That Pesky Freedom of Information Act
January 6, 2009: email 1231257056
Ben Santer writes to many:
I am forwarding an email I received this morning from a Mr. Geoff Smith.
The email concerns the climate model data used in our recently-published International Journal of Climatology (IJoC) paper. Mr. Smith has requested that I provide him with these climate model data sets. This request has been made to Dr. Anna Palmisano at Department Of Energy (DOE) Headquarters and to Dr. George Miller, the Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
Another request for data. One would think that, by now, Santer has his data in order.
I have spent the last two months of my scientific career dealing with multiple requests for these model data sets under the United States Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). I have been able to do little or no productive research during this time. This is of deep concern to me.
Santer still seems unable to comprehend that proper documentation and archiving of data is a crucial part of his job.
He seems unwilling to learn from his last dressing-down:
I would like a clear ruling from DOE lawyers—ideally from both the National Nuclear Security Administration and DOE Office of Science branches—on the legality of such data requests. They are troubling, for a number of reasons.
1. In my considered opinion, a very dangerous precedent is set if any derived quantity that we have calculated from primary data is subject to FOIA requests. At LLNL’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI), we have devoted years of effort to the calculation of derived quantities from climate model output. … The intellectual investment in such calculations is substantial.
Santer wants “exclusive rights” to the publicly-funded data. Even if he had managed to secure such a lucrative arrangement, he should not have publicly published papers based on the data.
2. Mr. Smith asserts that “there is no valid intellectual property justification for withholding this data”. I believe this argument is incorrect. The data used in our IJoC paper—and the other examples of derived data sets mentioned above—are integral components of both PCMDI’s ongoing research, and of proposals we have submitted to funding agencies (DOE, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration).
So, this is about money.
Can any competitor simply request such data sets via the United States FOIA, before we have completed full scientific analysis of these data sets?
Santer’s characterization of independent researchers as “competitors” is disturbing. Climate scientists should not seek to profit from their research—particularly not when their public pronouncements on the issue are used to lobby for political policy changes.
3. There is a real danger that such FOIA requests could (and are already) being used as a tool for harassing scientists rather than for valid scientific discovery. Mr. McIntyre’s FOIA requests to the DOE and the NOAA are but the latest in a series of such requests. In the past, Mr. McIntyre has targeted scientists at Penn State University, the United Kingdom’s Climatic Research Unit, and the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville. Now he is focusing his attention on me. The common denominator is that Mr. McIntyre’s attention is directed towards studies claiming to show evidence of large-scale surface warming, and/or a prominent human “fingerprint” in that warming. These serial FOIA requests interfere with our ability to do our job.
That would sound like a reasonable set of studies for McIntyre to target. Again, Santer misunderstands that “doing his job” properly in the first place would have obviated the need to clean up his mess at this late date.
As many of you may know, I have decided to publicly release the data that were the subject of Mr. McIntyre’s FOIA request … These data sets have been through internal review and release procedures, and will be published shortly on PCDMI’s website, together with a technical document which describes how they were calculated. I agreed to this publication process primarily because I want to spend the next few years of my career doing research. I have no desire to be “taken out” as scientist, and to be involved in years of litigation.
Santer brought upon himself the years of prosecution now facing him.
If Mr. McIntyre’s past performance is a guide to the future, further FOIA requests will follow. I would like to know that I have the full support of LLNL management and the United States Department of Energy in dealing with these unwarranted and intrusive requests.
I do not intend to reply to Mr. Smith’s email.
Santer has learnt nothing.
Stephen Schneider:
I had a similar experience—but not FOIA since we at Climatic Change are a private institution—with Stephen McIntyre demanding that I have the Mann and coworkers cohort publish all their computer programs for papers published in Climatic Change. I put the question to the editorial board who debated it for weeks. The vast majority opinion was that scientists should give enough information on their data sources and methods so others who are scientifically capable can do their own brand of replication work, but that this does not extend to personal computer programs with all their undocumented parts, etc. It would be an odious requirement to have scientists document every line of code so outsiders could then just apply them instantly. Not only is this an intellectual property issue, but it would dramatically reduce our productivity since we are not in the business of producing software products for general consumption and have no resources to do so. The National Science Foundation, which funded the studies I published, concurred—so that ended that issue with Climatic Change at the time a few years ago.
This is a startling admission on the part of Schneider: that computer programs throughout climate science are so shoddily written and poorly documented—or even completely undocumented—that they do not even reach the minimal standards required of high school students. His allegation that his funding agency, the National Science Foundation, supported this stance is, no doubt, under investigation by that agency.
This continuing pattern of harassment, as Ben rightly puts it in my opinion, in the name of due diligence is in my view an attempt to create a fishing expedition to find minor glitches or unexplained bits of computer programs—which exist in nearly all our kinds of complex work—and then assert that the entire result is thus suspect.
Again, this demonstrates a hopelessly amateurish attitude to computer programming. Glitches could indeed render the entire result false: that is why good documentation, verification, and replication are vital parts of science.
Our best way to deal with this issue of replication is to have multiple independent author teams, with their own programs and data sets, publishing independent work on the same topics—like has been done on the “hockey stick”. That is how credible scientific replication should proceed.
It is ironic that Schneider quotes the discredited “hockey stick” in support of his suggestion—which is one possible arm of a validation and verification process, but most certainly not a comprehensive blueprint.
Let the lawyers figure this out, but be sure that, like Ben is doing now, you disclose the maximum reasonable amount of information so that competent scientists can do replication work, but short of publishing undocumented personalized programs etc. The end of the email Ben attached shows their intent—to discredit papers so they have no “evidentiary value in public policy”—what you resort to when you can’t win the intellectual battle scientifically at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the National Academy of Sciences.
The most disturbing aspect of this commentary is that Schneider completely understands the enormous public policy ramifications of this research—yet still expresses such remarkably naive sentiments. He still thinks enormous public policy decisions should be based on the results from undocumented and unchecked personal computer programs.
Good luck with this, and expect more of it as we get closer to international climate policy actions. We are witnessing the “contrarian Battle of the Bulge” now, and expect that all weapons will be used.
PS Please do not copy or forward this email.
The need for confidentiality is becoming more apparent to the co-conspirators. Do they sense a dissenter or a whistle-blower in the ranks?
January 30, 2009: email 1233326033
Geoff Smith writes to Ben Santer:
Dear Dr. Santer,
I’m pleased to see that the requested data is now available on line. Thank you for your efforts to make these materials available.
My “dog in this fight” is good science and replicability. I note the following references:
The American Physical Society on line statement reads (in part):
“The success and credibility of science are anchored in the willingness of scientists to:
1. Expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others. This requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials.
2. Abandon or modify previously accepted conclusions when confronted with more complete or reliable experimental or observational evidence.”
Also I note the National Academy of Sciences booklet “On Being a Scientist: Responsible Conduct in Research” (2nd edition) states “After publication, scientists expect that data and other research materials will be shared with qualified colleagues upon request. Indeed, a number of federal agencies, journals, and professional societies have established policies requiring the sharing of research materials. Sometimes these materials are too voluminous, unwieldy, or costly to share freely and quickly. But in those fields in which sharing is possible, a scientist who is unwilling to share research materials with qualified colleagues runs the risk of not being trusted or respected. In a profession where so much depends on interpersonal interactions, the professional isolation that can follow a loss of trust can damage a scientist’s work.” I know that the 3rd edition is expected soon, but I cannot imagine this position will be weakened. Indeed, with electronic storage of data increasing dramatically, I expect that most of the exceptions are likely to be dropped.
I understand that science is considered by some to be a “blood sport” and that there are serious rivalries and disputes. Nevertheless, the principles above are vital to the continuation of good science, wherever the results may lead.
Again, I thank you for making the data available, and I wish you success in your future research.
Kind regards,
Geoff Smith
I couldn’t express it better myself.
Ben Santer’s reply:
Dear Mr. Smith,
Please do not lecture me on “good science and replicability”. Mr. McIntyre had access to all of the primary model and observational data necessary to replicate our results. Full replication of our results would have required Mr. McIntyre to invest time and effort. He was unwilling to do that.
Santer is still laboring under the misunderstanding that his research remains “private”.
Mr. McIntyre could easily have examined the appropriateness of the Douglass and coworkers statistical test and our statistical test with randomly-generated data (as we did in our paper). Mr. McIntyre chose not to do that.
Santer’s arrogance and narrow-mindedness extend to dictating that McIntyre must do only as Santer and his coworkers did. It does not seem to occur to him that the principles of statistics are not the exclusive domain of his small group of colleagues.
He preferred to portray himself as a victim of evil Government-funded scientists. A good conspiracy theory always sells well.
Ironic, given that Tom Wigley has described themselves in precisely those terms.
Mr. Smith, you chose to take the extreme step of writing to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Department Of Energy management to complain about my “unresponsiveness” and my failure to provide data to Mr. McIntyre.
Let us see if Santer has decided to become more “responsive”.
Your email to George Miller and Anna Palmisano was highly critical of my behavior in this matter. Your criticism was entirely unjustified, and damaging to my professional reputation. I therefore see no point in establishing a dialogue with you. Please do not communicate with me in the future. I do not give you permission to distribute this email or post it on Mr. McIntyre’s blog.
Sadly, he has not.
Now where have we seen the phrase “Please do not communicate with me in the future” before? In his reply to Steve McIntyre on November 10, 2008. There’s not much chance of “the open exchange of data, procedures and materials” with Ben Santer.
February 2, 2009: email 1233586975
Geoff Smith writes to Phil Jones, trying to clarify the situation:
Dear Prof. Jones,
(provides reference to the paper in question)
As you are a co-author of the referenced paper, you may be interested to know of developments (in case you have not heard already).
You will be aware that intermediate data … had been requested from the first author, Dr. Santer. A refusal has been posted online, but in the mean time the data is now available at (link).
Perhaps you had this data already, but other co-authors have reportedly claimed (earlier) they did not have the data. A typical reported response to a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request was, “I have examined my files and have no data from climate models used in the paper referred to, and no correspondence regarding said data.”
No one disputes Dr. Santer’s claim that the “primary model data” is publicly available, but there is a strong case to be made that intermediate results, e.g., collation of such data and the relevant computer programs should be made available in studies such as this one, since there is an important possibility of errors in trying to replicate such a collation. The archiving of such intermediate results is required for econometrics journals, among others.
It is further reported online that the posting of the data was not pursuant to an FOIA order, but posted voluntarily (although likely at the request of the funding agency, the Department of Energy, Office of Science). I hope other scientists will take this type of voluntary action. You may have heard that Professor Hardaker, the Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Meteorological Society, which publishes the International Journal of Climatology, has confirmed that the issue of data archiving will be on the agenda for the next meeting of the Society’s Scientific Publishing Committee. There is a need for journals as well as funding agencies, and publishing scientists themselves, to establish and enforce good data and computer program archiving policies. A more precise definition of “recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as necessary to validate research findings” is probably overdue.
I hope the Hadley Centre will take a lead in this issue. From time to time I’ll look at the progress on archiving, but in the mean time, no reply is necessary.
Kind regards,
Geoff Smith
Jones writes to Ben Santer:
Is this the Smith who has emailed? …
I’m not on a Royal Meteorological Society committee at the moment, but I could try and contact Paul Hardaker if you think it might be useful. I possibly need to explain what is “raw” and what is “intermediate”.
I wasn’t going to give this guy Smith the satisfaction of a reply!
Instead of improving their data and computer program archiving standards, Jones is only interested in influencing the committee that will revise the minimum requirements.
Santer replies:
Yes, this is the same Geoff Smith who wrote to me. Do you know who he is? From his comments about the Royal Meteorological Society, he seems to be a Briton.
…
I think it would be useful to raise these issues with Paul Hardaker.
Agreement has been reached that the best way forward is to influence the Royal Meteorological Society.
Arctic Sea Ice Milestone
April 29, 2010 | Anthony Watts
Today… the NANSEN is reporting that both Arctic Sea Ice area and extent are above the normal line. Usually we don’t see both in this mode. Here’s area:
And here is extent:
By itself, this is just a small thing, but it is just one more indication that there’s some improvement in the Arctic Ice situation again, and the indications are that we’ll have another summer extent that is higher than the previous year, for the third year in a row.
Of course our friends will argue that extent and area don’t matter now, that only volume and ice quality (the rotten ice meme) matters.
Interestingly, if you go back to the press releases on the record minimum extent in 2007 at NSIDC here:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2007.html
And search the entire set of release for the word “volume”, you won’t find it used anywhere that year. The volume worry is a more recent talking point that first appeared in October 2008 when it became apparent that extent wasn’t continuing to decline. They couldn’t tout another record low extent, so volume became the next big thing:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/
Arctic sea ice minimum press release
Please see the NSIDC press release, “Arctic Sea Ice Down to Second-Lowest Extent; Likely Record-Low Volume” for a detailed analysis of this year’s Arctic sea ice minimum and a synopsis of the 2008 melt season.
With nature still not cooperating with “death spiral predictions”, what will be the press release ice meme this year? Color? Texture? Cracks per square kilometer? It will be interesting to watch.
“Egypt Responsible For The Death Of Four, Gassed In Tunnel”
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – April 29, 2010
Dr. Sami Abu Zuhri, media spokesperson of the Hamas movement, held the Egyptian Authorities responsible for the death of four Palestinians who died in a tunnel after Egypt’s Border Police gassed it.
Abu Zuhri demanded Egypt to conduct an immediate probe into the issue, and to prosecute those in charge.
Speaking at a press conference in Gaza, Abu Zuhri said that Hamas is following the developments, and strongly denounced Egypt for using gas against the residents. Besides the four who were gassed to death, two residents are currently in serious conditions. He added that this is not the first time Egypt uses gas in the tunnels as 45 residents previously died after being gassed in different tunnels, and a total of 145 residents were killed in different accidents and incidents.
The Hamas spokesperson said that the Palestinians need the tunnels, and resorted to them due to the urgent necessity due to the ongoing siege on the Gaza Strip. He further stated that the solution is not killing the residents, and added that the solution is opening all border terminals.
Abu Zuhri demanded the Arab League to act immediately and end the siege.
Photo credit – Ma’an Images
National Public Radio’s Pro-Israeli Bias
By Stephen Lendman | April 29, 2010
Since established in 1970, NPR ignored its public trust in favor of privilege, corporatism, militarism, imperial wars, and Israel’s vilest crimes, including collective punishment, illegal occupation, targeted killings, land theft, dispossession, home demolitions, crop destruction, mass incarcerations, torture, violence, and the 2008 – 09 Gaza war inflicting mass deaths, permanent injuries, vast devastation, and human misery against defenseless civilians, imprisoned under siege since June 2007, and afflicted by a dire humanitarian crisis as a result – exacerbated by conflict and intermittent attacks, issues NPR ignores or understates.
It’s notorious for its biased, shoddy reporting, pseudo-journalism, creeping commercialism, distracting non-news, and deceiving listeners that it is public, non-profit, and impartial. Savvy media consumers know better and tune them out for delivering the same slanted coverage found on major networks and in broadsheets like The New York Times, Washington Post, and others – grossly favoring power, and when it comes to Israel, its interests matter. Palestinian ones don’t, so news is carefully filtered to distort facts, and report lies that when repeated enough become truths.
In its May/June 2004 issue, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) asked “How Public Is Public Radio?” in examining its guest list choices – on all issues (including Israel), mostly government officials, corporate think tank representatives, professionals representing their interests, and other elite sources, the public comprising a tiny 7%.
“For a public radio service intended to provide an independent alternative to corporate-owned and commercially driven mainstream media,” it said, “NPR is surprisingly reliant on mainstream” sources, the public nearly entirely shut out, and when included they’re largely nameless “people in the street,” quoted in one-sentence sound bites with no impact.
In December 2001, FAIR’s Seth Ackerman discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “Illusion of Balance” along with a companion November/December 2001 “Study of NPR’s Coverage of Deaths in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”
It found an 81% likelihood that an Israeli death would be reported compared to 34% for a Palestinian. Among under age 18 Palestinians, only 20% were reported compared to 89% of Israelis, FAIR concluding that “being a minor makes your death more newsworthy to NPR if you are Israeli, but less” so, or not at all, if Palestinian.
The imbalance is far greater today with few if any Israeli deaths, many Palestinian ones, but few ever reported and when done, it’s dismissive, brief, and/or falsified as to the cause.
FAIR October – February 2002 Action Alerts “repeatedly criticized NPR for describing periods when only Palestinians were being killed… as times of ‘relative calm (or) comparative quiet,’ ” yet barely concealing outrage about Israeli deaths, only caused in response to unreported IDF or settler-initiated violence.
Mainstream US media, including NPR, suppress stories like the London Guardian Rory McMarthy’s on April 17, 2009 headlined, “Teargas canister shot kills Palestinian demonstrator,” saying “Bassem Abu Rahmeh is (the) 18th person to die since 2004 during demonstrations against (the) West Bank(‘s)” Separation Wall.
Before being killed, Abu Rahmed begged Israeli soldiers not to shoot lest they kill an Israeli, his last words in Hebrew being: “Officer, officer, officer, listen, you killed an Israeli, wait a moment, wait a moment!” Instead, a high-velocity gas canister hit him in the chest and killed him.
“The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident,” of course, meaning whitewash, cover-up, and exonerating soldiers to commit repeated atrocities and get away with it – but try finding that explained on NPR or any mainstream US news service where Palestinian suffering is a non-story.
On April 6, 2007, Felice Pace’s CounterPunch article discussed NPR’s Weekend Edition, Saturday saying host Scott Simon “managed to do yet another NPR (Middle East) News interview (March 31)….in which he completely ignores the central influence of the Palestinian People’s plight,” affecting the entire region, contributing to its instability.
From 1990 – 2009, Linda Gradstein was NPR’s Israel correspondent, at the same time accepting pro-Israeli organization honoraria, the Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah and Nigel Parry reported on February 19, 2002 in their article headlined, “Special report: NPR’s Linda Gradstein takes cash payments from pro-Israeli groups.”
Despite a clear conflict of interest, professional ethics, and NPR policy, she worked as a paid Israeli propagandist, EI writers concluding:
“for some reason or other, Gradstein (was) effectively exempt from NPR’s own regulations. These revelations only broaden existing concerns about the integrity of NPR’s Middle East reporting and honesty of Linda Gradstein… the sad truth is that (she) rarely (met the minimum) standards,” nor do other NPR reporters covering foreign or domestic policies. They like other major media reporters are paid liars.
NPR Misinformation on East Jerusalem
Jews claim all Jerusalem as Israel’s historic capital, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring, during a May 22, 2009 Jerusalem Day ceremony (commemorating the city’s 1967 reunification), that:
“United Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided.”
For Muslims, it’s Islam’s third holiest site, containing the 35-acre Noble Sanctuary (al-Haram al-Sharif), including the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as its capital, yet Israel is dispossessing them one settlement expansion and home demolition at a time, world leaders turning a blind eye, letting it happen, despite disingenuous opposition rhetoric often quoted in mainstream reports, including NPR.
On March 26, Mondoweiss.net published Henry Norr’s article headlined, “When it comes to E. Jerusalem, ‘NPR’ misleads and misinforms,” offering examples from 22 recent broadcasts.
NPR calls the city “Israel’s capital,” its “undivided (or) unified capital,” with a historic claim to it all. In contrast, Occupied East Jerusalem is dismissed as “disputed territory,” its final status “only (to) be determined through negotiations” that may or may not occur, but given how previous ones were structured it won’t matter.
In three accounts, NRP quoted Netanyahu saying “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago,” despite Judaic roots dating only from around 1,800 BC, the Old Testament calling Abraham the first Hebrew for refusing to worship the period’s common idols, and organized Judaism dates from Moses around 1,500 BC.
One “Talk of the Nation” report featured an Israeli analyst saying East Jerusalem settlement construction will continue because the entire city is “the heart and soul of the Jewish people.” Analyst James Fallows told listeners that Israelis consider East Jerusalem settlements “necessary for their survival.”
Other reports described expropriated areas as idyllic “neighborhood(s),” hilltop “communit(ies),” pious Jews there “focus(ing) on their religious studies and pay(ing) little attention to the outside world.” Their large families require settlement expansions to accommodate them, so Palestinians have to go, no matter that they and their ancestors lived there for centuries.
Yet Israelis say East Jerusalem’s 250,000 Palestinians have no historic claim to the city they “want” for their “future state” and “aspire” to be their capital – mindless that it already is and that no government, including America, recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital or has an embassy there.
The November 1947 UN Partition Plan (Resolution 181) designated Jerusalem an international city under a UN Trusteeship Council, still binding today. The 1949 UN Resolution 273 gave Israel UN membership conditional on its implementing Resolutions 181 and 194 (December 1948) granting Palestinians their universally accepted “Right of Return – topics NPR never explains.
Though rarely discussed or reported, world governments and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) consider East Jerusalem occupied. Even the ICRC says so, calling Israeli actions there “illegal” under international law, specifically the 1907 Hague Regulations and Fourth Geneva’s Article 49 stating:
“Individual or mass transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of the motive.” Neither shall “The Occupying Power….deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
In addition, numerous UN resolutions established “no legal validity” for occupied land acquisitions or settlement building. When violations occur, no nation may recognize or support them or the responsible state.
Further, the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples condemned “colonialism in all its forms and manifestations,” including settlements deemed to be illegal.
International laws are clear and unequivocal. NPR never reports or explains that:
— all Israeli settlements are illegal;
— growing numbers of Jews oppose them;
— many support the global BDS movement (boycott, sanctions, and divestment);
— more now leave Israel than arrive; and
— Palestinians are systematically persecuted, terrorized, and denied rights afforded solely to Jews, and are being dispossessed of property they owned and did “most of the building (on for) over the last 1,500 years.”
Their voices are virtually shut out. Instead, feature interviews are presented like “All Things Considered” host Robert Siegel’s with Israel’s US ambassador Michael Oren, saying:
“….Jerusalem is sovereign Israeli territory, and it has the same status as Tel Aviv. And just as Israelis have a right to build anywhere in Tel Aviv, they have a right to build anywhere in the city of Jerusalem.”
Or another with Martin Indyk (former US Israeli ambassador and Netanyahu brother-in-law) hyping Iran as an “existential threat” when last September Reuters quoted Defense Minister Ehud Barak saying “Iran does not constitute an existential threat to Israel….Israel is strong. I don’t see anyone who could pose an existential threat,” though he called Iran a challenge to the whole world without being more specific.
NPR pro-Israeli propaganda persists in deference to the Israeli Lobby and its funding sources, much of it corporate, from special interest foundations, and wealthy donors strongly supportive of Israel as are virtually every member of Congress and all administrations, Republican and Democrat.
No matter, according to a FAIR May 17, 2005 Action Alert headlined, “CPB (the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) Turns to NPR as Latest ‘Bias’ Target.” It quoted a May 16 New York Times report about the CPB considering “a study on whether NPR’s Middle East coverage was more favorable to Arabs than to Israelis – further evidence that the agency intends to police public media for content it deems too ‘liberal.’ ”
Past FAIR analyses clearly exposed NPR’s pro-Israeli coverage – recently more extreme, making it impossible for listeners to know truths NPR suppresses, much like The New York Times and the rest of America’s print and broadcast media, in contrast to Haaretz writers Amira Hass and Gideon Levy who tell it heroically to Israeli and world readers.
A Final Comment
Among its 25 top 2005 censored stories, Project Censored’s No. 11 pick headlined, “The Media Can Legally Lie,” a CMW Report, Spring 2003 by Liane Casten titled, “Court Ruled that Media Can Legally lie.” It covered a unanimous February 2003 Florida Court of Appeals decision for Fox News, saying no rule prohibits distorting or falsifying news.
It pertained to 1996 Jane Akre/Steve Wilson Fox affiliate WTVT, Tampa reports on bovine growth hormone (BGH) dangers, Monsanto’s hazardous to human health genetically engineered milk additive. At first, the station loved them, but headquarters Fox executives and their attorneys wanted the reporters to admit falsifying evidence and produce bogus reports on BGH safety.
They refused, threatened to inform the FCC, were fired, and sued – a district court jury deciding on their behalf, awarding Acre alone $425,000 in damages. Fox appealed and won, the Appellate Court saying Acre wasn’t protected under Florida’s whistleblower statute, it loosely interpreted to mean employers must violate an adopted “law, rule, or regulation.” Fox simply followed “policy” entitling its stations to lie – whether on product safety or falsifying facts about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
NPR and other US major media operations take full advantage, keeping their listeners and readers in the dark and uninformed, while Palestinians are systematically persecuted, out of sight and mind, except for people concerned enough to learn the truth and tell it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
Defending their land
ActiveStills — April 26, 2010
Report from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee:
Palestinian, Israeli and international demonstrators managed to stop the construction of the Wall in the village of al Walaja, south of Jerusalem for the second time this week. If completed, the path of the Wall in the area will surround the village completely, isolating it from all its lands, the cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem and essentially the rest of the world.
Demonstrators managed to block the bulldozers in the early morning, and even climb and take over one of the machines. A Border Police force at the scene arrested on of the demonstrators – 15 year old Nabil Hajajla – who was beaten and pepper-sprayed. Following Hajajla’s arrest, Border Police officers managed to drag the demonstrators away from the bulldosers and construction was resumed.
Al-Walaja is an agrarian village of about 2,000 people, located south of Jerusalem and West of Bethlehem. Following the 1967 Occupation of the West Bank and the redrawing of the Jerusalem municipal boundaries, roughly half the village was annexed by Israel and included in the Jerusalem municipal area. The village’s residents, however did not receive Israeli residency or citizenship, and are considered illegal in their own homes.
Once completed, the path of the Wall is designed to encircle the village’s built-up area entirely, separating the residents from both Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and almost all their lands – roughly 5,000 dunams. Previously, Israeli authorities have already confiscated approximately half of the village’s lands for the building of the Har Gilo and Gilo settlements, and closed off areas to the south and west of it. The town’s inhabitants have also experienced the cutting down of fruit orchards and house demolition due to the absence of building permits in Area C.
According to a military confiscation order handed to the villagers, the path of the Wall will stretch over 4890 meters between Beit Jala and alWallaja, affecting 35 families, whose homes may be slated for demolition.
Beit Jala is a predominantly Christian town located 10 km south of Jerusalem, on the western side of the Hebron road, opposite Bethlehem. Once completed, he Wall will Isolate 3,200 Dunams of the town’s lands, including almost 3,000 Dunams of olive groves and the only recreational forest in the area, the Cremisan monastery and the Cremisan Cellars winery.
Settler Sewage Ruins Palestinian Crops, Drinking Water
By Mel Frykberg | IPS | April 28, 2010
BEIT UMMAR, West Bank – Residents of this Palestinian village refuse to buy the idea that the flood of raw sewage from the adjacent Israeli settlement of Kfar Etzion, that destroyed vineyards and contaminated their drinking water, was an accident.
The Israeli Civil Administration, which administers the occupied West Bank, claims the spillage was the result of an accidental power malfunction which caused excess settlement sewage to overflow onto Palestinian land.
“This was no mistake,” says a British activist who has been documenting life in the village for several months. “The pipe was deliberately unscrewed by hand so that the sewage would spill over into Beit Ummar. That has nothing to do with an electricity cut,” he told IPS.
Villagers standing near a completely destroyed 70,000 sq m vineyard belonging to the Sabarneh family said they believe it was a deliberate act of sabotage and part of a concerted campaign by the settlers to harass their Palestinian neighbours and vandalise their property.
Beit Ummar has been the target of a number of Israeli military raids at night last month. Activists who have been organising non-violent protests against the expropriation of their land for the settlements have been arrested and the village blockaded.
In a similar incident last week the Palestinian village of Bruqin, in the northern West Bank, was flooded with sewage from the nearby Ariel settlement, causing contamination of underground water and springs and damaging crops.
These incidents are part of a larger problem of scarce water resources where a Palestinian population of 2.5 million survives on 17 percent of the West Bank’s main underground aquifer.
The remaining water is channelled towards the West Bank’s (including East Jerusalem) 500,000 Israeli settlers, and into Israel proper.
The water shortage is compounded by the lack of wastewater treatment plants and inefficient treatment of waste and sewage in the Palestinian territory which fouls its water sources.
Israeli rights group B’tselem released a study last year called ‘Foul Play: Neglect of wastewater treatment in the West Bank’.
According to the organisation, more than 90 percent of Palestinian wastewater is not treated while only 20 percent of Palestinian homes, primarily in towns and cities, are connected to sewerage systems.
Furthermore, only 81 of 121 illegal Israeli settlements are connected to wastewater treatment facilities. Over half of the settlements’ treatment plants are too small to treat waste effectively and are ill-equipped to handle the burgeoning settler population.
The result is continual technical breakdowns and sewage overflow. Most of the settlements are situated on ridges and hilltops so sewage flows down towards the Palestinian villages and towns in the valleys below, contaminating their drinking water supplies and destroying their crops.
The Israeli settlers are not affected by this as they are connected to Israel’s water supply.
The planning and building authorities in the settlements and Israeli industrial areas also ignore Jordanian building and planning laws which govern how wastewater is to be treated in the West Bank.
The B’tselem report further outlines the neglect of the territory’s water treatment plants by the Israeli Civil Administration during the decades of occupation and the current difficulties faced by Palestinian Authority (PA) water officials in trying to build new wastewater treatment plants or repair the old ones.
There is currently only one wastewater treatment plant operating in the West Bank in Ramallah. Three others have ceased to function and the PA has been unable to repair them or build new ones.
The West Bank is divided into Area A, which is under Palestinian control, Area B under joint Palestinian and Israeli control, and Area C which is under full Israeli control.
Area C comprises 60 percent of the West Bank. Areas A and B are mostly built up with little free land available.
However, in order to move around or build new wastewater treatment plants in Area C Palestinian officials from the PA Environment Authority require building permits from the Israeli Civil Administration.
B’tselem and PA officials complain of the delays these officials face in getting building approval if they get them at all.
“There is an enormous amount of red tape and bureaucracy that Palestinian officials have to overcome before they get the permits,” says Eyal Hareuveni, the author of the B’tselem report.
“The Israeli Civil Administration says that the Palestinians don’t provide the necessary detailed building plans as they have been instructed but I think the administration is being deliberately difficult,” Hareuveni told IPS.
Issa Moussa from the PA’s Environmental Authority denied that the PA provided insufficient details.
“We have the case of wanting to build a new wastewater treatment plant in Tulkarem in the northern West Bank. We provided absolutely everything requested but we were still waiting for a permit,” Moussa told IPS.xxxxx
Other difficulties facing the more efficient handling of wastewater are the restrictions placed on Palestinian movement in the West Bank by the Israeli military. This has led to increased costs for donors who support wastewater projects and who in turn have cut down on their expenditure.
A Joint Water Committee between Israel and the PA was established following the Oslo Peace Accord of 1993, to address water issues.
One of the disputes between the sides is the Israeli insistence that settlement sewage be connected to future Palestinian wastewater treatment plants.
The Palestinians reject this as this implies that the settlements are permanent and say their refusal to approve this condition is one of the reasons for approval being withheld on the construction of wastewater plants.
With no higher authority to settle the disagreement the situation will only worsen in the future.
“Neither side seems to be making the urgent issue of water and waste treatment a priority,” Hareuveni told IPS.
War-Zone Medical Aid Doubly Endangered
By Paul Virgo | IPS | April 26, 2010
ROME – The case of the three Italians arrested this month on suspicion of trying to assassinate a southern Afghan governor concluded with a happy ending of sorts and a sure fire certainty – an uncompromising attitude that makes war-zone medical aid doubly dangerous.
The members of Milan-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) ‘Emergency’, inlcuding surgeon Marco Garatti, nurse Matteo Dell’Aira and logistical technician Matteo Pagani, flew back to Italy on Wednesday after being detained on Apr. 10 when their hospital in conflict-torn Helmand province was closed down after arms and explosives were found there.
But at least one of the NGO’s local staff remained in custody at the time of writing and there was no certainty about whether the hospital at Lashkar Gah would reopen and, if so, whether it would still be run by Emergency.
The accusation that members of a pacifist charity who had given up European comforts to save lives in Afghanistan were involved in a plot to kill Helmand Governor Gulab Mangal had sounded outlandish as soon as it was aired. The NGO said the bombs had been planted at the hospital, with its founder Gino Strada adding that the trio’s release showed the “attempt to discredit us has failed”.
But it was no surprise that Emergency had come under the Afghan authorities’ scrutiny. Like other medical charities such as the Red Cross, it treats wounded regardless of whose side they are on, which means Taliban fighters are among those who benefit from their care.
But unlike other NGOs in the field, it has accompanied its work in Helmand with sharp criticism of the number of civilian victims of the southern offensive against the Taliban and allegations that the United States-led international coalition was preventing the injured from reaching their hospital.
“It’s probably right to say what happened, happened because we told the story of the war,” Dell’Aira told a news conference on Friday. “This annoyed people because we told all the stories of our wounded, 40 percent of whom are children.”
Another factor that may have contributed to the NGO being targeted is that the lack of vetting of their local staff led to suspicions that their clinic served as a safe haven for insurgents.
The fact that Emergency has twice acted as a go-between for the Italian government in negotiations to release kidnapped Italian journalists also suggested that it had some form of contact with the insurgency, further raising distrust in some quarters.
“Emergency are on the radar because they’ve highlighted themselves as trouble-makers by criticising the Afghan authorities and the international alliance,” Luca La Bella, an Asia expert with the Rome-based Centro Studi Internazionali (Ce.S.I – International Studies Centre), told IPS.
“That’s not a wise thing to do. Becoming an enemy of the government is bound to endanger your operations sooner or later.”
However, the affair probably reveals more about the state of play in Afghanistan than it does about the NGO’s relations with the Afghan authorities, especially given that its operations in the rest of the country do not appear to be at threat.
The episode comes at a time when relations between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his international backers are regularly on the rocks.
Karzai has torn into the West recently saying, among other things, that its diplomats orchestrated the notorious election debacle last year that saw the Electoral Complaints Commission, the then foreign-led electoral fraud panel, throw out a third of his votes, badly hitting his standing.
During a stand-off over appointments to the panel Karzai passed a decree in February giving him the power to name all five members, angering donors. A compromise was later reached under which two foreigners were to be included with veto powers.
La Bella believes the Emergency episode is the fruit of Karzai’s desire to prove he is not a puppet of his international backers and project himself as a true national leader ahead of attempts to make peace with the insurgents.
“After being forced to back down over nominations to the Electoral Complaints Commission, Karzai had to hit back and he did so by taking things out on Emergency,” La Bella said.
“He is doing this because he needs to establish himself among Afghans, who are so proud of their independence, as a leader capable of defending national sovereignty from the overlording powers in order to find reconciliation with the insurgents. He knows he can’t have both (legitimacy at home and abroad).
“He wants to engage with the insurgents while the U.S. wants to fight on to weaken them further (before talking), by taking a stand in the south and showing the Taliban can be beaten. Karzai would rather get on with the reconciliation process now.”
Some experts also see the fact that the British military helped the Afghans seal off Emergency’s hospital as a sign that all is not well within the international alliance.
“One of my field researchers who’s just returned from Helmand said that many people he interacted with were of the opinion that the mentioned incident was a result of the internal bickering within the international community, Italian and British forces in this case,” Idrees Zaman, a researcher with Afghan research think-tank Cooperation for Peace and Unity, told IPS.
“Generally speaking, in southern Afghanistan, particularly in Helmand, lack of coordination and internal rivalries between the coalition forces is a major issue these days,’’ Zaman added.
Israeli soldiers given minor reprimands over shooting of Palestinian civilians
By Catrina Stewart | The Independent | 28 April 2010
Israeli officers held responsible for the deaths of four Palestinians in the West Bank received only minor reprimands after an internal investigation concluded that the deaths could have been avoided.
Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel’s military chief, admitted that the incidents last month “could have ended differently” and could have “avoided causing harm to civilians”.
The two fatal shooting incidents, just 24 hours apart, marked the most serious escalation of tensions in the occupied West Bank in months, and threatened to destroy the fragile calm that has persisted there in recent years.
In one case, Israeli soldiers fired on Palestinian protesters, killing two. In a second incident, a soldier killed two Palestinians who he claimed had tried to attack him. Mr Ashkenazi reprimanded two senior officers – a colonel and a lieutenant colonel – and removed a squad commander from his post, a military statement said. The soldiers who fired the lethal rounds appeared to escape censure.
Israeli human rights organisations denounced the military investigation, claiming that it failed to hold the soldiers accountable for their actions and upheld the army’s culture of impunity.
“It is extremely rare for the Israeli security forces to be held accountable in cases where they have killed or injured Palestinian civilians,” said Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem, an Israeli NGO.
She said that the army should open criminal investigations into both cases rather than conduct “internal operational debriefs” that skirt the legal issues regarding the soldiers’ actions. “There are credible allegations, these must be investigated,” she said.
On 20 March, Israeli forces faced Palestinian protesters in the village of Iraq Burin as they tried to prevent clashes with extremist Jewish settlers from nearby Bracha. In the ensuing skirmish, Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinian teenagers, Mohammed Qadus and Osaid Qadus.
The military statement said Israeli forces had been authorised to use rubber bullets against the Palestinians, but, as reported by The Independent, medics who examined the body insisted that live ammunition had been used, and produced X-rays that appeared to show a conventional bullet lodged in the skull of Osaid Qadus.
The Israeli army said a Military Police investigation into the claims that live rounds were used was still ongoing. The army “could not verify the autopsy and could therefore not confirm that the rioters were in fact hit by live rounds,” the statement said.
In Awarta a day later, an Israeli soldier fired on two Palestinians who approached a checkpoint and started “acting suspiciously,” according to the statement. The first apparently tried to attack the soldier with a bottle, prompting the soldier to shoot him. The second then allegedly wielded a “sharp object” and was also shot dead.
The soldier fired seven bullets into Mohammed Qawariq and at least three into Saleh Qawariq, according to Palestinian doctors. “While the soldier, believing his life was at risk, acted subjectively, the Chief of the General Staff holds the officers responsible for training their soldiers to act in difficult operational situations,” the military said.
Relatives of the deceased denied that they tried to attack the soldier and said they were only metal workers looking for scrap.
Hezbollah slams US over arms claims
Press TV – April 28, 2010
Hezbollah has sharply rejected US allegations about the Lebanese movement’s missiles, vowing to continue armed resistance against Israeli aggression.
Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah in an article published on Wednesday scoffed at recent comments by US Defense Minister Robert Gates that Hezbollah’s arms exceeded those held by many states in the world, saying Hezbollah’s arms did not compare to the “armament” and “crimes” of the United States and its ally Israel.
The Lebanese official recalled “the level of armament of the United States, which it used in its crimes against peoples around the world, from Hiroshima to the more than 100,000 killed in Iraq and the tens of thousands killed in Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan,” the Arabic-language newspaper As-Safir quoted him on Wednesday.
“There is a difference between arms which only serve invasions, occupations and aggressions, such as those of the United States and its ally Israel … and the arms of a resistance which defends, protects, and liberates,” he said.
“Our choice was and remains to secure all the arms of resistance that we can,” he added.
In a joint news conference with Israeli Defense Minster Ehud Barak in Washington, Gates on Tuesday accused Syria and Iran of arming Hezbollah with increasingly sophisticated rockets and missiles.
Gates’ claims came amid tensions in the Middle East intensified by Israel’s earlier accusations against Syria of providing Scud ballistic missiles for Hezbollah.
Israel views Hezbollah a major enemy, especially after the summer conflict of 2006 where the resistance forces repelled a 33-day Israeli offensive on southern Lebanon.
Nails in the Global Warming Coffin
By Professor Philip Stott | April 27, 2010
My silence since mid-February has not meant that I have taken my eye off the climate-change scene. Far from it, although I have to confess that I have become increasingly wearied and bored by the fatuous lack of reality exhibited on this topic by many UK politicians. It is so glaringly obvious that, since the debacle in Copenhagen, ‘global warming’ is dying as a major political trope that I find it less and less exercising as an issue. Indeed, I do not want to waste too much energy in flogging a fundamentally dead corpse.
This last week, however, the nails in the global warming coffin have been driven in so thick and so fast that I thought it might be worth bringing attention once again to what is happening around the world – “You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Global Warming is as dead as a door-nail,” although I suspect that the Global Warming Ghost will hang around moaning and wailing for quite a while yet.
Germany Gets Cold Feet
First, in that paragon of so-called Green virtues, Germany, Spiegel Online reports that the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, ‘Abandons Aim of Binding Climate Agreement’:
“Frustrated by the climate change conference in December, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is quietly moving away from her goal of a binding agreement on limiting climate change to 2 degrees Celsius. She has also sent out signals at the EU level that she no longer supports the idea of Europe going it alone.”
Spiegel goes on to comment:
“… now it’s time for realpolitik. Merkel and Röttgen [have] had to admit that countries like China and India will not submit to a mandatory target that others have contrived.
Precisely so.
The Emissions Billycan Waltzes Off Indefinitely
Meanwhile, ‘Down Under’, The Sydney Morning Herald reports: ‘Emissions put on back burner’:
“A Senate vote on the trading scheme legislation, which was due next month, has now been dropped by the government for the May and June sittings of Parliament.
A government source said yesterday the fate of the Senate vote on the legislation beyond June was unclear.
The source said the decision to park the legislation indefinitely reflected the political reality that the opposition, under leader Tony Abbott, and the Greens had vowed to reject the scheme in the Senate.
Unless the Coalition or the Greens change their positions the government will now have to wait until July 1 next year for the Senate to change over after this year’s federal election to negotiate with a potentially less hostile Parliament – unless a double-dissolution election is called.
The government will now concentrate on passing other matters in the Senate including its national health reform package and the national broadband network. ‘Obviously there are a lot of pressures in the Senate, so the government has to prioritise the reforms that are most likely to be passed,’ the source said.”
Indeed. Most wise. “Good On Yer, Mate!”
Different Priorities In US Too
Then, in the US, as The New York Times reports: “The Senate climate bill sits on the brink of collapse today after the lead Republican ally threatened to abandon negotiations because of a White House push to simultaneously overhaul the nation’s immigration policies.”
Moreover, President Obama has far more pressing worries and priorities as ‘US Republicans block debate of finance rules reform’ – Mr Obama has made reining in Wall Street a cornerstone of his Presidency.
Quite so.
Finally, Elusive Pay-Offs And Not Such A Green-Blue
Further, somewhat unsurprisingly given all of the above, the monies so happily and so readily promised to help developing nations to fight ‘global warming’ are proving remarkably elusive. Only the most politically- and economically-naive of souls could have expected otherwise.
Lastly, even in our ever-Utopian UK, ‘global warming’ has, thank goodness, hardly featured in the election to date, being confined to brief comments hidden in the deepest inner recesses of a few newspapers, although it is worth stating that the energy policies of the newly-resurgent Liberal Democrats would probably do for Britain as a serious economic power.
By contrast, as The Times points out this morning about the Conservatives:
“Despite Mr Cameron’s slogan of ‘vote blue go green’, a recent survey found that only 22 per cent of Conservative candidates in winnable seats strongly supported Britain’s target of generating 15 per cent of Britain’s energy from renewable sources by 2020.
David Davis, the former Shadow Home Secretary, recently warned that the policy of tough targets to cut carbon emissions, supported by Mr Cameron, was ‘destined to collapse’.”
Just so.
Indeed, the complete collapse of the Great Global Warming Grand Narrative continues apace.
It will surely be fascinating to observe precisely the moment when UK politicians begin to stop mouthing pious platitudes about the political significance of ‘global warming’.
That moment cannot come too soon.
Research: Global warming dirt-carbon peril models are wrong
By Lewis Page • 27th April 2010
The world may not be doomed after all, according to top American dirt scientists. Soil-dwelling microbes, expected in climate models to go into CO2-spewing “overdrive” as the world warms, refused to do so in experiments.
According to a statement released this week by the US National Science Foundation, which funded the research:
Conventional scientific wisdom holds that even a few degrees of human-caused climate warming will shift fungi and bacteria that consume soil-based carbon into overdrive, and that their growth will accelerate the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
This conventional wisdom now appears to be wrong, as research conducted by University of California ecologist Steve Allison has shown that in fact the carbon-eating microbes’ planet-busting activities are reduced, not increased, by warmth.
Allison developed a new climate model based on experimental results showing what happened in soils which had been warmed up artificially in greenhouses over a period of several years. There is an initial increase in microbial emissions, which has been the basis for existing models, but after a while the microbes “overheat” and their numbers – and CO2 output – plunge.
“When we developed a model based on the actual biology of soil microbes, we found that soil carbon may not be lost to the atmosphere as the climate warms,” Allison says. “Conventional ecosystem models that didn’t include enzymes did not make the same predictions.”
The flow of carbon in and out of the Earth’s soils is thought to be one of the biggest factors in the amount of greenhouse effect experienced by the planet, so the new results could have a major effect on climate forecasts and related government policies. Allison cautions that more research is needed, but seems confident that the microbe menace is not as severe as had been thought.
“We need to develop more models to include microbe diversity,” he says. “But the general principle that’s important in our model is the decline of carbon dioxide production after an initial increase.”
Allison and his colleagues’ research appears online this week in Nature Geoscience. ®
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From the Archives
A sample of vaccine and injectable medication tragedies during my lifetime
This is what happens when you demand speedy production in an era of politicized regulation
By Meryl Nass, MD | February 12, 2022
All these tragedies have been due to failures of testing or failures in manufacturing processes. Most occurred before vaccine manufacturers were given virtually complete protection from liability in 1987.
With the duration of patent exclusivity determining how much new products earn, products are rushed to market as quickly as possible, most using a shortened path for FDA review. Recalls and market removals of approved products are much more common than they used to be. We can only expect more of these disasters in the future, especially if the products are mandated for everyone. … continue
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