastasizing regulatory regime that is an increasing impediment to any productive activity.

Other Scientific News
UF study finds logging of tropical forests needn't devastate environment
By Staff Writers, Gainesville FL (SPX), May 22, 2012
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/UF_study_fi...

Other News that May Be of Interest
2012 Annular Eclipse
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, May 20, 2012
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/20/2012-an...
[SEPP Comment: Sunning photo from the ground.]

'Natural causes' blamed for Peru dolphin deaths
By Staff Writers, Lima (AFP), May 22, 2012
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Natural_cau...
[SEPP Comment: To ward of criticism the report should have been specific as to cause.]

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BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE:
Kenji gets mail, but where's the science?
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, May 24, 2012
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/24/kenji-g...
[SEPP Comments: Kenji Watts has the papers to be a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world." But can a dog respond to its plea for money?]

If the states abdicate their responsibilities under PPACA, the federal government will step in and act in lieu of the state. Under this scenario, states will relinquish all power to make a bad law better. Letting the federal government implement reform almost guarantees bad outcomes.

Linda Gorman: No

Exchanges are required to perform a variety of duties beyond distributing ObamaCare subsidies, and these duties are likely to add significantly to estimated costs. Some of them will damage a state’s business climate by creating new opportunities for crony capitalism. Some require that currently fashionable, but poorly tested, models be forced on health care providers. Some require that state exchanges have expertise equal to private insurers. Others force states to increase the cost of health insurance for people who currently have coverage.

“I’ve got better things to do.” 

 John Goodman continued:

The states should engage in preemptive reform over the next two years. This means enacting responsible, rational reforms — the kind of reforms that they should have enacted all along, in the absence of federal legislation. Where possible, states should try to make their reforms compatible with the new federal law — but only if compatibility does not sacrifice the major goals of the state’s reform.

There are four arguments in favor of preemptive action at the state level:

1. If states enact their own reform and if it is achieving most of the goals of the federal law in a reasonable way, they may be able to secure a federal waiver to continue with whatever they are doing.
2. There is some possibility that the federal law may be found unconstitutional or it may be repealed altogether. In either case, the states will be able to continue with their good reforms without federal interference.
3. There is a high probability that PPACA will be subjected to major modification within the next three years—barring an outright repeal or a finding of unconstitutionality. An amended PPACA will likely grandfather any state reform that appears to be working reasonably well.
4. Even if the states are forced to modify their reforms in major ways three years from now, the end result is likely to be much better if the system being modified is a good system to begin with than if a set of perverse federal rules are super-imposed on a pre-existing dysfunction of system.

State Responsibilities under the New Law. States are required to do a number of things under the PPACA. These include:

• Setting up and administering a new risk pool for people who have been denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition.
• Enforcing new health insurance regulations, including no ceiling on annual and lifetime spending, limits on the amount insurers can spend on overhead, enforcing a prohibition on pre-existing condition provisions in child-only policies, etc.
• Beginning in 2013, enforcing a prohibition on adjusting premiums to reflect an individual’s expected health care costs, enforcing guaranteed issue in the individual market—both inside and outside the health insurance exchanges—and limiting the spread of premiums charged to different individuals at different ages and in different occupations.
• Regulating health insurance premiums in the individual market.
• Setting up health insurance exchanges and administering federal subsidies for individuals who purchase their own health insurance, beginning in 2013.
• Managing a major expansion of Medicaid, including families with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, beginning in 2013.
• Managing the flow of people who move back and forth between the federal/state-funded Medicaid program and the tax-subsidized health insurance exchanges.

All of these responsibilities are challenging. They are costly and administratively difficult. Hence, it is tempting for the states to dump the problems back in the lap of the federal government.

What if States Do Nothing? More than half the states have already decided not to operate the new federally funded risk pools—which make health insurance available to people who have been denied coverage for a pre-existing condition—for the same premium healthy people would pay. In these states, the risk pool is being operated by federal authorities.

It is understandable that states would have little interest in operating a fund with downside risks and no obvious upside benefits. But for states that take my advice and implement preemptive reform, this decision may have been unwise.

The biggest problem in health reform is the problem posed by people known to have high health care costs. As a result, the greatest help a state can get in transitioning to a new health care system is a pool of money to pay for those costs—even if only for three years.  A well-funded risk pool should be an element of rational state-level reform.

Here is a principle to keep in mind on this and on many other issues: It is in the states’ interest to shift costs to the federal government wherever possible; it is in the federal government’s interest to shift costs to the states. With respect to a risk pool or a health insurance exchange there will be hundreds—even thousands—of decisions made on a day-to-day basis, that are hard to review and even harder to undo. From the state’s perspective, who do you want to make these decisions?

Let’s consider three areas where decision-making authority could be worth millions of dollars to state governments.

First, if state governments abdicate their right to set up health insurance exchanges, the federal government will step in and set up federally regulated exchanges in those states. But the official who stands at the entrance door of the exchange will be the person who will decide whether an applicant is entitled to federally subsidized insurance or whether that person should be getting insurance from an employer or from Medicaid. Consider also that whatever decision is made, no one will know if it was the right decision until an audit is done five years after the fact; and at that point there will not be much that can be done about it anyway.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with a health insurance exchange. What is wrong with existing exchanges is that they give health plans perverse incentives to underprovide to sick people. But an exchange that did not have such perversions built into it could be a valuable institution.

Second, consider the regulation of premiums for plans sold in the exchanges. The Obama administration’s goal for controlling costs in Medicare is immensely transparent. The administration wants to force seniors into super HMOs called Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). It will then limit the income of the ACO—forcing it to ration care. In doing this, the administration will be following a precedent that is already underway in Massachusetts.

With that in mind, who do you want to regulate private insurance premiums in your state? If the federal government does it, the tendency will be to replicate what is happening in Medicare. The regulators will try to keep the growth of premiums below the rate of growth of health care costs. This will not really control costs but it will limit the size of the subsidies the federal government has to pay. In the process it will force health plans to ration care.

A third area where decision-making authority will be worth millions of dollars is the ability to determine whether an individual or family qualifies for Medicaid or qualifies for insurance in the exchange. Under Medicaid, the federal subsidy is much lower and the state has to pay a good portion of the cost. In principle, eligibility for Medicaid follows in a straightforward way from objective criteria—mainly family income and assets. In practice, however, people’s income and assets are changing all of the time. It’s not unusual for a family to be eligible and then ineligible for Medicaid several times in one year. According to one study of the problem, within six months, more than 35 percent of all adults with family incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level will experience a shift in eligibility from Medicaid to an insurance exchange, or the reverse. Within a year, 50 percent, or 28 million, will.

In the light of all this movement and flux, the ability to make decisions about who should be in the exchange and for how long could be worth an enormous amount of money to the state. Keep in mind that a family at 133 percent of the poverty level will get a benefit in the health insurance exchange in excess of $20,000, according to estimates of the Congressional Budget Office. Medicaid spending will probably be less than half that amount and the federal government doesn’t even pay all of that.

Bottom line: states should at least consider retaining as much decision-making power as they can get.

In a future Health Alert, I will discuss the elements of pre-emptive reform.

Linda Gorman continued:

Once an exchange is established, a state must:

• Reimburse the exchange, but not private insurers, for the cost of any new health insurance mandates.
• Establish a reinsurance program for the first three years of operation. Fees will be collected from health insurers and used to “stabilize premiums” in the individual market. This increases health coverage costs for people who have existing coverage.
• Operate a risk adjustment program that collects risk-related data to determine individual risk scores. Private insurers have historically used experience based rating, not risk scores. Risk adjustment has not worked for Medicare Advantage.

Coverage offered through an exchange must:

• Meet a variety of reporting and document standardization requirements.
• Distribute grants to selected community groups “hired” to replace the services of traditional insurance brokers under PPACA’s “Navigator programs.”
• Establish network adequacy standards that have no minimum requirement except that they cover a “sufficient number” of “essential community providers.”
• Meet a variety of quality improvement requirements that, in pilots, have been shown to increase costs with little improvement in care:
  • Quality reporting.
  • Design new programs for case management, care coordination, chronic disease management, and care compliance initiatives.
  • Implementation of the medical home model.
  • Use of evidence-based guidelines.
  • Wellness promotion.
  • Operate programs for community outreach and cultural competency training to reduce health disparities.

We invite you to leave your thoughts in the comments.

SOURCE: John Goodman's Health Policy Blog

John C. Goodman is president and founder of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market think tank located in Dallas, Texas.  The Wall Street Journaland the National Journal, among other media, have called him the “Father of Health Savings Accounts.” Dr. Goodman’s health policy blog is the premier right-of-center health care blog on the Internet.  It is the only place where pro-free enterprise, private sector solutions tohealth care problems are routinely examined and debated by top health policy experts across the ideological spectrum.

This debate can become very heated.  The first thing that both sides should acknowledge is that everyone deserves to be loved and respected no matter where they are from and no matter what the color of their skin is.  If someone speaks English that does not make that person better than someone who speaks Spanish and vice versa.  Every single person on this planet is extremely valuable no matter where they come from and no matter what language they speak.

And the reality of the matter is that tens of millions of Americans speak Spanish as their primary language today.

All of us have noticed many of the changes that have occurred as a result.

If you use an ATM in America today, you will likely have the option to conduct your business in the Spanish language.

If you call a customer service hotline, you can "press 1 for English" or "para español oprima dos".

In many areas of California, Texas and Florida some employers have made being bilingual a mandatory requirement for many jobs.  If you apply for those jobs and you do not speak both English and Spanish you can just forget it.

Down in Miami, there are large areas of the city where Spanish is actually the primary language.  It is almost like going to a foreign country.

Big retailers in many parts of the country have also hopped on the bandwagon.  The following is a photo sent to me by a reader of the interior of a Home Depot store....

There is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to be helpful to your customers, but are we eventually going to get to the point where almost everything in America is done in two or more languages?

Increasingly, radical activist groups are deciding that it is not right to expect that immigrants will attempt to assimilate into our culture.  Instead, they are demanding that all of us must be willing to make special accommodations for them.

This whole "political correctness" thing has totally gotten out of control.

According to Marta Jimenez, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, "the historical use of English in the United States" has been used as "a tool of oppression".

A tool of oppression?   Really?

One of the biggest areas where we are seeing this kind of activism is in the education system.  In some areas of America today, Hispanic students are taught most of their subjects in Spanish.  This makes it very difficult for them to successfully integrate with the larger society.

The consequences of not insisting that public school students become proficient in English have been very dramatic at times.  The following example comes from an article by Mauro Mujica....

In May, about 20 percent of the students at Miami Senior High School, where 88 percent of the students speak English as a second language, failed the annual Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) exam, which is required for graduation. The poor results prompted protests and demands for the test to be given in Spanish as well as English. Over 200 students and teachers gathered outside the school waving signs and chanting "No FCAT." A state senator from Miami introduced a bill that would allow the FCAT to be given in Spanish.

Unfortunately, these issues are not going to go away any time soon.  Today, approximately 20 percent of the entire population of the state of California is considered to have limited English proficiency.

The federal government certainly has not been helping matters.  Illegal immigrants are much less likely to integrate into society, and the federal government continues to do very little to stop the flow of illegal immigrants coming into this country.

Meanwhile, legal immigrants (those that would be more likely to integrate successfully) have to go through paperwork hell in order to do things correctly.

Our entire immigration system is totally upside down.

Much of this article has focused on Spanish so far, but that is far from the only language that is becoming a major issue.

For example, those immigrating from the Middle East are also often not very eager to integrate into our culture.

Thanks to the federal government, very large numbers of Muslims have been immigrating into the United States, and as a result Islam is now the fastest growing major religion in America.

Many communities in America have actually altered their school calendars to accommodate Islamic holidays, and Arabic is commonly spoken in many areas of the United States today.

Someday members of your family may be taught Arabic in school.  Don't think that it can't happen.  As the New York Post recently reported, one public elementary school in New York will now require students to study Arabic....

An upper Manhattan public elementary school will be the first in the city to require that students study Arabic, officials said yesterday.

Beginning next semester, all 200 second- through fifth-graders at PS 368 in Hamilton Heights will be taught the language twice a week for 45 minutes — putting it on equal footing with science and music courses.

So will we soon hear "press 3 for Arabic" when we call a customer service line?

America is rapidly changing.

Barack Obama issued a memorandum which authorized the admission of up to 80,000 additional immigrants during fiscal year 2011.  Most of the additional "refugees" were from areas that were highly Islamic.

As their numbers grow, will they be willing to learn our language and our culture?

Most Americans do not realize this, but there is even a requirement that ballots in other languages be available on a nationwide basis.

So you don't even need to know English in order to be able to vote.

Unfortunately, those alternate ballots cost a lot of money to print up.

According to one estimate, providing bilingual and multilingual voting ballots nationwide costs close to 5 million dollars.

But it isn't just ballots that are the issue.

Executive Order 13166, which was signed by Bill Clinton when he was president, essentially requires that all federal agencies ensure that individuals with limited English proficiency have "meaningful access" to all services that they provide.

That means that millions upon millions of dollars is spent printing up forms and documents in other languages.

A recent CNS News article discussed one example of this....

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the government is working on including more questions about the health concerns of the LGBT community. The National Health Survey questions will be in multiple languages to “drill down on what are the specific health needs around the LGBT community.”

So is the federal government going to print up the National Health Survey in all 325 languages that are spoken in American homes?

If not, why not?

Don't all language groups deserve equal treatment under the law?

Hopefully you are getting an idea of how bizarre all of this can potentially become.

The truth is that if we could focus on just one language that might help our education system.

Today, 47 percent of all people living in the city of Detroit are functionally illiterate.  Getting the people of Detroit to be able to use one language correctly would be a major step in the right direction.

And if we allow other languages to become dominant in the United States it is only going to be a matter of time before that creates very deep political divisions in this country.

Theodore Roosevelt once made the following statement....

"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism…. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities."

So what do you think about all of this?

Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below....

Source: American Dream

The following are 45 signs that China is colonizing America....

#1 It was recently announced that China’s Dalian Wanda Group has bought U.S. movie theater chain AMC Entertainment for a whopping 2.6 billion dollars.  This deal represents China's biggest corporate takeover of a U.S. firm ever.

#2 Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve announced that it has given approval for banks owned by the Chinese government to buy stakes in U.S.-owned banks.

#3 A few days ago Reuters reported that China is now able to completely bypass Wall Street and purchase U.S. debt directly from the U.S. Treasury Department.

#4 A recent investigation by the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services found more than one million counterfeit Chinese parts in the Department of Defense supply chain.  How in the world could we be so stupid?

#5 After being bailed out by U.S. taxpayers, General Motors is currently involved in 11 joint ventureswith companies owned by the Chinese government.  The price for entering into many of these "joint ventures" was a transfer of "state of the art technology" from General Motors to the communist Chinese.

#6A Chinese company known as "Sino-Michigan Properties LLC" has purchased 200 acres of land near the town of Milan, Michigan.  The goal is to build a "China City" with artificial lakes, a Chinese cultural center and hundreds of housing units for Chinese citizens.

#7 As I reported on recently, corporations controlled by the Chinese government have been rapidly buying up U.S. oil and gas deposits worth billions of dollars.

#8Chinese investors have been gobbling up real estate all over New York City.  The following is from a recent Forbes article....

According to a recent report in the New York Times, investors from China are “snapping up luxury apartments” and are planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on commercial and residential projects like Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn. Chinese companies also have signed major leases at the Empire State Building and at 1 World Trade Center, the report said.

#9The Chinese are also doing huge real estate deals in cities in the middle part of the country.  The following example is from an article in the Toledo Blade....

Dashing Pacific Group Ltd., which has already purchased the nearby Docks restaurant complex for $2.15 million, put its $3.8 million offer to buy the southern 69 acres at the Marina District in East Toledo back on the table for approval by Toledo City Council. Additionally, Dashing Pacific Chairman Yuan Xiaohong, in a letter signed in Hangzhou, said the firm wants a two-year option to buy the decommissioned Toledo Edison power plant property on the site.

#10 According to ABC News, major road and bridge projects all over the United States are being built by Chinese companies.  Meanwhile, there are millions upon millions of blue collar American workers that cannot find jobs.  The following is a brief excerpt from a recent ABC News article....

In New York there is a $400 million renovation project on the Alexander Hamilton Bridge.

In California, there is a $7.2 billion project to rebuild the Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland.

In Alaska, there is a proposal for a $190 million bridge project.

These projects sound like steps in the right direction, but much of the work is going to Chinese government-owned firms.

"When we subsidize jobs in China, we're not creating any wealth in the United States," said Scott Paul, executive director for the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

#11 The new World Trade Center tower is going to include glass that has been imported from China.

#12 The new Martin Luther King memorial on the National Mall was made in China.

#13 Check out this incredible photo which contrasts the decline of Detroit over the years with the amazing rise of Shanghai, China.

#14 A couple of years ago, a large Chinese company was considering building "a 10,000- to 30,000-acre technology zone for industry, retail centers and homes" just south of Boise, Idaho.

#15Our trade deficit with China in 2011 was $295.5 billion.  That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the planet.

#16 In 2011, our trade deficit with China was 28 times larger than it was back in 1990 and more than 49,000 times larger than it was back in 1985.

#17 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Today, China's high-tech exports are more than twice the size of U.S. high-tech exports.

#18 America has lost more than a quarter of all of its high-tech manufacturing jobs over the past ten years.

#19 According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.

#20 The U.S. spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.  Does that sound like "fair trade" to you?

#21 While we allow Chinese goods to freely flood our shores, China just keeps slapping new tariffs on American-made goods.  According to the New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States costs about $85,000 in China thanks to all the tariffs.

#22 According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day closed down in the United States during 2010.

#23 The United States has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month and more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been shut down since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

#24 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#25 Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Ohio were lost, 42 percent of the manufacturing jobs in North Carolina were lost and 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Michigan were lost.

#26 In 2010, China produced more than twice as many automobiles as the United States did.

#27 In 2010, China produced 627 million metric tons of steel.  The United States only produced 80 million metric tons of steel.

#28 In 2010, China produced 7.3 million metric tons of cotton.  The United States only produced 3.4 million metric tons of cotton.

#29 Today, China produces nearly twice as much beer as the United States does.

#30 85 percent of all artificial Christmas trees are made in China.

#31 China is now the number one producer of wind and solar power on the entire globe.

#32 Chinese solar panel production was about 50 times larger in 2010 than it was in 2005.

#33 Right now, China is producing more than three times as much coal as the United States does.

#34 China is now the number one supplier of components that are critical to the operation of U.S. defense systems.

#35 According to author Clyde Prestowitz, China's number one export to the U.S. is computer equipment.  According to an article in U.S. News & World Report, during 2010 the number one U.S. export to China was "scrap and trash".

#36 According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades.

#37 The United States had been the leading consumer of energy on the globe for about 100 years, but during the summer of 2010 China took over the number one spot.

#3815 years ago, China was 14th in the world in published scientific research articles.  But now, China is expected to pass the United States and become number one very shortly.

#39 China now awards more doctoral degrees in engineering each year than the United States does.

#40 China now possesses the fastest supercomputer on the entire planet.

#41 China now has the world's fastest train and the world's most extensive high-speed rail network.

#42 The Chinese economy has grown 7 times faster than the U.S. economy has over the past decade.

#43 The Chinese economy is projected to be larger than the U.S. economy by 2016.

#44 One economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.

#45 China now holds approximately 1.17 trillion dollarsof U.S. government debt.  If you were alive back when Jesus was born and you had spent a million dollars every single day since then, you still would not have spent that much money by now.

In compiling the statistics above, I relied heavily on two articles that I previously authored.  You can find them here and here.

Please share this list with as many people as you can.  It is imperative that the American people get educated about why our economy is falling apart and about why there are so few jobs.

Thanks to the foolishness of our politicians, today American workers have to compete directly for jobs with workers on the other side of the globe where it is legal to pay slave labor wages.

Do you want your standard of living to continue to descend toward the level of a communist worker making about a dollar an hour?

Do you want tens of millions of American workers to be unemployed indefinitely as millions of good jobs continue to leave this country?

If not, you better stand up and say something while you still can.

The greatest economy the world has ever seen is falling to pieces right in front of our eyes and most Americans are dead asleep.

Is there any hope for us?

Source: American Dream

President Obama supposedly has an “all-of-the-above” energy policy that is displayed on the Barack Obama campaign website.[ii] Unfortunately, coal was missing from the list of the “all-of-the-above” energy policy until recently– after he lost40 percent of the primary vote in coal-rich West Virginia to a prison felon.[iii] At that point, his website removed ‘fuel efficiency” and replaced it with “clean coal” as part of his “all-of-the-above” energy plan. But what is “clean coal” to the president?

In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed a Clean Energy Standard (CES), where by 2035, 80 percent of our electricity would come from “clean” energy sources: renewable energy (e.g. wind, solar, biomass, and hydropower), nuclear power, natural gas, and “clean” coal.[iv]

Most people think of “clean energy” as energy that produces low amounts of pollution such as soot or toxic chemicals, but a “Clean Energy Standard” does not concern itself with actual dirtiness. Instead, proposed bills define “clean” only based on how much carbon dioxide a power plant emits. Carbon dioxide itself is not dirty—it is an odorless, colorless gas that is not toxic until carbon dioxide concentrations are many times higher than in the atmosphere.

Under a CES, ‘clean coal’ is a coal generating technology with Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) equipment that removes 90 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions. Unfortunately, the technology is not commercially viable today.

Impact of a Clean Energy Standard

Senator Bingaman has put forth a number of bills defining a Clean Energy Standard (CES). Under a CES, fossil fuels get penalized against renewable fuels and nuclear power by the amount of carbon dioxide emissions they release. In order for coal to be considered a viable technology under a CES, it must have Carbon Capture and Sequestration equipment. But, that technology is not commercially available today—and some engineers believe it is at least 2 decades away from becoming a viable competitor. Of course, by then, the ‘Clean Energy Standard’ will reduce the amount of coal consumed for electricity substantially and raise electricity prices in so doing.

According to a study by the Energy Information Administration that analyzed the latest Bingaman proposal, average electricity prices in 2035 will be 18 percent higher than they are forecast to be without the CES and coal generation will be 54 percent lower. Some regions will see electricity prices as much as 30 percent higher by 2030. Under Bingaman’s CES, no coal with CCS equipment is expected to be built because it is not an economically viable technology by 2035. As a result, about one-third of today’s coal capacity will be prematurely retired. That means that perfectly good coal generating equipment will not be allowed to be used because of the desire of politicians to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The American public will have to pay for the higher cost replacement technology that will result in an 18 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2035. That 18 percent reduction, however, will not even be noticeable on a global scale since China’s increase in carbon dioxide emissions over that time period will dwarf the reduction from the clean energy mandate.[v] China currently consumes over 3 times the amount of coal that the United States consumes and is expected to consume more as the country attempts to improve the standard of living of its citizens and to fuel its growing economy.

Coal’s Accomplishments

The coal generating industry has made great strides in reducing criteria pollutants substantially through the use of viable technology—scrubbers and flue gas desulfurization equipment—and using lower sulfur coal. The criteria pollutants are carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ground-level ozone, and particulate matter. They are called “criteria” pollutants because the Environmental Protection Agency sets the criteria for permissible levels based upon levels acceptable to human health.  According to the Energy Information Administration, sulfur dioxide emissions from coal plants declined 62 percent between 1989 and 2009, and nitrogen oxide emissions decline 76 percent over that time period while coal fired generation increased over 10 percent.

EPA shows that criteria pollutants were reduced by 71 percent between 1970 and 2010 while Gross Domestic Product increased 210 percent, energy consumption increased 44 percent and population increased 51 percent.

Despite record energy consumption, U.S. air quality is 60% better today than in 1970.

Source:  http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/images/comparison70.jpg

Conclusion

President Obama would like the country, and especially the coal producing states, to believe that coal is part of his “all-of-the-above” energy plan by adding ‘clean coal’ to the plan. But ‘clean coal’ according to a Clean Energy Standard requires 90 percent removal of its carbon dioxide emissions and the technology to do so is not commercially viable today and is not likely to be by 2035. Therefore, his plan would have us retire perfectly good coal generating capacity and replace it with more expensive natural gas, renewable, and nuclear generating capacity, while charging us 18 percent more to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions.  U.S. carbon dioxide emissions reductions will be dwarfed by the increase in emissions from developing countries in their quest for better living conditions and greater economic growth, even as our own electricity prices skyrocket.

SOURCE: IER

Lest we forget what "veiled" really means, here is a photograph of a veiled Marlene Dietrich in The Devil Is a Woman:

Marlene, bless her German-American heart, is veiled.

Now that that's clear, I can go on with the story, which best continues with another photo. Behold the flower of Egyptian womanhood on Concubine, I mean, Marya TV.

Call it "The Obstructed View."

It should be noted that this does not go over well with all of Egypt. Indeed, some prominent Eyptians are protesting this overt exercise in Islam.

I was particularly taken with a quotation from a woman described as Egyptian actress Athar al-Hakim, who told an Egyptian women's magazine:

“I have the right to know who is talking to me on the television screen,” she said.
“The issue of niqab is a national security one and it is unacceptable in Egyptian society despite the religious diversity.”

Sounds -- gosh -- reasonable. I decided to learn more about Athar Al Hakim. Turns out, she is a very famous in Egypt, a television and movie star of long standing, often appearing as the usually star-crossed romantic leading lady.

Athar (left) doesn't wear a niqab, that's for sure. In fact, from her blonde highlights to her pink lipstick, she looks Western-influenced. My survey of Athar articles and interviews, however,  reveals that this Western influence is no more than skin deep.

I'll begin with a 2001 interview in Al Ahram.

And remember -- this is our no-niqab-news champion!

Excerpts:

She found success at the very beginning of her career, and considered that a sign from God that she should pursue acting. ...

"My father would sign the contracts for me. He was very strong, a difficult character, but he encouraged and supported me. He was full of contradictions."...

El-Hakim has three sons: Omar 12, Ali, 10, and Abdel-Rahman, nine. She wanted to have five or six. How about a girl? I ventured. "Never. I wouldn't be fair to her. I would want her to veil the moment she was born." Isn't that a little extreme? On this note, El-Hakim started to open up about her personal life. She wasn't welcomed as the first-born in a family that wanted boys. She had to work very hard to prove herself, and "I feared men. Sometimes I think I hated them. I was a very difficult, rebellious daughter, maybe because I missed having a real man in my life since my childhood. My father was very strong, tough, revered by many people, but I missed him in my life as a protector and a friend. He only gave orders; I missed the company of a man of my flesh and blood. The discrimination in my family between girls and boys affected my relationship with men too. I thought I'd live without them my whole life."...

What Athar begins to describe here and elaborates on below is the same warping vortex of pain that Islam inflicts on generation after generation of women, as chronicled so vividly by Wafa Sultan in A God Who Hates.

We learn Athar is twice divorced.

She has channeled all the energy she used to dedicate to her husband (whose name she does not mention once, referring to him only as "the father of my children") into humanitarian causes.

Such as?

She was one of many singers and movie stars to collaborate on a recent song titled "Jerusalem Will Be Ours Once More."

Sounds like Yusef al Qaradawi's February 2011 speech in Tahrir Square calling for the conquest of Jerusalem (which went virtually unreported by the media).

Back to Athar:

Since when has she been interested in the Palestinian cause? "It is not the Palestinian cause itself, it is that I have more time now." She has given blood, boarded the first Egyptian plane to break the air embargo against [Saddam's] Iraq last October, and visited Qana in south Lebanon last April, on the fourth anniversary of the massacre. "I had these feelings before I had my children, but I have more time now," she explains. ...

Her dream now is to act in a movie based on a real story about a Palestinian woman who spent her childhood in Jaffa and Jerusalem and moved to Egypt as an adult: Al-Kharaz Al-Mulawwan (Coloured Beads), written by Mohamed Salmawy. "No movie in Arab cinema has tackled the Palestinian cause directly...."

Does she think she will stop acting at some point? She doesn't like the question. "I see no contradiction between veiling and acting, or maybe directing."

Seems as if she has "veiling" on the brain.

El-Hakim has been attending religious seminars for more than 10 years and when she reads she prefers religious books, because "most of us suffer from religious illiteracy." ...

She is also a strict mother who believes in hitting her children if they don't pray, as her father used to do to her. "He used to hit me for a lot of things. I used to say my father was harsh and difficult. Now I understand: he was right. Especially in adolescence, strictness, even a little bit of violence, is necessary. I hit them quite hard. I know they would prefer their father, who is the other extreme."

Therein lay the irreconcilable differences? She doesn't say.

Athar did in the end stop acting, one decade after the Al Ahram interview. Sheannounced her retirement in August 2011:

Prominent Egyptian actress Athar Al Hakim has publicly announced that her decision to resign from the acting world is final. At the same time, Athar said that she does not intend on wearing the hijab (Islamic headdress) and start preaching because it is not her place to do so.

Athar stated that she considers the entertainment world to be more corrupt than the political world for it is full of superficial people, adding that most of the films being produced are full of indecent and provocative scenes that aim at brainwashing viewers. ...

Athar noted that she wants to make a career shift and may consider journalism and has in fact received numerous offers to work as a television broadcaster but has not accepted any so far. Athar stressed that what she wants to concentrate on in the current moment is becoming closer to God.

(In February 2012, Athar let it be known that one of the main reasons for her retirement was the "seductive clothing" of Dina the belly dancer (below).

No comment.

Let's try to put it all together: Retired romantic leading lady. Would have veiled her baby girl. Beat her sons for not praying. Wants to capture Jerusalem. Now campaigns for former leader of the  Muslim Brotherhood Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh in his run for Egyptian president.

Sounds MB- and sharia-compatible.

She just doesn't want her news through a veil.

She also has (or had?) blonde highlights.

What gives?

I go back to her retirement announcement of last August:

Prominent Egyptian actress Athar Al Hakim has publicly announced that her decision to resign from the acting world is final. At the same time, Athar said that she does not intend on wearing the hijab (Islamic headdress) and start preaching because it is not her place to do so.

My hunch is she has another "place."

Window-dressing.

Diana West is the author of The Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization. Her arttcle archive and blog are here.

As recently as the 1960s CTA was a politically moderate entity that eschewed labor activism, as reflected by then-executive director Arthur Corey's 1962 declaration that: “The strike as a weapon for teachers is inappropriate, unprofessional, illegal, outmoded, and ineffective. You can’t go out on an illegal strike one day and expect to go back to your classroom and teach good citizenship the next.” The union began drifting leftward in 1975, however, when California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill permitting the state's teachers to bargain collectively. Over the ensuing 37 years, CTA staged more than 170 strikes.

Among the most well-funded institutions in America today, CTA's revenues derive mostly from mandatory annual dues that, in some cases, can amount to more than $1,000 per member. The Association's income in 2009 exceeded $186 million, all of it tax-exempt.

For many years, CTA has used its massive resources to fund its ever-expanding political activism. In 1988, for instance, the union helped win the passage of Proposition 98, an initiative that compelled California to spend more than 40% of its annual budget on public education. Because this mandate was not contingent upon merit or achievement, it eliminated schools’ incentive to operate in a fiscally responsible manner (with a sense of accountability to the taxpayers). More and more funds were directed toward pet causes whose overriding objective was to promote the growth of the union itself.

In the early 1990s, CTA spent $12.5 million on a massive negative-publicity campaignthat helped defeat Proposition 174, a ballot measure that was initially very popular with voters and would have given California families universal access to schoolvouchers. Some CTA members tried to physically intimidate people who wished to sign the petition to bring Prop 174 to a formal vote; others urged fellow opponents of the measure to sign the petition multiple times in order to inject chaos into the process; still other CTA representatives offered a $400,000 payoff to a key consultant in charge of organizing the petition campaign, in hopes that he would agree to refrain from collecting the requisite number of signatures. In 2002, CTA spent an additional $26 million to help defeat yet another school-voucher proposal. To this day, the union contends that voucher programs “hurt students and schools by draining scarce resources away from public education.” 

In 1996 CTA devoted $1 million to an ad campaign touting the benefits of smallerclass sizes for children in the early grades. This effort led to the passage of a measure providing subsidies to schools with classes of 20 children or fewer. Not only did the program fail to improve student performance, but it arguably reduced the quality of education statewide by making it necessary for schools to hire many new teachers as quickly as possible (in order to maintain a low student-to-teacher ratio). According to City Journal, “The program cost California nearly $2 billion per year at its high-water mark, becoming the most expensive education-reform initiative in the state’s history. But it worked out well for the CTA, whose ranks and coffers were swelled by all those new teachers.”

In 1998 CTA spent almost $7 million to defeat Proposition 8, which sought to make student performance a criterion for teacher reviews. That same year, the union earmarked another $2 million for a bid (which was ultimately unsuccessful) to continue bilingual-education programs in the public schools.

In 2005 CTA spent an astonishing $58 million to defeat initiatives designed to cap the growth of state spending, require unions to get their members’ consent before using dues for political purposes, and make it easier to terminate incompetent teachers. Indeed, CTA has long used its influence to create a complex web of procedural roadblocks making it almost impossible to fire public-school teachers for any transgression short of outright criminality. Consequently, the cost of trying to terminate a single teacher in California is approximately $500,000. This expensive and laborious process dissuades most school districts from ever trying to fire anyone. For instance, the Los Angeles Unified School District—which employs 33,000 teachers—dismissed only four during the ten-year period of 2002-2012.

CTA also bankrolls a wide range of left-wing causes unrelated to education, such as the implementation of a single-payer health-care system in California; the prohibition of photo-identification requirements for voters; the placement of limits on the government’s power of eminent domain; and support for the legalization of gay marriage.

Between 2000 and 2010, CTA spent over $210 million on political campaigning—more than any other political donor in California. In fact, this total exceeded the combinedpolitical expenditures of the pharmaceutical, oil, and tobacco industries during that same period. From 2003-2012, only eight-tenths of 1% of CTA's political contributions went to Republicans. The rest went to Democrats, making CTA the largest supporter of the Democratic Party in California.

Emphasizing that “the health of California's public schools depends on stable tax revenues,” CTA contends that the state's high earners are not “paying their fair share” in taxes and are thereby depriving the public-education system of much-needed cash. Thus, in 2011 CTA organized a “State of Emergency” week to agitatefor higher taxes on wealthy Californians. A CTA document encouraged teachers to promote this cause by means of such tactics as shadowing state legislators wherever they went; shutting down major transportation arteries; boycotting companies that backed school vouchers; and creating chaos in politically strategic locations. In the spring of 2012, CTA president David Sanchez was among 100 demonstrators who were arrested for illegally occupying the California State Capitol in Sacramento.

SOURCE: Discover the Networks

Nine Muslim men belonging to a child-rape gang in northwestern England have received hefty prison sentences for trafficking and raping young British girls.

The three-month sexual grooming trial at a court in Liverpool, which ended on May 9, has drawn nationwide attention to the sexual abuse of children and women by Muslim immigrants, and British police are currently investigating at least 40 other cases of child rapes perpetrated by Muslims in northern England.

While Muslim groups have sought to discredit the police investigations by accusing British authorities of "racism" and "Islamophobia," it recently emerged that British police had known for more than a decade that Muslim rape gangs were targeting young girls in England, but they ignored evidence of the rapes and failed to act because they were afraid of being accused of racism.

The Liverpool Crown Court heard horrific testimony from five victims -- the youngest was 13 when the abuse began -- who were plied with alcohol, drugs and gifts so they could be "passed around" among a group of men aged between 24 and 59 for sex in apartments, houses, cars, taxis and kebab shops.

The nine defendants -- eight are from Pakistan and one is from Afghanistan -- were sentenced to a total of 77 years in prison after being convicted of rape, aiding and abetting rape, conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child, sexual assault and trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

All of the Muslims live in Rochdale, a grimy suburb of Greater Manchester in northwestern England. Some of the men were regarded as pillars of their community.

One of the men, Abdul Rauf, 43, is a married father-of-five and an Islamic studies teacher at a local mosque. According to court testimony, Rauf asked a 15-year-victim if she had any younger friends and he drove some of the girls to other men who would use them for sex, even though he knew the girls were minors. He was sentenced to six years in prison.

Another man, Adil Khan, 42, who is married with one child, fathered the child of a 13-year-old victim; he received an eight-year sentence. Hamid Safi, 22, an illegal immigrant with no fixed address, will be deported to Afghanistan at the end of his four-year sentence.

Mohammed Sajid, 35, was sentenced to 12 years for rape, six years for conspiracy, one year for trafficking and six years for sexual activity with a child. Known as "Saj," he would regularly ply victims with alcohol before having sex with them at his apartment, where groups of men would gather and "pass around" the girls.

Judge Gerald Clifton said: "One of the factors leading to that [rape] was the fact that they [the victims] were not part of your community [Pakistani] or religion [Muslim]. Some of you, when arrested, said it [the prosecution] was triggered by race. That is nonsense. What triggered this prosecution was your lust and greed."

Clifton said that in some cases, the girls had been raped "callously, viciously and violently" at a time when they were going through difficult periods in their lives. "One had left her parents' home, another had been in [foster] care for many years. You attracted them to your company by flattery, free food, and alcohol. Some of you acted to satiate your lust, some to make money out of them. All of you treated them as though they were worthless and beyond all respect."

The guardians of British multiculturalism have been quick to argue that it is merely coincidental that the rapists in the Rochdale case are Muslims and that sex abuse also occurs in white gangs. Some in British have also sought to portray the Muslims as the true victims in this case.

Defense attorney Simon Nichol told the BBC that his client "has objected from the start for being tried by an all-white jury, and subsequent events have confirmed his fears. He believes his convictions have nothing to do with justice but result from the faith and the race of the defendants. He further believes that society failed the girls in this case before the girls even met them and now that failure is being blamed on a weak minority group."

But Simon Danczuk, Labour Party MP for Rochdale, said in an interview that "it would be daft not to believe that race plays a part." He added: "There is a subculture of a small group of males that are Asian, that are collaborating to abuse young white girls who are vulnerable. The subculture is under the radar. Some people in communities are in denial about it but we need some home truths if we are going to address this."

According to experts interviewed by The Telegraph, while white pedophiles generally operate in isolation, the Muslim-led grooming is being done mostly by large numbers of men acting as a group. Several of the men on trial in Liverpool apparently told their victims that it was all right for them to be passed around for sex with dozens of men "because it's what we do in our country."

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Britain's most senior Muslim politician, told the London Evening Standard that there are "Pakistani men who believe that white girls are fair game. And we have to be prepared to say that. You can only start solving a problem if you acknowledge it first."

Warsi said the color of the victims' skin, as well as their vulnerability, helped to make them a target. She also said that some Pakistani men "see women as second class citizens and white women probably as third class citizens" and that these men "are to be spoken out against."

Warsi called on British authorities to stop being squeamish about investigating allegations involving Muslims. "Cultural sensitivity should never be a bar to applying the law," she said.

Greater Manchester Police and the Crown Prosecution Service [CPS] have apologized for failing to protect the first victim -- a 15-year-old known as Girl A -- following her plea for help in August 2008.

Girl A told police that she had been raped and provided DNA evidence from her attacker, but the CPS twice decided not to prosecute him.

Girl A's abuse intensified and she was being driven to apartments and houses to be raped by up to five men a night, four or five days a week. She was singled out because she was white, vulnerable and under-age. Her ordeal only ended when her teachers forced social workers to intervene after she became pregnant and they became concerned by the number of Muslim men picking her up from school.

Girl A said that in a six-hour interview she gave police details about her abusers and where the attacks took place. She said: "I hoped they were going to do something and it would stop. But it just carried on. It just started again with different men and more men this time, and that's when it started becoming up to five men a day."

When the Greater Manchester Police finally forwarded a file on Girls A's rape to the CPS in 2009, a government lawyer decided not to charge anyone because he said she would not be a sufficiently credible witness to put before a jury. A second CPS lawyer backed that opinion.

It was only after social workers noticed an upsurge in cases of "child grooming" – pretending to befriend children with attention and gifts to gain their trust, and eventually lead them to think that underage sexual activity is "normal" -- that police reinvestigated and made a series of arrests which led to the convictions on May 9.

According to Ann Cryer, a former Labour MP for the town of Keighley, who has campaigned to draw public attention to the issue of Muslim sex gangs, complaints to social workers and the police were ignored because they were "petrified of being called racist."

Cryer said: "This is an absolute scandal. They were petrified of being called racist and so reverted to the default of political correctness. They had a greater fear of being perceived in that light than in dealing with the issues in front of them."

Rather than acknowledge that there is a problem, Muslim groups in Britain have decided to play the victim card instead. They are also working overtime to try to silence public discussion about Muslim sex crimes in Britain by branding critics as "far right racists" and "Islamophobic."

The Muslim Council of Britain has complained about a "climate of hate" against Muslims and it has warned Muslims to brace themselves for "Islamophobic" attacks on Muslims and mosques.

Faith Matters, a pro-Muslim "inter-faith think tank" which established a helpline called Tell Mama to monitor "Islamophobia" when the Liverpool trial began in February, said the "Islamophobic hatred" prompted by the case has added to the "poison" against Muslims.

Fiyaz Mughal, a spokesman for Faith Matters, said: "This is dangerous for community relations. There's lots of discussion about 'Muslim paedos,' like saying the prophet Mohammed married a young girl. All of this disgusting talk is adding to the poison against Muslims."

Although five girls testified at the trial in Liverpool, British police are pursuing leads that the Rochdale gang exploited at least 50 other girls.

On May 12, just three days after the nine Muslims from Rochdale were sentenced to prison, Greater Manchester Police arrested another nine Muslims, aged between 24 and 38, on suspicion of sexually abusing a child. And on May 19, police arrested two more Muslims, both aged 33, on suspicion of sexual assault and rape.

In January 2011, researchers at The Times newspaper identified 17 prosecutions in Britain since 1997 -- 14 of them in the past three years -- involving the on-street grooming of girls aged 11 to 16.

The victims came from 13 towns and cities and in each case two or more men were convicted of offenses. In total, 56 people, with an average age of 28, were found guilty of crimes including rape, child abduction, indecent assault and sex with a child. All but three of the men were Muslim.

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

SOURCE: Gatestone Institute

And make no mistake about it folks, the left is extremely cunning and aggressive in their quest to make homosexuality considered normal – equal to heterosexuality. Heck, the left believes bisexuality is more enlightened and superior to both. 

The left's indoctrination of our kids regarding homosexuality begins in kindergarten. Kids are taught Heather having two moms is really cool. As for us old farts, they simply bully us into submission. They put us in a political stranglehold with our arms bent behind our back; apply painful pressure until we yell, “OK, OK, homosexuality is normal!” 

Now, every time I deal with the topic of homosexuality, liberals go crazy! They cuss me out and say I hate gays. I do not. As cliche as this might sound, some of my closest friends and family, who I love dearly, are gay. But loving someone does not mean one should be forced to approve their behavior. 

Calling the opposition “haters” is a tried and true effective tool of the left to get-their-way. If you disagree with government forcing taxpayers to fund abortion against their religious beliefs, the left says you “hate” women. If you disapprove of the president ignoring the Constitution to implement his Socialistic agenda, the left says your disapproval is really “hate” for a black man. If you say gay civil unions are fine, but marriage should remain defined as one man and one woman, the left says you “hate” homosexuals. The left actually exploits our sense of decency, compassion and fair-play. They know accusing us of “hate” will in many cases silence our opposition and give them whatever they want. 

The left are pretty selective regarding who they call intolerant haters. For example, the left claims Christians are vitriolic haters of gays. While the Bible does call homosexuality a sin, it says “with loving kindness have I drawn thee.”(Jeremiah 31:3) 

As a teen touring Maryland black churches while on the Baltimore Youth Choir, gays were active in the black church. Black pastors preached the Bible, but I never saw homosexuals mistreated. 

Meanwhile, the Muslim faith has zero tolerance for homosexuals. And yet, the left defends Islam to the max. The Noble Quran's punishment for unrepentant homosexuality is execution, crucifixion or cutting off of hands and feet. (The Noble Quran 5:33) http://www.answering-christianity.com/houses.htm So why does the left, which include the mainstream media, enthusiastically defend Islam while despising and aggressively attacking Christianity? The answer is the left has a problem with Jesus; but that's for another article. 

Recently, VP Joe Biden came out boldly in favor of same-sex marriage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trcdYBUD3r8 Biden was laying the foundation for Obama to secure gay campaign contributions. 

In typical democrat fashion of dividing Americans into various percieved voting blocs, Obama has thrown a bone to numerous groups to win their votes in November; women, college kids, blacks and occupiers. Now Obama is going after the gay vote/contributions. During a recent interview Obama said he supports gay marriage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F06_knuiGU 

Obama coming out in support of gay marriage might be the single issue which awakens black Christian voters from their Obama Zombie trance. 

As a black American who ignores skin-color, I can not begin to tell you how frustrating it has been attempting to persuade fellow blacks to see the devastating effects Obama's Socialistic policies have had not just on America in general, but particularly on the black community. Nothing seems to break their Black Code loyality to the first black president. 

But this "gay thing" may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. 

My dad and a super-liberal black minister friend consider a vote for a Republican to be a vote for the KKK. And yet, they both voted for Bush's second term to protest the Democrat's support of gay marriage. 

As I stated, blacks fellowship with gays in church – love, live and play with them. But trying to make blacks say homosexuality is normal – “ain't happenin'”. 

Lloyd Marcus, Proud Unhyphenated American

Chairman – www.CampaignToDefeatObama.com

www.LloydMarcus.com

Renewable Approvals on Federal Lands

Since 2009 when President Obama took office, the Department of Interior approved 16 solar projects with 5,636 megawatts of capacity, 7 geothermal plants totaling 407 megawatts and 4 wind farms with capacity of 544 megawatts. In 2012, the agency plans to review 17 additional proposals (9 solar, 6 wind, and 2 geothermal) totaling about 7,000 megawatts.[iii]

In 2010, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved 6 solar projects on federal lands in California and 3 in Nevada, and one wind project and 2 geothermal projects on federal lands in Nevada, totaling 3,900 megawatts and covering more than 60,500 acres of federal lands. A few projects overlap onto private lands using an additional 6,300 acres.[iv]

The Silver State North project (a 50 megawatt solar plant) in Nevada’s Ivanpah Valley, south of Las Vegas, is the first non-hydroelectric renewable plant to operate on federal soil. The solar plant started operating on Monday. It is owned by Enbridge Inc., Canada’s largest oil-pipeline company. NV Energy Inc., Nevada’s main electric utility, is committed to buying its power over the next 25 years.[v]

In 2011, the BLM gave priority status to 18 projects (9 solar, 4 wind, and 5 geothermal) totalling 4,279 megawatts. The projects include one solar project to be built on federal lands in Arizona, 7 in California, and one in Nevada; 2 wind projects each in California and Oregon; and 5 geothermal projects to be constructed on federal lands in Nevada. Decisions are pending on 2 projects and one has been identified as a priority project for 2012.[vi]

Offshore Wind Projects

The Obama Administration also promotes offshore wind projects, though their cost has shown them to be prohibitive compared to other renewable projects. The Energy Information Administration estimates the cost of generation from offshore wind to be 2.5 times more expensive than generation from onshore wind, and 3.7 more expensive than natural gas-fired combined cycle generation.

The Cape Wind project off Cape Cod, Massachusetts was the first offshore wind farm to get approval by the Department of Interior in 2010. But, the project is having trouble finding buyers for its high cost electricity. The second approved offshore wind project, Bluewater Wind owned by NRG Energy, off the coast of Delaware is having trouble getting financing.[vii]Although none have been built to date, Secretary of Interior Salazar wants to develop wind farms off the coasts of Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Virginia.[viii]

The governors of five states and 10 federal agencies and departments have signed a memorandum of understanding to boost development of offshore wind energy in the Great Lakes. The governors of Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania co-signed the memorandum of understanding, which requires federal agencies to streamline and expedite their current regulatory regimes for offshore wind projects. The Energy Department, one of the federal signees, estimates that the Great Lakes has the potential to produce more than 700 gigawatts of energy from offshore wind, about a fifth of the total offshore wind energy potential for the United States.[ix] However, while the winds may be there, so is the higher cost of producing the electricity.

Oil and Gas Approvals

While the Obama Administration is promoting all sorts of renewable technologies on public lands, fossil resource development on federal lands has fallen by the wayside. Oil production on federal and Indian lands has declined by 13 percent in fiscal year 2011 from fiscal year 2010 levels, while production on private and state lands has increased by 11 percent due to less bureaucratic red tape and the advent of hydraulic fracturing technology to get oil in shale formations.[x]Recent government impediments to oil production have included the denial of the Keystone XL pipeline, continued delays in Shell’s Arctic Alaska permits, and the moratorium and permitorium in the Gulf of Mexico after BP’s oil spill accident.

The federal government leases less than 2.2 percent of federal offshore areas and less than 6 percent of federal onshore lands for oil and natural gas production. When oil and gasoline prices peaked in 2008, President Bush and Congress allowed access to additional federal lands for oil and gas exploration.  And, before leaving office, President Bush put forth a new 2010 to 2015 lease plan that included areas for leasing that had been off limits for almost 3 decades.  The Obama Administration rejected that plan prior to the Macondo oil spill and since then has put forth delay after delay.

The Department of Interior now claims that its delay is because of the oil spill, though the Obama Administration had rejected a perfectly good plan prior to the spill. Due to the delays imposed by the Obama Administration, for the first time since the United States has had a comprehensive offshore leasing program, the 5 year plan will not be submitted in time to meet its statutory deadline and give Congress its 60 day review period.

The Obama administration did not hold a single offshore lease sale in fiscal year 2011, while the Bush administration planned to hold five. Those sales were rejected when the Obama Administration decided not to pursue the 2010 to 2015 outer continental shelf lease plan reflecting the expiration of the Presidential and Congressional moratoriums on leasing in 2008 demanded by the public.

President Obama’s Bureau of Land Management is setting records for the least number of leases on average per year.  For example, President Clinton’s Administration issued over twice the number of leases per year than President Obama’s Administration issued (1856 leases), even though oil and gasoline prices were substantially lower during the Clinton Administration than the Obama Administration.

Oil and Gas Leases

Source: Bureau of Land Management, http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/energy/oil_and_gas/statistics/Table04.html

The number of federal acres leased for oil and gas exploration and production has also taken a downturn under the Obama Administration. The number of federal acres leased during the Obama Administration averaged about 1,760,000 acres per annum, about half the acreage leased by either the Clinton Administration or the George W. Bush Administration.[xi]

Source: Bureau of Land Management, http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/energy/oil_and_gas/statistics/Table05.html

Conclusion

The Obama Administration is fast tracking renewable energy development on federal lands, while delaying oil and natural gas resource development on federal lands.  It is concentrating its limited resources on the most expensive kinds of energy for consumers, which may reflect its interpretation of President Obama’s statement that under his plans, “electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket.”

The Department of Interior has approved 27 projects for wind, solar, and geothermal electricity production since 2009 and 17 more are in review this year.  In contrast, the Obama Administration has approved only half the leases per annum that the Clinton Administration approved and has taken the nation backward in its offshore leasing plan for 2012 to 2017, denying access to offshore areas opened for leasing by Congress and President Bush in 2008.  In sum, the Obama Administration is force-feeding more expensive energy into the economy while starving Americans of the kinds of energy that they want to use.  If Americans are concerned about energy costs, they should be concerned about these actions by the Obama Administration.

SOURCE: Institute for Energy Research

Why Pro Life?

by Tom White

Every year, over a million babies are aborted in the United States. These children are not just an unwanted collection of cells growing in the mother. They are the collective culmination of generations going back countless centuries. Each child has the genetic makeup of the parents, as well as uncles, aunts, grandparents, great-grandparents and on and on. Each child has recognizable features like eyes, ears, hair and personality traits of those who came before him or her. The mother is aborting her family tree. Bits of a dear departed grandmother, a favorite uncle, or a cousin are all in the DNA of this unique individual.

And what might have that tiny life have become, if he were allowed to live? What discoveries will the world never know? And what will the soul of the aborted child think and see? A mother’s regret in later life? Or sooner? Only God will know these children taken from the earth before they even had a chance. And what must these poor souls think of us? And what does God think?

A Million Souls Up in Heaven

I got my Mama’s coal black hair, and my Daddy’s crooked grin
Got my Grandma’s funny ears and my Grandpa’s dimpled chin
I love to dance and kick my feet like my Uncle likes to do
My aunt loves her quiet time and sometimes I do too.
A hundred generations of two separate family trees
Brought together by my branch for all eternity.
You’d think they would all agree and everyone rejoice
But that ain’t what happens to the victims of pro choice

Chorus

But there’s a million souls up in Heaven
Looking down on earth below
There’s a million souls up in Heaven
That only God will ever know.·

I might have been a Doctor and done a lot of good
Or maybe just a carpenter who makes things out of wood.
I might have been an Astronaut and soared high above the world
Or maybe just a normal boy or a normal little girl
I might have been a writer and made the world a better place
Or maybe just a preacher trying to save the human race
I might have been a singer writing songs about romance
I might have been a lot of things but I never had a chance·

Chorus

But there’s a million souls up in Heaven
Looking down on earth below
There’s a million souls up in Heaven
That only God will ever know.·

I never felt my Mama’s touch and I long for her embrace
And she tries to tell herself that I’m in a better place
One less son or daughter there to share her golden years
She cries herself to sleep sometimes, her pillow stained with tears
Everybody told her she had a right to choose.
But they never told her how much that she would lose.
The thing about decisions that can never be reversed
Instead of solving problems they can sometimes make them worse

Chorus

But there’s a million souls up in Heaven
Looking down on earth below
There’s a million souls up in Heaven
That only God will ever know.

Tom White, VA RIGHT

00:12
Yeah I think that...
00:16
after our Power and Prejudice documentary, basically for three years...
00:20
we’ve been slandered as ‘racist, Nazi’ by the media...
00:24
after our Power and Prejudice documentary it come out quite clear, something, certain things...
00:28
the only thing I wanted to get out of that documentary was that we are against the ideology...
00:32
of 7th-century Islam. And that we are not against blacks, Sikhs...
00:36
Asians and nothing to do with colour and it’s all to do with ideology. And that came
00:40

out of it and in the weeks after, I had so many...
00:44
Western European people in Luton come up to me, and they were infuriated
00:48
that they had been lied to, by the media. They said ‘how can they...
00:52
in media have gotten away with telling us you are Nazis?’ They didn’t understand...
00:56
I’ve had so many people come up to me, and that’s the main gripe from a lot of their things and...
01:00
that’s public perception, it is changing people, people three years on..
01:04
we’re established now, people know what we stand for, they no longer say, ‘the racist English...
01:08
Defence League’ they say ‘The anti-Islamist Defence League’. So
01:12
and it’s been a hard long battle to fight and break those barriers.
01:16
It’s been a smear campaign by politicians, by Islamic leaders and the left
01:20
to try and silence us really, to try and stop...
01:24
the growth. To stifle...
01:28
the debate by labelling us all as racists and Nazis.
01:32
and obviously now with the link up with British Freedom, the idea is that...
01:36
The EDL does clearly have a bit of an image problem.
01:40
It’s an image problem that has been created not just by the left...
01:44
partly our own fault, a lot of people ask me to condemn it when ...
01:48
people are angry on the streets but, I try and explain that those lads that are angry...
01:52
you see these grooming cases and things like that, I’ve been to cities where I have had lads...
01:56
come up to me, and say, ‘My sister is one of the victims of these Muslim paedophiles’...
02:00
Now, the system has let him down, the police have let him down and the Islamic community has let him down,
02:04
and when that man is angry on the street and he has an aggressive face or he shouts...
02:08
I can’t condemn him. Although what I’ll try and do is...
02:12
channel his frustration and anger, obviously you do see anger on the streets...
02:16
because people are angry. There is an undercurrent of anger and I don’t thing anyone’s got...
02:20
their finger on the pulse. And it’s massive.
02:24
Especially with recent developments with this Islamic child grooming and the fact that...
02:28
there has been a conspiracy of silence to facilitate it at the police force.
02:32
And by social services. People are really angry, blood is boiling.
02:36
And we are trying to direct that anger through peaceful protest. So...
02:40
Whether our new image problem, hopefully with British freedom now will be like...
02:44
clean slate as such, that will be...
02:48
the organization, cause so many people are sympathetic, I have so many people come up to us on the streets...
02:52
and say, ‘I support you, but I’m too fearful to come to a demonstration because of losing my job because...
02:56
they look a bit rowdy, they look a bit aggressive,’ things like that. So those sort of people...
03:00
which is a massive percentage, will now be able to support us by ticking a box.
03:04
for the British Freedom party, hopefully.
03:08
03:24
Every single police force tell us, when we have sit down meetings with the police they all say:
03:28
that we are not allowed an opinion but they stick their thumbs up. Pretty much all of them do that. All of them...
03:32
do that. ‘Cause obviously they see first-hand the extremism, the Islamists, the Muslim gangs.
03:36
They see it first hand. They have to deal with that as a job, the police. Also...
03:40
what they do is, we had a black Tory councillor, Dr.
03:44
Blaine. He come up to me at a meeting on camera, shook my hand, says he admires what I’m doing...
03:48
he thinks it’s amazing what I’m doing, the way we are galvanizing the working class, he thinks we’ve got skills...
03:52
that need to be capitalised on by local government...
03:56
and he doesn’t understand why governments are not sitting down and talking with us...
04:00
and he was suspended. So then there is this big campaign, whenever anyone...
04:04
talks out on behalf of us, we’ve just had it again last; and he was a local Tory...
04:08
councillor. And he was a black man. He was actually a black man. And they called him racist...
04:12
afterwards. And we just had last week a...
04:16
another Tory councillor down in Bournemouth. She made comments on Twitter saying that...
04:20
the English Defence League is the only group sticking up for the English. Now she’s been suspended.
04:24
So this is what happens. There’s a big, which is what they have done across this country, ...
04:28
they scare everybody. ‘Cause all the politicians watching think, ‘Well, I’d better not say anything
04:32
productive about the English Defence League cause Ill be suspended. I’ll be...
04:36
harassed by the left. I’ll be called a racist. I’ll be called far right, I’ll be called an extremist’
04:40
So that’s the problem we have. And that’s what they do, and they do it on purpose.
04:44
So that people are fearful, and it’s exactly the...
04:48
that reason that we formed. ‘Cause people have been walking on eggshells 15, 20 years...
04:52
scared to talk about how they feel, and it’s because of these reasons, they are harassed.
04:56
Well anyone who is the EDL is harassed, they try and find out where they work, they report them to their job,
05:00
they smear campaign them, to try and destroy your life. Which is...
05:04
an organized and orchestrated campaign by the left against anyone...
05:08
who speaks out.
05:12
05:24
They have been infiltrated...
05:28
to the top. The first thing that brought it to my awareness really was....
05:32
really locally, even in Luton, they opened...
05:36
the ‘Discover Islam Centre’. So we looked into Discover Islam Centre...
05:40
and the group that are doing it, that previously the Daily Telegraph had done a big article on them...
05:44
That previously, as soon as Lutfur Rahman, which is a known...
05:48
extremist, and known Islamist links, he was kicked out of the Labour party for having Islamist links...
05:52
as soon as he got into power in Tower Hamlets Council, the first thing he done was to...
05:56
put all these leaflets and these CDs for this Da’wa...
06:00
to convert to Islam for this group, and this group are funded by extremism,
06:05
they are Islamists, and that’s the first thing that happened so once Tower Hamlets Council was infiltrated they started pushing
06:09
Islam and pushing extremist Islam through the council. Now Luton
06:13
opened this centre, and to our shock and dismay, when we started looking into the group behind this centre...
06:17
all of our councillors, our Mayor, all of our...
06:21
cohesion groups went to the grand opening of it. Now...
06:25
When we did some digging and we’ve highlighted who is behind it, some of the things they said in...
06:29
videos on the internet, their anti-Christian rhetoric.
06:33
There can be no other reason, why our council...
06:37
is supporting these groups. Other than they have been infiltrated to the top. ‘Cause
06:41
in this Daily Telegraph investigation of this group, it say’s that ‘The only purpose...
06:45
for this group coming to your town, is to cause disharmony, and foster hatred.’
06:49
Now how are our council supporting this group? And it’s clear...
06:53
It’s then clear to me that Labour... and then when we started looking at the people in positions...
06:57
of power like, the head of Luton in Harmony, which is like a cohesion project...
07:01
is a Socialist Workers party. So then we see the far left...
07:05
is infiltrating as well as Islam. For their own personal agendas.
07:09
And it’s alarming. And you’ve seen the police force
07:13
have kicked out 3 or 4 police officers last week, because they believe they have been to terrorist raining camps...
07:17
if you look at the CPS, like what we are seeing now
07:21
with these child-’grooming’ gangs, the first instances come to court
07:25
come about in 2008, and a solicitor for the CPS decided not to prosecute.
07:29
Now we have just done a Freedom of Information Act [request] and I guarantee you, I’m pretty sure
07:33
that the man is a Muslim. It seems that
07:37
they have infiltrated everything. They have got themselves into positions of power
07:41
across the board. All the major decision-makers, all the major organizations,
07:45
that’s what they aim for. So they can have a sway
07:49
and they can slowly get into positions of power and Islamify areas for
07:53
changing to sharia. And that’s where I’m at. And I believe they have infiltrated to the top of this country.
07:57
And I always thought they’d start
08:01
an Islamic National party or an Islamic political party
08:05
but they don’t need to cause they just infiltrate Labour. That’s all they done.
08:09
They just basically took over the Labour party. That’s what we’ve seen. So,
08:13
yeah, they are infiltrating everywhere.
08:17
08:25
I don’t know that’s what I need to look into ‘cause
08:29
I just rang the police earlier cause, today, just today
08:33
I’ve had threats to chop up my children. I’ve had threats to burn my mum.
08:37
This is just today. And I’ve got them all in black and white where they are messaging me
08:41
online, I’ve had threats to shoot me, every single day I get this.
08:45
If I went online and I made a threat to chop up a Muslim’s mum I’d be arrested.
08:49
So the police need to be arresting these people on a daily basis that are making these threats.
08:53
But they don’t seem to. There seems to be a lack of
08:57
real determination to deal with these problems.
09:01
I hope so. I hope if I can get elected anywhere
09:05
then I will get some protection from the authorities.
09:09
but at present it doesn’t look that way.
09:13
I keep on hoping, ‘cause I said, to be honest, it’s getting to a point now where
09:17
I was in town yesterday doing an interview for Croatian TV and I was lucky to get out
09:21
So they have some great footage cause I was surrounded by at least 20 or 30 Muslims
09:25
and it was all getting heated, three police cars come, and I’m standing there
09:29
saying this is freedom of speech, and the police we’re telling me to go away. I said I’m not going away
09:33
I’m finishing my interview with this TV company, in my town.
09:37
I don’t care if they want to threaten to beat me up, or beat me up, you have to deal with it then. That’s your job
09:41
It is my right to stand here and talk.
09:45
You can’t tell me to stop talking. And they said, well, they were going to arrest me
09:49
for breach of the peace. I said this is where the problem is. Rather than turn up and dealing
09:53
with the aggressors, you are picking on me. Who is merely standing here exercising my right
09:57
of freedom of speech. And, yeah,
10:01
I’ve been thinking for 3 years, I thought by now someone would have come in and...
10:05
a sympathetic donor, who sees the work we
do, and we are all volunteers....
10:09
and I thought we might have got some funding from somewhere,
10:11
even just funding for security. ‘Cause, to be honest, I do need security.
10:13
I’d still do what I do, but I can see something bad happening in the future,
10:16
do you know what I mean, because I’m in Luton every day,
10:19
and I walk round Luton every day, and every time I do an interview
10:21
I’m usually on my own, and I’m in the town centre, and there’s always things.
10:25
I think I nearly have about three or four punch-ups every single day, probably,
10:29
when I walk through town, so I think it’s just a matter of time.
10:30
So hopefully I can get some security.
10:34
10:49
Yeah, see, like when these stickers went up, saying, ‘gay-free zone’
10:55
And ‘alcohol-free zone’, and all these things, there was a lot of people shocked by it.
10:59
But people, like, living in towns where we live... The stickers didn’t shock us,
11:03
‘cause those stickers just confirm what’s been happening anyway.
11:06
You see every week in the paper a non-Muslim walking near a Muslim area,
11:10
he’s attacked and beaten. They call it a ‘failed robbery’, yeah?
11:13
But they don’t try and rob him. The reason why they’re getting beat up
11:16
is ‘cause they’re drunk, and they’re walking within an Islamic area.
11:19
And that’s sharia law. We used to wonder and scratch our heads,
11:22
‘Why are they jumping out of cars on innocent people and beating them up
11:24
all the time?’ And if you look, it’s usually homosexuals, it’s usually someone
11:27
who’s intoxicated near their mosques, or near their area,
11:31
and that’s sharia policing. That’s been here for years.
11:34
They’ve been policing their own communities for years.
11:37
And we’re always just scratching our heads, thinking it’s just random racist attacks,
11:40
or random religious attacks, but it’s not: it’s enforcing sharia.
11:43
Every single homophobic attack would go up by hundreds of percent
11:48
where Islamic areas [are]. The pubs close down, they gradually wear down the pub,
11:51
they attack people, and that’s everyday life now. So, when they put these stickers up,
11:56
and a lot of people are alarmed by it, it’s just confirming what we know,
11:59
living near Islamic ghettos, anyway.
12:02
12:09
What’s becoming more worrying and alarming is Salafis and Wahhabis.
12:13
They’re growing big-time. They are growing big-time. And all the people
12:16
who convert to Islam, you see all the non-Muslims that are converting,
12:20
the West Indians, the whites, none of them are converting to Sufism.
12:24
None of them are converting to any sort of moderate sects of Islam.
12:27
It’s all Salafis. It’s all Wahhabis. The drive to convert, and the drive
12:32
to Islamify, and really push Islam on us, is coming from Saudi-funded sects.
12:37
And it is alarming, because now all the Muslims, obviously now, that are walking
12:41
around town, who are 18, 19, are the big bearded and bald-headed mullahs.
12:45
That’s the way they’re all going. They’re all going, praying five times a day.
12:49
They’ve all stopped listening to music. They’re all going back to the 7th century.
12:52
And it’s happening at an alarming rate.
12:55
13:19
‘Cause they’re petrified. And fear is paralysing, innit? And I think the fear factor
13:26
has paralysed our politicians; it’s paralysed our police force. And I think
13:29
the way they look at it, is they’re trying to put the cat back in the box,
13:33
and everyone’s now starting to say how they feel. Three years ago
13:37
no one would talk about Islam. Everyone was too scared. No one would mention sharia.
13:41
No one would mention the barbaric, the anti-democratic, the anti-Semitic,
13:44
the homophobic ideology. No one would talk about it. Now, within three years,
13:48
because of the English Defence League, people are proudly standing up,
13:51
shouting it and singing it and screaming it, and people are talking about how they feel.
13:54
And they’re trying to put it back into the box. So, by giving people gaol sentences,
13:57
it scares everyone else. I try and work out the way they look at it,
14:03
and I think they’re looking at it as though, ‘We’ve got 3% that are Muslim,
14:06
we’re trying to contain them, ‘cause if the 97% really kick off
14:10
and decide that they’ve had enough, we’re gonna have big problems.’
14:13
So I think they’re trying to scare the fear factor into people.
14:17
Say they gaol - when the English Defence League first started,
14:21
every leader I talked to from different towns and cities, they’ve all had
14:24
their doors kicked off, they’ve all been arrested, and they do that purposely
14:28
to scare all the other people. So all my friends are scared. When this first started,
14:31
and they started kicking my door off, and putting pictures of me in the paper,
14:34
arresting me, just harassing me, forcing me to lose my businesses -
14:39
when they do that to me, all the people around me sit and watch,
14:42
and they all think, ‘I’ve got a job, I’ve got family to protect - I don’t want that.’
14:47
So then it scares them from joining the movement. It scares them from speaking
14:50
about how they feel. And that’s the tactic I think they purposely use.
14:53
In fact, I know they do, because every single leader from every single town
14:57
and division in the English Defence League has been arrested, raided, and persecuted.
15:00
And it’s done in order to terrify the people. So when people speak up,
15:04
and say how they feel, they’re then arrested, and they do that to stop other people.
15:08
So when people, like - you see - I saw some lads, yeah, they got four years [in gaol]
15:12
for smashing a mosque window with a brick. Now, any house of worship
15:16
should never be attacked, it doesn’t - that’s not the correct method to go down.
15:20
But they smashed a window with a brick. That’s it. They got four years.
15:24
That’s all ‘cause it’s ‘religiously-motivated’. Now that is to put the fear factor
15:29
into anybody from ever going near mosques. Whereas someone could smash a church;
15:33
someone could beat up a priest - they don’t get four years. Muslims attack anything.
15:37
A Muslim desecrated a war memorial with ‘Bin Laden’s on his way, British will die’.
15:44
He didn’t go to gaol, he didn’t get - he actually got let off. Yet a non-Muslim
15:51
smashes one window and gets four years. So there’s a two-tier policing system
15:56
where our community are treated with iron fists, and their community are treated
16:00
with kid gloves, and we need to break that. One of the first things we need to break
16:04
is the two-tier policing system. We need them to be as worried as our community
16:07
as they are of theirs.
16:10
16:22
Well, when they say ‘Holocaust’ - I’m a proud supporter of Israel. I mean,
16:26
I’ll defend Israel to the last day. And I think it’s a shining beacon in the middle of,
16:30
surrounded by totalitarian Arab dictatorships. It’s a shining beacon of democracy.
16:36
These ‘Hope not Hate’, these groups - they’re all funded. They’re all saying what they say
16:39
because they get paid to say it. That’s it. You take away their funding, would they
16:43
still be here doing it? Would they still be volunteering? To print stories, etc.?
16:48
No, they wouldn’t. So we’re all volunteers. We do this as a passion.
16:52
That’s why they don’t know how to deal with us. Because we’re doing this,
16:54
we’re dedicating our lives to it, and we’re not getting paid a penny.
16:57
Whereas all these groups are coming out against us, all these ‘experts’
17:01
who give their opinion, they’re all getting paid to give their opinion.
17:04
So, their opinion, they’re just saying what their paycheck tells them to say.
17:08
So all they are is far-left groups who are appeasers to communism,
17:13
to Marxism; they get anti-establishment, anti-British police, whereas we’re pro-police,
17:19
we’re pro-law, we’re pro-democracy. Yet for some reason the authorities
17:23
wish to treat us as the bad boys. I can’t get my head round this sometimes, but…
17:28
It’s just ludicrous.
17:31
17:40
What they need to know is that… It’s like they’re sleep-walking into an oblivion.
17:45
I don’t think they will realise how quickly, at the click of your fingers, your country
17:49
won’t be the same. Because it will happen, it’s just like - it’s not -
17:54
it just so gradually happens; it’s so quick, it’s so… I mean, like,
17:58
you just turn around, and, ‘Oh my God!’ Like certain estates in Luton,
18:01
it’s like within five years - ‘Oh my God! The whole estate, all the schools
18:04
are now Muslim - what’s happened?’ And yet, it’s just like overnight.
18:07
And that’s because of the birth rate. And it’s so terrifyingly quick, the way it can just,
18:12
within one generation, it can change a whole town. Within one generation.
18:16
People have to stand up now, before it happens. I wish what we’re doing now,
18:21
I could have been around twenty years ago to do in Luton now. To stop the town
18:25
descending the way it has. To stop the Saudi-funded Wahhabi Islamists sects
18:29
getting such a grip on the town that they have. To stop them controlling
18:32
the streets the way they do. If you wish to control an area, the first thing you have to do
18:36
is control the streets, so you have like a street-formed jihad, where they put
18:40
their muscle on the streets, and they attack people, so they control the areas.
18:43
And that’s what we’re seeing. And I think people really need to -
18:46
We should always look and learn from history. I can’t believe Britain
18:49
has not learned from Lebanon. I can’t believe Britain has not looked around the world
18:53
and [isn’t] learning now from Nigeria and Sudan. I can’t believe we haven’t learned
18:57
in 1400 years of history of Islam. I can’t believe we haven’t looked to history.
19:00
‘Cause that’s what we need to do: look to history to see what’s going to happen in Britain.
19:04
Now, Canada and America, countries like, in North America, they should be looking now,
19:07
thinking, ‘We don’t want that! Look what’s happening now in Britain!’
19:10
And it’s going to happen. It’s not IF it happens, it’s just WHEN it happens.
19:15
It’s coming to a town near you, coming to a country near you,
19:18
unless you stand up, be brave, put your life to it, and dedicate it,
19:21
and then stop it. (...)

We are not claiming that religion is the only factor. Why exactly these men committed their crimes we may never know, but that does not mean that the role played by Islam should avoid any scrutiny. If it is an important factor then it needs to be understood.

Evidence for the argument that Islam is an important factor can be found in the fact that the abduction, rape and sexual abuse of young girls by Muslim men is recognised as a problem in numerous different countries, including Sweden, Norway, Holland, France, Denmark, Pakistan, India, Somalia and Egypt. In each of these countries the victims all share the same profile: they are overwhelmingly non-Muslim. For instance, in Pakistan the victims are invariably Christian, in India they are Sikhs and Hindus, in Somalia they are Christians and Animists, and in Egypt they are Copts.

It would be easy to argue that this can be explained by Islam’s hostility to other religions, but despite the success that some British imams have had in whipping up hostility towards non-Muslims, sectarian violence is hardly unique to Islam.

But whilst it is easy to think of any number of examples of violent crime being linked with a particular religious, racial, cultural or political perspective, the abuse of children is almost always assumed to be the work of individuals who share nothing in common with their fellow abusers other than their perverted desires. This is because it is very hard to imagine a belief system in which this sort of abuse could be in any way justified.

However, whilst not necessarily justifying these actions, it is possible to look to Islam to explain why these men all chose such young victims. Unlike in the UK, where boys and girls are considered to be children until they reach the age of sixteen, many Islamic cultures consider young girls to have reached adulthood by the time that they are nine or ten.

This is rooted in the example set by Islam’s prophet Mohammed. The Islamic texts tell us Mohammed married Aisha when she was just six years old and that he consummated the marriage (had sex with her) when she was nine.

Islamic apologists will often object to Qur’anic references, claiming that they must be understood in their historical context. But this is not how they are understood in the Islamic world. In fact, the story of Mohammed’s wedding Aisha is well-known in the Muslim world and forms the foundation for the legal age of consent (or equivalent) in many Islamic countries.

The Qur’an tells us that Mohammed was “the most excellent example for all believers” (Sura 3:21), and this is a belief that has remained central to Islamic teaching ever since. And yet Islam’s prophet, a man who set a perfect example for Muslims to follow, had sex with a nine year old.

In Britain the age of consent is sixteen, so already there is a clear conflict between the law of Islam (which relies heavily on Mohammed’s example) and the law of the land. This perhaps would not be so significant were Islamists not constantly calling for Muslims to obey the Sharia (Islamic law) rather than live according to our laws.

But the example of Mohammed, and the importance given to this example, is not the only factor to consider. We must remember also that the Qur’an dictates that women should have a second class status to men and that unbelievers should live in a state of submission, or ‘dhimmitude’. Many mainstream interpretations of Sharia Law make it very clear that any unbelievers living in a Muslim state ought to be granted far fewer rights than Muslims.

Being a ‘dhimmi’ means that any crimes committed against you are punished far less severely than they would be if committed against a Muslim (if they are punished at all). If you happen to be a woman then you’re in an even worse position.

If this is how Muslim men are encouraged to see non-Muslim women, as dhimmi who deserve little to no rights or protection, then that attitude would surely lead to exactly the sort of problem that we do have with Muslim grooming gangs.

The Qur’an also includes instructions about how a Muslim man should treat a woman that he has captured or has dominion over. In particular, it makes repeated references to that “which your right hand possess”, meaning that which you have taken by force or by other means. This applies to women in the same way as it applies to property. That “which your right hand possess” is yours to do with as you will, since Allah would not have allowed you to gain possession of it if it were not! If you can seize it, you can do what you like with it.

It is certainly possible to argue about the extent to which this attitude persists. But we need only look as far as a few examples to see how the Islamic world treats women: stoned to death for adultery under the Taliban and barely allowed out of the house in Saudi Arabia. Even in Britain, Muslim women are encased in Burqas or subjected to Sharia Law – where their testimony counts for half of that of a Muslim man.

Hostile attitudes towards both women and unbelievers have permeated Islamic culture for centuries. In Britain the Muslim community has been highly successful at resisting integration and maintaining many of its traditional cultural attitudes – both good and bad.

Given Mohammed’s personal legacy, common Muslim attitudes towards women and non-Muslims and the ever-present influence of Islamic extremism, there is more than enough reason to consider the role that Islam has played in the emergence of Muslim grooming gangs.

And yet despite all the evidence, it still remains taboo to mention Islam in relation to these crimes. The authorities may chastise themselves for being too afraid of being accused of racism, but their fixation on race disguises the fact that they’ve replaced one fear with another. Instead of the fear of being called racist, they’re now terrified of being accused of the new ultimate sin: Islamophobia.

But if we care about preventing these horrific crimes then we must not be afraid to face down these false accusations. As with all criticisms of Islam, we must make clear that our criticisms are not motivated by hate, but by love for whatever it is that we find is threatened.

Nowadays not everyone shares our love for our country. But at the very least we should hope they share our love for the innocence of youth, and our determination to do all we can to protect it.

SOURCE: EDL

As the politically active Muslim population in France continues to swell, and as most Muslims vote for Socialist and leftwing parties, conservative parties will find it increasingly difficult to win future elections in France.

According to a survey of 10,000 French voters conducted by the polling firm OpinionWay for the Paris-based newspaper Le Figaro, an extaordinary 93% of French Muslims voted for Hollande on May 6. By contrast, the poll shows that only 7% of French Muslims voted for the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy.

An estimated 2 million Muslims participated in the 2012 election, meaning that roughly 1.7 million Muslim votes went to Hollande rather than to Sarkozy. In the election as a whole, however, Hollande won over Sarkozy by only 1.1 million votes. This figure implies that Muslims cast the deciding votes that thrust Hollande into the Élysée Palace.

France, home to between five and six million Muslims, already has the largest Muslim population in the European Union, and those numbers are expected to increase exponentially in coming years. According to conservative estimates, the Muslim population is projected to exceed 10% of the overall French population within the next decade-and-a-half.

During the campaign, Hollande offered an amnesty to all of the estimated 400,000 illegal Muslim immigrants currently in France. He also pledged to change French electoral laws so that Muslim residents without French citizenship would be allowed to vote in municipal elections as of 2014. These measures, if implemented, would enable the Socialist Party tighten its grip on political power, both at the regional and national levels.

Muslims in France -- and across Europe as a whole -- tend to support the Socialists for a variety of demographic, socio-economic and ideological reasons.

Most Muslims in Europe live in lower-income households and experience higher levels of unemployment. As a result, Socialists and Muslims are locked into a politically advantageous power-dependence relationship, between the givers of social welfare benefits and the givers of votes. Not surprisingly, Socialists favor increased Muslim immigration, which in turn produces more voters for Socialist parties.

In the ideological sphere, Socialists and Muslims generally share a mutual antipathy for traditional Judeo-Christian values. Although many Muslims oppose the secular agenda of the Socialists, most Muslims wholeheartedly support Socialist multicultural dogma, which they are leveraging to promote the Islamization of Europe.

In foreign policymaking, Socialists and Muslims share a mutual disdain for the United States and Israel. Leftwing parties across Europe have turned anti-Zionism into a politically correct form of anti-Semitism. The increasingly hysterical anti-Israel rhetoric emanating from Socialist circles has contributed to a spike in anti-Semitic hate crimesacross the continent; many of these crimes against Jews are being perpetrated by Muslims.

Although Hollande has not articulated his views on Israel -- he has said he wants to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories this summer -- many observers fear that Hollande will surround himself with a coterie of leftwing advisors who will push him to distance France from the pro-Jewish, pro-Israel course established by Sarkozy.

Hollande has also said he is opposed to Israeli or American military action against Iranian nuclear facilities and many analysts believe the new French government will seek to weaken international sanctions against Iran.

The political changes in France have many Jews concerned about their future. On the day that French voters elected Hollande as their new president, more than 5,000 French Jews participated in an Aliyah (immigration of Jews to Israel) fair in Paris. The annual event, organized and run by the Jewish Agency, usually attracts about 2,000 visitors.

To be sure, France is not the only country in which Muslims are changing the political dynamic.

In Denmark, Socialist Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt won the parliamentary election in September 2011 by a margin of just 8,500 votes. According to an opinion survey, 89.1% of Muslims said they would vote for Socialist or leftwing parties. There are an estimated 200,000 Muslims in Denmark, 100,000 of whom are eligible to vote.

In Britain, a new research report entitled, "Degrees of Separation: Ethnic minority voters and the Conservative Party," shows that 47% of Muslims say they have affinity for the Labour Party, while on 5% say they identify with the Conservatives. During the 2010 elections, Muslim voters were the deciding factor in 82 constituencies.

In the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Muslim voters elected the Bangladeshi-born Lutfur Rahman as their mayor. He is linked to the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), an Islamist group dedicated to changing the "very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed ... from ignorance to Islam." Since taking office, Rahman has stocked the public libraries in Tower Hamlets with books and DVDs containing the extremist sermons of banned Islamist preachers.

Also in Britain, Labour Party MP Jim Fitzpatrick recently warned that his party has been infiltrated by radical Muslims who want to create an "Islamic social and political order" there. Muslims, he said, are "placing people within the political parties, recruiting members to those political parties, trying to get individuals selected and elected so they can exercise political influence and power, whether it's at local government level or national level." He added: "They are completely at odds with Labour's program, with our support for secularism."

In Belgium, Muslims now make up one-quarter of the population of Brussels. In real terms, the number of Muslims in Brussels -- where half of all Muslims in Belgium currently live --- has reached 300,000, meaning that the self-styled "Capital of Europe" is now the most Islamic city in Europe.

In practical terms, Islam mobilizes more people in Brussels than does the Roman Catholic Church, and demographers expect that Muslims will comprise the majority of the population of Brussels by 2030.

In Belgium as a whole, new research from the Itinera Institute forecasts that by 2060, 60% of the Belgian population will be foreign born, which will have clear implications for Belgian politics.

In Norway, new statistics show that immigrants will make up almost half of Oslo's population by 2040. The study, the first ever projection of immigration trends to be published in Norway, shows that the largest cities will also see the biggest upsurge in immigrant numbers. In the country as a whole, the immigrant population is expected to jump from 12% to 24%, or from 600,000 people today to 1.5 million in 2040.

In Spain, the Socialist Party recently attempted to pass a law in parliament that would have enabled more than 500,000 Moroccans residing in Spain to vote in Spanish municipal elections. If enacted, the measure would have ensured permanent Socialist control over all Spanish towns and cities with significant Muslim minorities. The measure was derailed in November 2011, when, in the general election, the Socialists were ousted from power.

SOURCE:Gatestone Institute

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

So why are we still hearing from this discredited and disgraced bunch of charlatans and buffoons? In early May, The New York Times published “Game Over for the Climate” by a major offender of the truth, Dr. James Hansen, who for some reason is still the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), despite having pocketed big bucks beyond his humble government salary. In 2007 he split a million dollar Dan Davis Prize with someone else and in 2001, received a $250,000 Heinz Award. Former GISS employees want him fired.

As debased as The Times is, in 2006 the American Association for the Advancement of Science selected Hansen to receive their Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility. I cite this as a warning that even a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper and formerly respected science organization have long since gone over to the dark side when it comes to global warming. Nothing they have to say on the subject should be regarded as more than pure propaganda.

Suffice to say that Dr. Hansen’s opinion article cited every global warming lie we have been hearing since 1988 when he first gained famed testifying before a congressional committee that we were doomed. In his Times article, he predicted that the “semi-permanent drought” would turn the Midwest into “a dust bowl.” Like every other global warming prediction (that hasn’t come true) this will happen “over the next several decades.” Time enough for Dr. Hansen to pick up a few more awards and fatten his bank account.

The face of the global warming hoax, Al Gore, will not shut up. He made news in August 2011 when he totally lost it while speaking at the Aspen Institute. Anyone, noted climatologists, meteorologists, and mere science writers like myself were the target of his rant for actually citing things such as the fact that the Earth has been in a natural COOLING cycle since 1998 and other inconvenient facts about the climate.

“And some of the exact same people” said Gore, frothing at the mouth, “I can go down a list of their names—are involved in this. And so what do they do? They pay pseudo-scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message. ‘This climate thing, it’s nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn’t trap heat. It may be volcanoes’ Bullshit! ‘It may be sun spots.’ Bullshit! ‘It’s not getting warmer.’ Bullshit!”

The climate is not cooperating. The Church of Global Warming is crumbling around them. People are making fun of them. Parents are objecting to their scaring children with their lies. People actually want to warm their homes in winter and cool them in the summer. Meanwhile, using the global warming lies, the Environmental Protection Agency is trying to shut down the entire U.S. coal mining industry and attacking “fracking” to access natural gas. The Department of the Interior has virtually shut down all oil drilling on federal land and offshore. How crazed is all this?

One of their number, Dr. Peter Gleick, formerly of the American Geophysical Union’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics—the irony is too delicious—perpetrated a fraud against The Heartland Institute earlier this year, pretending to be a member of its board in order to secure a list of its donors and allegedly authoring a memo about a scheme to invade the nation’s schoolrooms with a program to dispute global warming. After confessing to the former, he resigned from the task force. An FBI probe is underway to determine if he broke any laws. Heartland has dubbed it “Fakegate.”

The Institute, by the way, is sponsoring its 7th annual conference on climate change, May 21-23, in Chicago, immediately following the NATO conference that will be held in the windy city where it is headquartered. Its theme this year is “Real Science, Real Choices.” Among the speakers will be Czech President Vaclav Klaus, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, vice chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, and two former NASA astronauts. 

The lesson we can draw from the last few decades is that the entire environmental movement, of which the global warming hoax is one part, is an extension of what Dr. Robert Zubin, a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy, addressed in his new book,“Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalism, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism.”

Antihumanism has been around a long time. As Dr. Zubin points out, it has taken the form of “Darwinism, eugenics, German militarism, Nazism, xenophobia, the population control movement, environmentalism, technophobia, and most recently, the incredibly demented climatophobic movement, which seeks to justify mass human sacrifice for the purpose of weather control.”

Al Gore, James Hansen, and even President Obama’s science advisor, John Holden, are card-carrying members of this cult. In 1971 Holden co-authored “Global Ecology” with Paul Ehrlich, famed for his 1968 book, “The Population Bomb.” They wrote “when a population of organisms grows in a finite environment, sooner or later, it will encounter a resource limit. This phenomenon, described by ecologists as reaching the ‘carrying capacity’ of the environment, applies to bacteria on a culture dish, to fruit flies in a jar of agar, and to buffalo on a prairie. It must also apply to man on this finite planet.”

So you need to understand that you are no better than a fruit fly and you need to die in order to avoid depleting the planet’s supply of food and its energy resources. 

God knows I would like to ignore or—better still—never have to hear from these climate Nazis, but that is not going to happen so long as The New York Times, the United Nations, and a host of others keep repeating their lethal lies.

© Alan Caruba. 2012