Obama Declares Afghan War ‘Absolutely Essential’
Insists America Will Never Abandon Conflict
By Jason Ditz | March 28, 2010
Underscoring his administration’s commitment to continue the already eight and a half year long occupation of Afghanistan, President Barack Obama made a surprise visit today and delivered a speech declaring the war ‘absolutely essential.’
Citing 9/11, President Obama insisted that continuing the conflict makes all Americans safer, and assured the troops that “everyone” knows the importance of the continued occupation of the landlocked nation.
He also threw water on the notion that the war might come to an end any time soon, saying “the United States of America does not quit once we start on something.” He reiterated his confidence that the US would ultimately prevail.
But despite pledging to give the troops a clear mission and a clear goal, and insisting that they would “get the job done,” he didn’t make it at all clear what exactly this job was. His only hint at any mission beyond endless conflict was a reference to al-Qaeda in the region, though administration officials have repeatedly conceded that there are virtually no al-Qaeda members left in Afghanistan, and have not been in some time. Yet momentum and a sufficiently hawkish administration suggests the conflict will continue to find enemies wherever it can and continue indefinitely.
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Top Scientist Assesses Climate Change Emails
Mar 28, 2010 John O’Sullivan
Dr. John P. Costella examined 1079 leaked emails and 72 other documents from the computers of the UK’s Climatic Reseach Unit to reveal ‘shocking misconduct and fraud.’
Dr. Costella’s study has been widely accepted by all sides of the global warming debate as a faultless assessment. Climategate publicly began on November 19, 2009 allegedly pointing to a conspiracy to fraudulently bolster greenhouse gas theory. The British mainstream media, more than any other nation, have widely reported on the scandal.
The Australian physicist documents, step by step, flawed scientific procedure, over-arching concerns with personal and professional interests and how an elite of climatologists discussed immorally securing ‘research’ funding and evading tax payments. The emails cover correspondence between international climatologists over a 13-year period up to November 2009.
Does the evidence point to climate crimes?
Yes, as reported in The Times of London ‘University tried to mislead MPs on climate change e-mails’ (February 27, 2010) referring to the decision of the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Only the statute of limitations thwarted criminal charges on breaches of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), while further issues of serious fraud are yet to be decided. Examples of specific quotations most often referred to from those leaked emails include evidence supportive of:
(1.) Manipulation of evidence:
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” [Jones: CRU email 942777075.txt, Nov. 16 1999]
(2.) Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.” [Trenberth: CRU email 1255352257.txt, October 12, 2009]
(3.) Intentional conspiracy to destroy evidence:
“Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.” [Jones: CRU email1212073451.txt May 29, 2008]
(4.) Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):
“I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago.” [Briffa: CRU email 938018124.txt (Sep. 22, 1999)]
“I do find the dismissal of the Medieval Warm Period as a meaningful global event to be grossly premature and probably wrong.” [Cook: CRU email 988831541.txt (May 2, 2001)]
(5.) Suppression of dissent from the peer review process:
“ I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.” [Jones: CRU email 1047388489.txt March 11, 2003]
Who Has Been Implicated in the Global Warming Scandal?
A clique of climate scientists central to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are implicated: Professor Phil Jones, ‘lead conspirator’ in the United Kingdom; Professor Michael Mann, the ‘lead conspirator’ in the United States; Tom Wigley, older ‘conspirator’ who becomes increasingly worried about the unfolding scandal; Keith Briffa, an older conspirator whose ‘blunders lead the others to all but abandon him.’
Also included are Ben Santer, a ‘dangerously arrogant and naive young conspirator’ in the U.S. as well as other conspirators of varying degrees of complicity and integrity.
What Fallout Has Occurred Since the Climategate Scandal Broke?
Dr. Costella concluded that the “climate science” community was a façade and that “their vitriolic rebuffs of sensible arguments of mathematics, statistics, and indeed scientific common sense were not the product of scientific rigor at all, but merely self-protection at any cost.”
There has been worldwide condemnation for the unethical conduct of the discredited researchers. In the United States a raft of civil lawsuits opposing federal policy based on the alleged fraudulent results of these researchers has ensued. Climate sceptics have called for a moratorium on implementation of any further expensive ecological policies until the courts resolve the matter.
The IPCC has admitted errors have been made after subsequent revelations known as Glaciergate, Amazongate, Australiagate, Africate, Inquirygate, etc.
England’s Five Year Climate Forecast Cycle
By Steven Goddard | March 28, 2010
(UK Pic Photo: NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response)
England, Scotland and Wales completely covered in snow, January, 2010
In my last article, I discussed the current theory that global warming is going to turn England into a tropical paradise. And ten years ago we were told by The Met Office that “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.” But five years ago the theory was that global warming will turn England into a frozen wasteland.
THE Gulf Stream currents that give Britain its mild climate have weakened dramatically, offering the first firm scientific evidence of a slowdown that threatens the country with temperatures as cold as Canada’s.
The Atlantic Ocean “conveyor belt” that carries warm water north from the tropics has weakened by 30 per cent in 12 years, scientists have discovered. The findings, from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, give the strongest indication yet that Europe’s central heating system is breaking down under the impact of global warming.
Scientists have long predicted that melting ice caps could disrupt the currents that keep Britain at least 5C (40F) warmer than it should be, but the new research suggests that this is already under way. It points to a cooling of 1C over the next decade or two, and an even deeper freeze could follow if the Gulf Stream system were to shut down altogether.
The British Isles lie on the same latitude as Labrador on the East Coast of Canada, and are protected from a similarly icy climate by the Atlantic conveyor belt, which carries a million billion watts of heat. Although oceanographers still think it unlikely that the currents will stop completely, this could reduce average temperatures by between 4C and 6C in as little as 20 years, far outweighing any increase predicted as a result of global warming.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article598464.ece
What the scientists were saying is that the melting Arctic is going to flood the North Atlantic with cold fresh water, and will slow down the Gulf Stream. The BBC explained it like this :
Global Warming will cause the Greenland ice cap to melt which, when combined with increased rainfall at high latitudes, will potentially disrupt the THC by adding freshwater and decreasing sea water salinity in the North Atlantic…. Winters would be much colder than now “along the lines of the winter of 1962-1963″ suggests Jenkins, with summers being cooler and shorter. This would have many social implications including (not surprisingly!) transport and agriculture. 3-4°C may not sound much, but the average air temperature difference between the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ when vineyards thrived in southern England and the ‘Little Ice Age’ when the River Thames regularly froze over was only 1-2°C.
Sun photo : English cars buried in global warming
The Guardian explained it like this:
“Based on climate simulations we think that UK winters would be around 5-10C colder on average if the Gulf Stream shut down,” says Michael Vellinga, of the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. For those who can remember back that far, this would make the average UK winter feel more like 1963, when February temperatures hovered around -5 C.
So here is the climate cycle timeline:
- 2000 – Snowfalls are a thing of the past in Britain
- 2005 – Britain to turn into a frozen wasteland
- 2010 – Britain to become a tropical paradise like Portugal
Climate science in England shows a statistically significant cycle, alternating between tropical forecasts and ice age forecasts every five years.
‘Dennis Ross more sensitive to Netanyahu than US interests’ (Surprised?)
By Philip Weiss on March 28, 2010
My post last night on Dennis Ross [copied below] was right on time. Laura Rozen at politico reports that Ross is at the center of a battle within the Obama administration about how nice to be to Israel. The piece includes a frank statement of confused loyalty:
“He [Ross] seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu’s coalition politics than to U.S. interests,” one U.S. official told POLITICO Saturday. “And he doesn’t seem to understand that this has become bigger than Jerusalem but is rather about the credibility of this Administration.”
Let me repeat myself. This guy is the living embodiment of the Israel lobby. He was till recently chairman of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, which opposes intermarriage, among other charming and important campaigns. Aaron David Miller said that the U.S. too often acted as “Israel’s lawyer” at Camp David; and that meant Ross. Dan Kurtzer’s book, Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace, said that the US team lacked diversity and cross-cultural expertise– again, ethnocentric Ross. Kurtzer and co-author Scott Lasensky write: “’The perception always was that Dennis [Ross] started from the Israeli bottom line,’ said a prominent Arab negotiator, ‘that he listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it to the Arabs.’” No wonder Kurtzer lamented “the deference that some policymakers pay to Israeli domestic political concerns. Israel plays an outsized role in U.S. politics and diplomacy…”
The lobby; and Ross denied the existence of the lobby when it was under attack, because it was his own power base.
Netanyahu’s AIPAC speech last week was so shocking that it has rung in a new era for the lobby. Basically: the F.U. period, overplaying its hand in plain sight of the American people. The (in)ability of an American administration to free itself of Ross is a real test of the perseverance of the lobby in our politics.
More on Ross: this was in the original RSS feed on the Politico piece but is not in the published version:
Ross, the U.S. official continued, “starts from the premise that U.S. and Israeli interests overlap by something close to 100 percent. And if we diverge, then, he says, the Arabs increase their demands unreasonably. Since we can’t have demanding Arabs, therefore we must rush to close gaps with the Israelis, no matter what the cost to our broader credibility.”
This is the old neocon delusion, in order to support their loyalty to Israel’s interests: there is no difference between our interests and Israel’s. A preposterous assertion, for any two states.
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Dennis Ross opposed a tenet of the new Obama Middle East policy
By Philip Weiss on March 27, 2010
Dennis Ross personifies the Israel lobby. That gives him his power, that’s why Obama has him in his administration. Putting Ross in a policy job–the Iran portfolio–makes the lobby happy. And Obama has to keep the lobby happy.
It would be a sign of real independence if Obama could lose this guy whom Bush I and Clinton couldn’t lose either. Here Matt Berkman reminds us that Dennis Ross wrote a book with David Makovsky just a year or so back in which he argued vehemently against an idea that is becoming a tenet of the Obama doctrine in the Middle East: linkage, the (plain as the nose on your face) idea that the Israel/Palestine conflict is linked to America’s fortunes in the Middle East.
So Ross is against a key principle of the Obama administration! And he works for him… Go figure! Berkman:
“Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East” devoted a chapter to debunking the “myth” that Israel’s violent occupation of Palestinian land foments challenges for U.S. foreign policy in the region.
“Of all the policy myths that have kept us from making real progress in the Middle East, one stands out for its impact and longevity: the idea that if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all other Middle East conflicts would melt away,” Ross and Makovsky wrote. “This is the argument of ‘linkage.’”
Makovsky, a frequent commentator on U.S.-Israel relations who never fails to recapitulate this argument, launched into it earlier this month during testimony for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “There are no strict linkages between the Palestinian and Iranian issues,” he said. “Regardless of progress on peace, Iran will seek a nuclear weapon. Moreover, senior Arab security officials say privately that they do not see progress on peace as decisive in influencing Arab efforts to halt Iran in any way.”
Of course, formulated in this way, the “linkage” thesis is an easily refutable straw man. No reasonable observer of the Middle East believes that “all other Middle East conflicts” will “melt away” if the U.S. succeeds in brokering a peace agreement. Nor has anyone ever contended that resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict would “decisively” impact U.S. policy vis-à-vis Iran, or that Iran would immediately abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons should the long-suffering Palestinians achieve national self-determination.
But by concocting and then launching an assault on spurious iterations of the “linkage” idea, hawkish Zionists like Ross and Makovsky are attempting to inoculate Israel’s settlement and occupation policies from any criticism that might implicate them in the degeneration of regional security dynamics.
So Ross was against settlement evacuation too? Maybe Obama should blow him off for dinner, or can him.
Germany to extend nuclear plant phase-out by 28 years
Press TV – March 28, 2010
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government is pushing to extend the lifespan of some of the country’s nuclear power plants to 60 years, amid opposition.
The new plans come a week after an agreement between the environment and finance ministries, backed by the government, to add 20 more years to a previous compromise which had established that all of the countries’ nuclear power plants be shut down by 2022.
The opposition has slammed the move, arguing that this would endanger the safety of citizens as well as slowing down the progress in the filed of renewable energy sources.
In an interview published last Friday in the Munich-based daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said a 28-year extension of the previous phase-out plans could have the last nuclear power plant go off the grid in 2050.
Roettgen stressed that the government was just at the stage of considering all its options, with evaluators now discussing scenarios of extending the phase-out by four, 12, 20 and 28 years.
The paper criticized the government for treating the power plants like old bicycles, stressing that unlike a bike, nuclear facilities could not be patched up and reused for an unlimited amount of time.
This is while a 2002 Atomic Energy Act, currently in force, outlines a total phase-out by the next twelve years and bans the extension of the residual life of reactors, which have already produced an amount of electricity equivalent to 32 years of operation.
Nuclear power production is highly unpopular in Germany, where leaks at nuclear waste dumps and accidents at aging power plants have led to several controversies in the past years.
Many experts believe the aging nuclear power plants can not endure 60 years of operation, stressing that such a decision would be extremely dangerous.
Israeli Army Invades Khan Younis, Leaders Weigh Resumption Of Assassinations
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – March 28, 2010
Ma’an images
Several armored military vehicles carried out a limited invasion into Khan Youni, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, on Sunday morning. The latest attack comes amidst talks of a likely resumption of assassinations in the coastal region. Israeli Finance Minister called for “reoccupying” Gaza and “eliminating Hamas”.
Eyewitnesses reported that several armored vehicles and military bulldozers advanced 500 meters into the area, and that military bulldozers started uprooting trees and farmlands while the army opened fire in different directions. Military bulldozers uprooted olive and almond trees in Um Al Mahed and Abu T’eima areas, in Khan Younis.
The invaded area is where Friday clashes took place; one resident was killed and thirteen others were wounded. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and three were wounded. The latest developments came as Israel’s military and political leaders are weighing the possibility of a massive attack against the Gaza Strip in addition to weighing the possibility of resuming Israel’s illegal assassinations policies.
Israeli paper, Maariv, reported Sunday that Israel’s military leadership believes that Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza benefited from the cease fire that followed “Operation Cast Lead” offensive against the Gaza Strip a year ago January. The paper added that this cease fire gave the resistance a chance to attack the Israeli army along the border with Gaza, such as the Friday attack that led to the death of three soldiers.
A number of military leaders said that the known policy of bombarding tunnels and “weapons storage facilities is not affective anymore and does not curb further attacks”.
Senior Israeli military leaders stated that the current situation requires the resumption of the assassination policy. They are calling for assassinations targeting certain political and military leaders of Palestinian factions in Gaza, especially prominent figures.
The Israeli army believes that after the Friday attack and the killing of the soldiers, several leaders in Gaza went underground fearing Israel’s retaliation.
The army estimates that those leaders would resume their activities in the future, therefore “the army must prepare plans to assassinate them”, and should also bombard certain areas believed to be used by the resistance. This includes tunnels, resistance training centers and areas believed to be weapons storage facilities, in addition to bombing the homes of political and military leaders of Hamas and other factions.
Israeli Finance Minister, Yuval Steinitz, called for “reoccupying Gaza” and to totally eliminate the authority of Hamas in the coastal region. He said that reoccupying Gaza and eliminating Hamas, the ruling “power” on Gaza, are among the main scenarios that Israel might elect should other options fade.
Steinitz slammed what he called “the U.S. pressure on Israel”, and claimed that Israel conducted acts of “good will” towards the Palestinians by “giving them the chance to improve their economy” and by “freezing settlement activities”.