Clinton to Congress: Take action against ‘epidemic of fake news’
Press TV – December 9, 2016
Defeated US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has called on Congress to take action against the “epidemic of malicious fake news” that she said represents a “danger” to the “lives of ordinary people.”
“Let me just mention briefly one threat in particular that should concern all Americans,” Clinton said on Thursday speaking at a ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, honoring retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. “Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike — especially those who serve in our Congress.”
“The epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year — it’s now clear the so-called fake news can have real-world consequences,” she added.
Some Democrats, including President Barack Obama, have argued that Clinton lost the presidential election to President-elect Republican nominee Donald Trump because of the spread of fake news online against her.
Obama had been worried about cropping up of multiple pro-Trump fake news websites in the run-up to Election Day and spoken about it with his advisory team before the presidential election, The Independent reported on November 18.
According to reports, hundreds of invented articles had surfaced which promoted Trump and slandered Clinton, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
This week, police said a gunman entered a pizzeria in Washington, DC, after he read online that it was tied to a pedophilia ring linked to the Clintons.
“This isn’t about politics or partisanship,” Clinton said during her speech Thursday.
“Lives are at risk — lives of ordinary people just trying to go about their days, to do their jobs, contribute to their communities. It’s a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly,” she said.
Clinton’s speech was the second public appearance she has made since suffering a crushing defeat at the hands of Trump in the November 8 election.
In her first appearance after the defeat on November 16, Clinton expressed her disappointment of losing to Trump, saying there were times when she wanted to “curl up… and never leave the house again.”
2017 NDAA ups aid to Ukraine, gives arms to Syrian rebels & lets Trump sanction the world
RT | December 8, 2016
Congress has authorized $618.7 billion for the 2017 military budget. The bill ups aid to Ukraine by $50 million and allows the transfer of missiles to Syrian rebels. However, it omits controversial provisions about drafting women or religious exemptions for contractors.
The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed in the Senate on Thursday with 92 votes in favor and seven opposing. It already cleared the House last Friday in a 375-34 vote. With the annexes, appendices and the conference report harmonizing the two chambers’ versions, the final document is 3,076 pages long.
Absent from the NDAA is the proposal to allow female Americans to register for the Selective Service system, which replaced the Vietnam War-era draft but currently only applies to men aged 18-25. That proposal was sent to the Government Accountability Office for further study.
Lawmakers also abandoned the so-called Russell Amendment, which would have created a religious freedom exemption from the Obama administration executive order mandating nondiscrimination from federal contractors. Obama threatened to veto the bill with this amendment.
Buried in the bill, in Section 1224, was the provision to allow Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) to Syrian rebels appropriately vetted by US intelligence. The law requires the Pentagon and the State Department to file extensive documentation with Congress, including details of the weaponry provided, the recipient’s location and the intelligence assessment, including “a description of the alignment of such element within the broader conflict in Syria.” The report would need to include a justification for supplying the MANPADs, “including an explanation of the purpose and expected employment of such systems.”
“We appreciate the bicameral and bipartisan support in the US Congress for Ukraine in our fight against the ongoing Russian aggression,” Ukraine’s embassy in Washington said on Thursday, commenting on the fact that the NDAA increased military aid to the government in Kiev to $350 million, $50 million more than in 2016.
What could potentially have the biggest long-term impact is the provision allowing the application of the 2012 “Magnitsky Act” to anyone in the world, rather than just the Russian Federation and Moldova.
Sections 1261-65 authorize the US president to sanction anyone responsible for “extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights committed against individuals in any foreign country” who seek to expose illegal activity carried out by government officials” or to “obtain, exercise, defend, or promote internationally recognized human rights and freedoms.”
Authorized sanctions include denying entry to the US or revoking an existing US visa; seizure of any property and interests that are located in the US “or come within the possession or control of a United States person.” The provision would sunset six years after the NDAA’s enactment.
Of further interest are the provisions allowing the establishment of the US Cyber Command as a fully separate combat command (Section 923), capping the size of the National Security Council staff at 200 – down from 400 or so it currently employs (Section 1085).
The NDAA maintained the prohibition of using any funds to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or transfer any of the remaining 59 detainees onto US soil.
Obama grants waiver for military support of foreign fighters in Syria – White House
RT | December 8, 2016
President Barack Obama has ordered a waiver of restrictions on military aid for foreign forces in Syria, deeming it “essential to the national security interests” of the US to allow exceptions from provisions in the four-decades-old Arms Export Control Act.
A White House press release Thursday announced that foreign fighters in Syria supporting US special operations “to combat terrorism in Syria” would be excused from restrictions on military assistance.
“I hereby determine that the transaction, encompassing the provision of defense articles and services to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating ongoing U.S. military operations to counter terrorism in Syria, is essential to the national security interests of the United States,” President Obama affirmed in the presidential determination and waiver.
The order delegates responsibility to the US secretary of state to work with and report to Congress on weapons export proposals, requiring 15 days of notice before they are authorized.
Obama announced a similar waiver of the Arms Export Control Act in September 2013, following the Ghouta chemical attack in August of that year. That order facilitated the transfer of US military weaponry to “select vetted members” of opposition forces battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Thursday’s order appears less narrow in scope.
The challenge of differentiating between terrorist forces, such as Al-Nusra, and more moderate forces in Syria has been acknowledged by press secretaries in recent State Department briefings.
Israeli police say singing event was organized to ‘sympathize with terrorists’
(Photo credit: Ahmad Jalajil)
Ma’an – December 8, 2016
JERUSALEM – Israeli forces raided the Palestinian National Theatre in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah Thursday evening, preventing organizers from holding an event titled “Sing with Us” for allegedly being organized by the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in order to “sympathize with terrorists.”
Witnesses told Ma’an that Israeli special forces, police, and intelligence raided the theater, also known as al-Hakawati Theater, during the event, which was organized by the Milad Fund for University Education.
Israeli police spokeswoman Luba al-Samri said in a statement that Jerusalem police chief Yoram Halevy signed an order on Thursday “to prevent holding a conference for the terrorist PFLP group,” citing Article 9 of the newly minted anti-terrorism law of 2016 — that members of Israel’s parliament have referred to as “draconian and unacceptable.”
“The chief’s decision was made after receiving intelligence information that the aforementioned terrorist group plans to hold a conference in order to sympathize with terrorists and other issues,” al-Samri’s statement continued.
“After the decision, a police unit headed to the designated place in East Jerusalem and prevented the holding of the conference without any exceptional incidents.”
The Israeli law, which was passed in June, includes a provision expanding the definition of terrorist organization membership to include “passive members” who are not actively involved in any group, but can now be indicted by Israeli authorities. It applies only inside Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, but not the occupied West Bank.
Head of the Joint List of Israel’s parliament Ayman Odeh said at the time of the legislation’s passage that it will damage Israel’s security cooperation with the PLO and Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, pointing out that Israel considers the majority of political parties within the PLO — including the PFLP — to be terrorist organizations.
For Palestinians, the PFLP — founded by a Christian doctor, George Habash — is the most popular political faction for secular leftists.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported last month that al-Hakawati, after operating for three decades as a leading cultural center for Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem, faced closure by Israeli authorities as a result of unpaid bills to the Jerusalem municipality amounting to $150,000, citing Palestinian commentators who believed Israeli authorities were pressuring the theater in order to “marginalize Arabic cultural and arts institutions.”
(Photo credit: Ahmad Jalajil)
(Photo credit: Ahmad Jalajil)
(Photo credit: Ahmad Jalajil)
Israeli wildfires expose Netanyahu’s burning hatred
By Yvonne Ridley | MEMO | December 8, 2016
As wildfires tore through large swathes of the land a week or so ago, some Israeli politicians used the disaster as an opportunity to fan the flames of hatred against Palestinians by calling it a “fire intifada”. Foreign firefighters from many countries came to Israel’s assistance, but it seems that those politicians had different priorities; they rushed to judgement in newspaper columns and appeared to show scant concern for the tens of thousands forced to flee their homes.
This was a time for politicians to demonstrate leadership and calm the people; to reassure the wider world that everything was being done to protect and save life. Legend has it that the reckless Roman emperor Nero fiddled as a blaze raged through ancient Rome for seven nights in 64 AD; while Benjamin Netanyahu picked up neither lyre nor violin, he did seize the moment to orchestrate a burning campaign of hatred against the Palestinians.
Never one to miss such an opportunity, the Israeli prime minister blamed “terror” as courageous firefighters from Italy, Croatia, Russia, Cyprus, Turkey and even the neighbouring Palestinian Authority risked their lives to help their exhausted Israeli colleagues. Words of support instead of hateful rhetoric should have been the order of the day, but from Netanyahu there was very little.
Now, though, as Israelis are beginning to count the true cost of the forest fires, the words and motives of Netanyahu and his cabal are being scrutinised more closely. The Israeli leader and other ministers — including Interior Minister Aryeh Deri and Culture Minister Miri Regev — pledged to revoke the residency rights of those found guilty of arson. This is a threat normally reserved for Arab Israelis, so it was clear where Tel Aviv was pointing the finger of blame.
Of course, Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman typically went one step further and, along with Education Minister Naftali Bennett, called for the expansion of the illegal West Bank settlements in response to the alleged wave of terror.
However, it appears that some of the claims about terrorism have been wildly premature. Forensic investigators as well as fire and security experts believe that not all of the fires were started deliberately. “In most areas you won’t find many things that say whether it was arson,” explained Ran Shelef, the Fire and Rescue Authority’s chief investigator.
Another senior investigator, Herzl Aharon, said that the authorities still don’t know anything. “I wish I had a direction,” he told Israel’s Channel Two. “I go to a place and get an insight — and then I go to another place and everything changes. This is what you call an illusion of the topography, the bedlam of the mountainous region, and it is very difficult to investigate.”
Of the 35 people initially arrested on suspicion of arson or inciting others to commit arson, fewer than 10 remain in custody; only two suspected arsonists have been charged, one of whom insists that he was simply burning rubbish.
In the meantime, Netanyahu’s unsubstantiated blame has drawn blunt criticism from a former Israeli intelligence officer and the head of terrorist research at the Institute for National Security Studies. “The habit of inflaming the atmosphere by politicians is playing into the hands of the terrorists,” said Yoram Schweitzer. “A basic principle of fighting terrorism is to differentiate between the community which is allegedly or potentially supportive of such acts and the terrorists themselves. This is the first principle that was breached.”
Representing a coalition of Arab political parties called the Joint List, Ayman Odeh called on Netanyahu to be investigated for incitement for accusing Palestinians of deliberately starting the fires. Odeh said that he would formally request a probe by the attorney general. “Everyone knows that there wasn’t a wave of terrorism, that there wasn’t a ‘fire intifada,’” he said, citing the headline phrase used by some Israeli media following Netanyahu’s outburst.
While police officials say they suspect arson in 29 of the 39 major fires, and in about one-third of the 90 blazes investigated, they also admit there are no suspects in the largest fires, nor clear proof of arson.
As the investigators continue to rake through the embers of the wildfires, it’s worth remembering that the Palestinian Authority sent its own team of firefighters to help the Israelis. In other words, Palestinians set aside their differences and risked their lives to help those who enforce a brutal military occupation on their land. They didn’t expect gratitude from the likes of Netanyahu for their humanitarian efforts as the forest fires raged. Even so, the international community might want to consider whether they’d like to help the Palestinians firefighters in Gaza when Netanyahu next orders a blitz of blazes caused by hellfire missiles and bombs on the tiny coastal enclave.
As the firefighters from Ramallah showed, when it comes to putting out fires and extinguishing the flames of hatred, the Palestinians lead from the front.
@yvonneridley
UN resolution demanding that Israel rescind its Golan annexation decision
Inside Syria Media Center | December 8, 2016
The UN General Assembly (UNGA) reiterated its demand that Israel comply with the Security Council resolutions, particularly resolution no. 497 for 1981 which declared Israel’s decision of 14 December 1981 to impose its laws and jurisdiction on the Syrian Golan as “null and void and without international legal effect”.
During a session on Tuesday, the UNGA adopted a resolution titled “Occupied Syrian Golan” after it was endorsed by the Special Political and Decolonization Committee (the Fourth Committee).
The resolution was adopted with 163 in favor out of 193 countries, 1 against (Israel), and a number of abstentions, including the US and Canada.
The resolution called upon Israel to rescind its decision of annexing the occupied Golan, and to desist from changing the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure and legal status of the occupied Syrian Golan, as these measures are null and void, asserting that all relevant provisions of the Regulations annexed to the Hague Convention of 1907, and the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, continued to apply to the Syrian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
It also called upon Israel to desist from imposing Israeli citizenship and identity cards on Syrian citizens and to stop its provocative measures against them.
The resolution called upon the UN member states to not recognize the Israeli measures and procedures adopted in the occupied Syrian Golan as they constitute a breach of the international law.
German lawmaker warns Facebook to censor “hate speech” or face consequences
By Alex Christoforou | The Duran | December 8, 2016
The German neo-liberal class of lawmakers continue to push the “hate speech” agenda, which is really just the beginning of the German government (and eventually the entire European Union) censoring speech that they deem inappropriate in terms of their world view and agenda.
Who defines what “hate speech” is? Where does hate speech end, and full on government censorship begin? German lawmakers could never answer these questions, nor do they want to. They simply want to get the ball rolling on curbing dissenting voices, so as to have complete control of the media and social narrative.
Expecting Facebook to be judge, jury and executioner when defining “hate speech” is unrealistic, and sets a very dangerous precedent. It is also intrinsically anti-internet. The web was founded on freedom of expression. Germany lawmakers wish to break a core function of what makes the internet work.
Speaking at a party conference of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), Volker Kauder suggested German politicians were running out of patience with efforts by social media companies to censor hate speech.
“I expect from big companies like Facebook that they adhere to laws. If they are not respected then we must think about new possibilities, fines for example.”
“They say there is too much. But a big auto manufacturer that produces millions of cars can’t say: ‘I produce so many cars that I can’t guarantee they are all secure.’ No, that is not on. I expect and demand from Facebook that laws are upheld.”
Very smart analogy by Mr. Kauder… comparing social media posts to building automobiles. We all know that building a car is exactly the same as composing a tweet.
Facebook declined immediate comment on Kauder’s remarks.
Reuters reports…
Germany is seen as a forerunner when it comes to forcing Facebook to step up efforts to police online hate speech, which has risen here following an influx of almost one million migrants, mainly from the Middle East, last year.
Politicians are also worried about how hate speech and fake news could sway public opinion ahead of elections next year in which Merkel will be running for a fourth term and facing an increasingly popular far right.
Last year, Justice Minister Heiko Maas set up a task force made up of representatives from Facebook, Google’s YouTube and Twitter as well as nonprofit groups to discuss ways to combat the rise in online hate speech.
The platform providers signed up to a voluntary code of conduct to take action to remove hate posts within 24 hours.
Results of a survey published in September by a group that monitors hate speech found Facebook removed about 46 percent of illegal content reported by users within 24 hours, significantly more than YouTube and Twitter which deleted just 10 percent and about 1 percent respectively.
Maas has repeatedly warned that he will propose legislation if the social media networks do not remove at least 70 percent of hate speech by March next year.
Kauder said Maas, a member of the Social Democrats, Merkel’s junior coalition partner, was being too easy on social media.
“We have a roundtable and now we must wait … but after the Christmas break is the end of the roundtables. We’ve sat at roundtables long enough. Now we want to see actions.”
Twitter and Facebook Censorship and Mainstream Media Denial
By Craig Murray | December 8, 2016
I had never heard of ghost banning until I was ghost banned by twitter. That of course is the idea – they censor you without you realising that you are censored. People no longer get notifications when I post, and the tweet only turns up in the twitter line of followers who happen to be logged in at the time my tweet goes out. Those logging in later will no longer see tweets I issued while they were away. Most of my tweets no longer show up on twitter searches, and further restrictions are applied when people retweet my tweets.
Since ghost banning, traffic to my website from twitter has fallen 90%.
As twitter do not inform you that you have been ghost banned, it is hard to know exactly what prompted it, but I believe it immediately followed this tweet.
For anyone who gets their news through the mainstream media, the spirit cooking scandal referred to performance art by Marina Abramovic, to an intimate domestic display of which Clinton campaign chairman and paid Saudi lobbyist John Podesta was invited. The performance draws upon occult references and imagery – as an “artist” her inspiration appears to be early Hammer horror films. It involves painting with blood, milk and semen, presumably from animals. To add a frisson, Ms Abramovic has claimed it is art when performed in a gallery, but real when performed in a private home.
Personally, I view it as rubbish as art, and the sort of thing idiots with too much money pay for. I think the occult references give a frisson to the idle rich, like students playing with a Ouija board. Personally I believe that kind of thing is better avoided, but each to his own. What the Podesta emails undoubtedly show is that the rich are not like us. Just as David Cameron sticking his todger in the mouth of a dead pig was an upper class bonding ritual and not actual bestiality, I don’t actually think the Podestas are Satanists. Just weird.
But what is beyond doubt is that the #spiritcooking sensation on social media had a real effect on the US election, and in an election where the margins were so very close potentially an extremely important one. Tens of millions of people saw the images on social media. It galvanised evangelical Christians to vote for Trump and, perhaps much more crucially, it contributed materially to a massive depression of the African American vote for Hillary as millions of African American Christians, disgusted by seeing apparent endorsement of Abramovic’s voodoo and satanic references by the Clinton camp, sat at home and did not turn out to vote. That 2 million black Americans who voted for Obama did not vote for Hillary was not because they are racist – it was because they disliked Hillary for a number of reasons, and spirit cooking was a factor, especially as the famed Democratic machine is heavily reliant upon African American churches for the ground war. I should love to see the influence of the spirit cooking scandal measured, but given that the mainstream media who commission the polls are desperate to deny the effect of WikiLeaks on the election, they are not likely to measure it.
Instead what we have is the “post-truth” narrative. This holds that something is only true if the mainstream media says that it is. It is an easy trick to conflate a dozen ludicrous untrue stories released on social media, and then leap from there to saying everything on social media not endorsed by mainstream media is untrue. It is but a further step to argue that therefore social media must be censored. This is where we came in, with Twitter already doing this to me. Mark Zuckerberg has indicated that Facebook will take further action to prevent dissemination of “untrue” political information. Of course, they already do this, and again I am afraid to say in particular they do this to me. All my blog posts are posted to Facebook as well as twitter. Did you know when you share my post on Facebook, Facebook limits the number of your friends who can see it? In my case the limit is set to ensure that the percentage of incoming traffic to my site that comes through Facebook, is always precisely 5%. To do that, of course, they have to know precisely how much traffic is coming in to this site. Worrying, isn’t it? Before Facebook set the limitation -around the same time as twitter – the amount of incoming traffic from Facebook was around 30% of my traffic.
As with any grossly illiberal cause it is the Guardian which has led the charge for internet censorship in the UK. One hilarious recent Guardian article listed media bias towards Clinton as an example of a post-truth claim. The article did not mention the fact that senior CNN commentator Donna Brazile had been sacked by CNN after WikiLeaks revealed she had been feeding debate questions to Hillary Clinton in advance, nor Wikileaks’ numerous releases of emails detailing partisan collusion with the media to promote Hillary. It did not mention the deliberate and planned timing of primary elections and debates to disadvantage Sanders. In fact, it did not mention any of the inconvenient facts WikiLeaks had revealed. In that, it was absolutely typical mainstream media.
Mainstream media is not post-truth. It never had any connection to the truth.
To complete the chain of dishonesty, the trope of Russian interference in the election is getting a new airing. In a painfully obvious charade, Obama is being “pushed” by his own party to reveal security service information on “Russian interference” in the US election. The focus is particularly on the allegation that the Russian state hacked the Podesta and DNC emails and gave them to WikiLeaks.
The problem is there is no such evidence. There can’t be because both the DNC and Podesta emails were leaked by Washington insiders, to my certain knowledge. I repeat that, to my certain knowledge. Hillary’s pathetic election claim that the security services had information it was the Russians, depended on a statement that the leak was “consistent with Russian methods and objectives”. Look at that statement very carefully. It says “we have no evidence whatsoever, but the President has asked us to blame the Russians”. As I say, I know it wasn’t the Russians. The only “evidence” ever shown to me by those blaming the Russians is that an alleged hacker calling himself “Guccifer” sometimes uses Cyrillic. Which may or may not be true, but as “Guccifer” was neither the source of, nor a conduit for, the leaks it is utterly irrelevant.
Fear not. The truth is out there. People are trying to make it more difficult for you to find, but they will not succeed. In my own humble case, while visits from Facebook and Twitter are radically down, overall numbers are up. The internet somehow always finds a way to work around.
Journalism Fail: Washington Post Story on ‘Fake News’ Was Fake
Sputnik – 08.12.2016
Following public backlash, legal threats, and sustained mocking, the Washington Post has added an editor’s note distancing the newspaper from a shadowy website called PropOrNot which they had preciously endorsed as “experts” on “fake news” and “Russian propaganda.”
In an ironically fake news article about “fake news” by Craig Timberg the Washington Post claimed that Russian propaganda helped Donald Trump win the US presidential election. A large part of the basis for the piece was centered on evidence the paper presented that was gleaned from an aggressively anonymous website called PropOrNot, which lists over 200 websites that they accuse of peddling what they call Russian propaganda, and other false narratives. Popular news websites on all sides of the political spectrum are listed, including The Drudge Report, Zero Hedge, TruthOut, Sputnik News, and WikiLeaks.
The Washington Post has now added the following editor’s note to the article:
“The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.”
After the publication of its article, the Post was slapped with a letter from Naked Capitalism, one of the websites listed, demanding a full retraction and threatening a defamation lawsuit. “You did not provide even a single example of ‘fake news’ allegedly distributed or promoted by Naked Capitalism or indeed any of the 200 sites on the PropOrNot blacklist,” the attorney representing the website, Jim Moody wrote.
“You provided no discussion or assessment of the credentials or backgrounds of these so-called ‘researchers’ (Clint Watts, Andrew Weisburd, and J.M. Berger and the ‘team’ at PropOrNot), and no discussion or analysis of the methodology, protocol or algorithms such ‘researchers’ may or may not have followed.”
While declaring that the entities behind the PropOrNot operation were “experts,” the Post refused to name them. Though their motives remain unknown, the organization previously promoted a Ukrainian hacker group on their Twitter feed.
Interestingly, a bill was introduced November 22, just two days before the Post published the November 24 article in question, which would allow lawmakers to crack down on websites deemed to be “Russian propaganda” or “fake news.” Tucked neatly inside the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, the bill appears to be aimed at cracking down on free speech.
“It is easy to see how this law, if passed by the Senate and signed by the President, could be used to target, threaten, or eliminate so-called ‘fake news’ websites, a list which has been used to arbitrarily define any website, or blog, that does not share the mainstream media’s proclivity to serve as the Public Relations arm of a given administration,” Global Research reported.
The bill must now pass through the Senate, but a top aide to Rand Paul has informed Sputnik News that the Senator is currently holding the bill for a variety of reasons.
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Climate Science: Is it Currently Designed to Answer Questions?
By Prof. Richard S. Lindzen | Global Research | September 22, 2014
Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Global Research 30 November 2009
Abstract
For a variety of inter-related cultural, organizational, and political reasons, progress in climate science and the actual solution of scientific problems in this field have moved at a much slower rate than would normally be possible.
Not all these factors are unique to climate science, but the heavy influence of politics has served to amplify the role of the other factors. By cultural factors, I primarily refer to the change in the scientific paradigm from a dialectic opposition between theory and observation to an emphasis on simulation and observational programs. The latter serves to almost eliminate the dialectical focus of the former.
Whereas the former had the potential for convergence, the latter is much less effective. The institutional factor has many components. One is the inordinate growth of administration in universities and the consequent increase in importance of grant overhead. This leads to an emphasis on large programs that never end. Another is the hierarchical nature of formal scientific organizations whereby a small executive council can speak on behalf of thousands of scientists as well as govern the distribution of ‘carrots and sticks’ whereby reputations are made and broken. The above factors are all amplified by the need for government funding.
When an issue becomes a vital part of a political agenda, as is the case with climate, then the politically desired position becomes a goal rather than a consequence of scientific research. This paper will deal with the origin of the cultural changes and with specific examples of the operation and interaction of these factors. In particular, we will show how political bodies act to control scientific institutions, how scientists adjust both data and even theory to accommodate politically correct positions, and how opposition to these positions is disposed of. … continue
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