‘US cluster bombs killed 55 in Yemen’
Press TV – June 6, 2010
Cluster bomb shells dropped on Vietnam by the US military
Amnesty International says the United States used cluster bombs on a cruise missile in Yemen, killing 55 people, most of whom were civilians.
The attack, according to the rights group, targeted Al-Maajala in the Abyan province at a time when Washington was pushing hard to project militants in the country.
“Amnesty International is gravely concerned by evidence that cluster munitions appear to have been used in Yemen,” said Mike Lewis, the group’s arms control researcher, AFP reported.
The group cited a Yemeni parliamentary committee as reporting in February that the attack had killed 41 local residents, including 14 women and 21 children, in addition to 14 alleged militants.
Deputy Director of AI’s Middle East and North Africa Program, Philip Luther warned that “a military strike of this kind against alleged militants without an attempt to detain them is at the very least unlawful.”
“The fact that so many of the victims were actually women and children indicates that the attack was in fact grossly irresponsible, particularly given the likely use of cluster munitions,” he also said.
Lewis said, “Cluster munitions have indiscriminate effects and unexploded bomblets threaten lives and livelihoods for years afterwards.”
AI had obtained photographs which showed remains of the BGM-109D Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile. “This type of missile, launched from a warship or submarine, is designed to carry a payload of 166 cluster sub-munitions (bomblets) which each explode into over 200 sharp steel fragments that can cause injuries up to 150 meters (about 500 feet) away,” an AI statement said.
“An incendiary material inside the bomblet also spreads fragments of burning zirconium designed to set fire to nearby flammable objects,” it added.
Israeli War Crimes: From the U.S.S. Liberty to the Humanitarian Flotilla
James Petras | My Catbird Seat | 05 June, 2010
Introduction: Israel Crimes on the High Seas
On June 8, 1967, two squadrons of Israeli warplanes bombed, napalmed and machine-gunned the US intelligence-gathering ship, USS Liberty, in international waters, killing 34 US sailors and wounding another 172. The assault took place on a sunny afternoon, with the US flag and identifying markers clearly visible. The Israelis targeted the antennae to prevent the crew from broadcasting for help and shot up the lifeboats to ensure no survivors. There were, however, survivors who rigged up an antenna and radioed their distress, a call for help that reached Washington D.C. In an unprecedented act of betrayal, President Johnson, in close liaison with powerful American Jewish Zionist political backers, covered up the mass murder on the high seas by issuing orders first to recall Mediterranean-based warplanes from rushing to assist their besieged comrades, then threatening to court-martial the survivors who might expose the deliberate nature of the Israeli assault and finally by repeating the Israeli line that the attack was a matter of mistaken identity, a lie which numerous military leaders later rejected.
Almost to the day, 43 years later, on May 31, 2010, Israeli warships, helicopter gun ships and commandos assaulted a convoy of humanitarian ships carrying ten thousand tons of aid to Gaza in international waters. Prior to the aid mission Turkish authorities had examined the passengers and the ship to ensure no weapons were on board. The Israelis never the less came on board shooting and clubbing the unarmed passengers, killing up to 19 and wounding dozens. Despite subsequent Israeli and Zionist claims to the contrary no weapons were found, apart from sticks used by some of the victims attempting to fend off the murderous premeditated assault planned, directed and defended by top Israeli leaders and the entire leadership of the major Zionist organizations in the US and elsewhere. The invading Israeli storm troopers systematically destroyed all cameras, videos and tape recorders that had documented their savage assault, in order to subsequently spread their brazen lies about their being subject to armed resistance.
The World Response
Within hours of Israel’s bloody act of piracy, nations, political leaders, human rights organizations and the vast majority of the international community condemned the Israeli state for its violation of international law. Turkey, Spain, Greece, Denmark and Austria summoned their Israeli Ambassadors to protest the deadly assault. The Financial Times, (June 1, 2010) referred to the Israeli assault as a “brazen act of piracy … hurtling into lawlessness” rooted in its “illegal blockage of Gaza”. Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan called the Israeli assault an act of “state terrorism” which would have “serious consequences”. Israel’s attacks on ships flying Turkish, Greek and Irish flags on the high seas were described by legal experts as an “act of war”. The UN Security Council, NATO and the Secretary General of the UN demanded Israel cease its aggression, while tens of thousands of demonstrators marched denouncing Israel’s blatant act of state murder and wounding of pacifists, humanitarians and protesters from 60 countries. UN experts demanded that Israeli leaders “must be held criminally responsible”. Only the Obama regime refused to condemn the Israeli act of state terror, merely expressing “concern and regret”. The Israeli state defended its murderous assault, promised more in the future and insisted on maintaining its blockade of Gaza, even after the US suggested it might be loosened.
The Israeli Defense of Piracy and State Terror
As news of the Israeli massacre slipped out and the international community reacted with horror and anger, the Israeli government “sought to flood the airwaves with their versions of events … more importantly, the authorities ensured that their narrative gained early dominance by largely silencing the hundreds of activists who were on board during the attack” (Financial Times, June 2, 2010, p2.). The Jewish state held all the prisoners alive, wounded and dead incommunicado, seized their mobile phones and prohibited any interviews, barring all journalists. Like most terrorist states, the Jewish state wanted to monopolize the propaganda media. The Israeli propaganda machine via its state sponsored journalists and news media employed several ploys typical of totalitarian regimes.
- Israeli storm troopers invading the ship were turned into victims and the humanitarian pacifists were turned into aggressors. “Israeli Soldiers Met by Well-Planned Lynch Mob” (Jerusalem Post, March 31, 2010); “Israeli Soldiers Attacked” (IDF, March 31, 2010).
- Israel’s act of piracy in international waters was declared legal by a Professor Sabel of the Hebrew University.
- The humanitarian organizers were accused of having ties to terrorists according to Deputy Foreign Minister Ayalon, though no evidence was presented (Ha’aretz, May 30, 2010). The organizers including the Turkish human rights group accused by Ayalon were cleared by the Turkish intelligence agency, the military and the Erdogan government, a member of NATO and for many years (in the past) a collaborator with the Israeli Mossad. The other 600 plus human rights volunteers, included pacifists, parliamentarians, former diplomats, as well as current members of the Israeli parliament.
- While dozens of human rights people were shot, killed and maimed, Israeli propagandists doctored video releases portraying one of the Israeli assailants on the deck, cutting out the preceding sequence of attack (Financial Times, June 2, 2010, p. 2).
- The Israeli sea and airborne assailants were described as the victims of a “Brutal Ambush at Sea” (Ynet News, June 1, 2010).
- The terrorized human rights workers were accused of being a “lynch mob”, attacking the Jewish commandos who were firing automatic rifles wildly across the deck and at cornered victims. The few courageous individuals who fought back to stop the murderous attack were slandered by the Zion-prop, which itself is as monstrous as the crimes they perpetrated.
Once the Israeli propaganda machine started spewing out its gutter lies, the entire leadership of the Zionist Fifth column swung into action … first and foremost in the United States.
The US Zionist Power Configuration: In Defense of the Massacre
Just as the entire leadership of the 51 principle American Jewish organizations defended every Israeli war crime in the past, from the bombing of the US Liberty, to the Occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza so too did these most honorable apologists repeat verbatim the lies of the Israeli state regarding the assault of the humanitarian flotilla.
The Daily Alert (May 31 – June 2, 2010), the official public propaganda organ of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations, published every scurrilous Israeli state lie, about the Israeli commandos being ‘lynched’, ‘attacked’ and the human rights victims being responsible for the death of their comrades … at the hands of Israeli commandos. Not a single deviation, not a single word of criticism. Not even a single mention of even the superficial Israeli critics who faulted the execution, the use of deadly weapons, the assault in international waters, and the public relations fiasco. The vast majority of Israeli Jews and organized Zionists in the US supported the bloody massacre and were opposed by a small minority who has no access to the mass media. Zionist control over the mass media was once again demonstrated by the reporting through “Israel’s eyes” (FAIR, June 1, 2010). Essentially the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, CBS, NBC presented the Israeli commandos attacking the humanitarian boat as being … “assaulted and beaten” (Washington Post, June 1, 2010). The New York Times gave credence to the Israeli claim that its act of piracy on the high seas was legal (NY Times, June 1, 2010). For the US mass media the problem is not Israeli state terror, but how to manipulate and disarm the outrage of the international community. To that end the entire Zionist Power configuration has a reliable ally in the Zionized Obama White House and US Congress.
The Obama Response to Israeli State Terror
There is only one basic reason why Israel repeatedly commits crimes against humanity, including the latest assault on the humanitarian flotilla: because it knows that the Zionist Power Configuration, embedded in the US power structure, will ensure government support, in this case the Obama White House.
In the face of the world-wide condemnation of Israel’s crime on the high seas, and calls from the international community for legal action, the Obama regime absolutely refused to criticize Israel. A White House spokesman said “The United States deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained and is currently working to understand the circumstances surrounding the tragedy” (AFP May 31, 2010). An act of state terrorism does not evoke “regrets” – it normally provokes condemnation and punishment. The power which caused “loss of life and injuries” has a name – Israel; the persons who suffered death and injuries during the Israeli assault – have a name – humanitarian volunteers. It was not simply a “loss of life” but a well planned premeditated murder which is openly defended by Prime Minister Netanyahu and his entire Cabinet. The “circumstances” of the murders are clear: Israel assaulted an unarmed ship in international waters, opening fire as they boarded the ship. The Obama regime’s obscene political cover-up of a deliberate criminal act in violation of international law is evident in his description of a serial homicide as a ‘tragedy’. Premeditated state terror has no resemblance to a tragic noble ruler forced by circumstances into a criminal act against their closest allies.
Washington, pressed to participate at a UN Security Council meeting, spent 10 hours eliminating all references to Israel’s illegal criminal act, ending in a resolution which merely calls for an “impartial” investigation, with Washington pushing for an Israeli investigatory committee. To the world at large, including the Turkish government, the Obama regime and the US government, by refusing to condemn Israel, are “accomplices to a mass murder”.
To understand why the Obama regime brought shame and infamy to itself in the eyes of the world, one need look at the Zionist composition of the Obama White House and, equally important, the direct power and access that the principle Jewish-Zionist organizations have over the US political system. In the week preceding Israel’s announced assault on the humanitarian flotilla, (pro-Israel) Jewish leaders met with over a third of US senators to pressure them to pass harsher sanctions on Iran by June. Among the key operatives attending were the Jewish Federation of North America, AIPAC and the rest of the Israeli Fifth Column (Jewish Telegraph Agency, May 26, 2010). The following day a squadron of leaders from the Jewish Federations flew into Washington to meet with top Obama administration officials, to ensure that the White House and Congress did not in any way or form publicly express any criticism of Israel’s settlement policy. No doubt the Zionist apologists for Israeli war crimes extended their agenda to include no public criticism of the Israeli assault on the flotilla. Rahm Emmanuel, top US Presidential aide, was in Tel Aviv as a guest of top officials of the Israel Defense Force a few days before the IDF launched the assault, no doubt having filled Rahm in on the details. The Israeli-American aide to Obama no doubt assured the war criminals of Washington’s unconditional political and military support for Israel’s acts of aggression.
From within the Obama Administration and without, the aggressive pressure from the 51 principle organizations of the American Zionists have guaranteed Israeli war criminals immunity from any War Crimes Tribunal, or even serious political condemnation by the UN Security Council. The Zionized White House’s tactic is to deflect attention from immediate consequential condemnation let alone sanctions, hoping that over time, aided by the blanket mass media apology in the US, the mass indignation and protest overseas will gradually wither away. Obama and his Zionist cohort are already in a belly crawl mode with Israel. Part of Rahm’s mission to Israel was to hand Netanyahu an invitation to the White House, during the week of the slaughter at sea. The only reason Netanyahu did not come to Washington was because he rushed back to Israel to buttress the Foreign Office’s defense of the slaughter in the face of world-wide outrage. But in a phone conversation, Obama promised Netanyahu a prompt new invitation – assuring the Jewish statesman that violating international laws and bloodying dozens of humanitarian activists is of no consequence, especially since it insures continued financial support by Obama’s Zionist backers.
Like Lyndon Johnson with the cover-up of the USS Liberty, Obama’s apology of Israel’s war crimes, is the price for ensuring the backing of billionaire Zionist financiers and media moguls, the tens of thousands of pro-Israel Jews and the 51 President of the Major American Jewish Organizations.
In the face of Washington’s complicity with Israeli war crimes, the only road is to intensify the world-wide boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaign against all Israeli products, cultural activities and professional exchanges. Hopefully, the Islamic led mass protests will find echo in the wider anti-Zionist Christian and Jewish communities – especially, when Israeli apologists for state terror make public appearances. Even more important each and every Israeli involved in the mass assault should be subject to criminal prosecution wherever they visit. Only by making the Israelis understand that they will pay a high price for their serial homicides and violations of international law will reason possibly enter their political narrative. Only by moving beyond symbolic protests, like recalling diplomats, and taking substantive actions, like breaking relations, will the international community isolate the perpetrator of state terrorism. All Americans should send loud and clear to President Obama –NEVER AGAIN. Otherwise, with the Zionist Power Configuration active 7/24, the Obama regime, true to the Zionist agenda, will once again focus attention on attacking Iran. Israel’s action today with US complicity is a prelude of the kind of deadly force it has in store for sabotaging the recent Turkey-Brazil-Iran diplomatic agreement.
This is dedicated to the brave Turkish martyrs on the Mavi Marmara, May 31, 2010, and to the 34 murdered American sailors on the USS Liberty, June 8, 1967 – all victims of an unrepentant criminal state – Israel.
Shame behind the silence of America over Israeli crimes
By Paul J. Balles | 5 June 2010
The Gulf Daily News (2 June 2010) headlined a front-page article “The silence of America”. Questions were submitted to the American embassy, the White House, US State Department and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The article concluded: THE RESPONSE WAS SILENCE. The questions posed in that article deserve a response, but not the twists provided by Israeli apologists or Zionist controlled Washington.
Why, after all the years of total blind US support for Israel, would anyone expect anything different? Here are the questions and my answers:
1. What will it take before the US even condemns Israel’s behaviour?
Answer: A provable catastrophe committed by Israel resulting in the deaths of thousands of Americans. Israel’s behaviour has no judge other than Israel. Their behaviour will remain unchecked until a significant number of Americans suffer from the reality and become enraged.
2. How many people must die at the hands of Israelis before the US will take action against their behaviour? Ten people? 1,000? 10,000?
Answer: Consider how many Palestinian (6,348 between 2000 and 2009) and Lebanese (1,401 in two unprovoked raids) civilians have died unnoticed by America. Remember the provocation by Israel and the execution by America in Iraq; add another 1,366,350 innocents. To the Israelis, what’s another 10 murders in a humanitarian flotilla to Gaza?
3. Why is the US so against an independent inquiry into the flotilla incident?
Answer: The facts of such an inquiry, like the Goldstone inquiry into the carnage of Operation Cast Lead, would be ignored and the truth of its conclusions denied. Israel says “no independent inquiry”. America follows.
4. Any armed attack on any vessel in international waters would be deemed an act of piracy or war by most countries. Is the US definition of piracy and war different from the rest of the world?
Answer: If the pirates are Somalis, no. Pirates are pirates. If the pirates are Israelis, yes. Pirates become transformed into defence forces.
5. How would the US expect the crew or passengers of a civilian US ship to react if it was boarded by a foreign force in international waters? Would it expect them to defend themselves?
Answer: Bow, submit and genuflect if the foreign force is Israeli naval pirates. The victims of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty – an American military ship – were silenced even though the combined air and sea attack killed 34 (naval officers, seamen, two Marines and a civilian), wounded 171 and severely damaged the ship. At the time, the ship was in international waters.
6. The US says it does not consider itself to be at war with Islam, but how can it possibly hope for trust from the Muslim world and elsewhere when it tacitly backs such acts?
Answer: If the American position was honest, we would say, “We’re not at war with Islam; we’re only at war with Muslims.” When is the Muslim world going to waken to the American double talk that’s convenient only for Israel and America?
7. Does the US condemn the detention of four Bahraini civilians and others onboard the flotilla in international waters?
Answer: Fortunately, the Bahraini humanitarians have been released and returned home. The US has not and never will condemn Israel for being what ex-Israeli Gilad Atzmon described as “an inhuman murderous collective fuelled by a psychosis and driven by paranoia”.
The US response? President Obama expressed “deep regret at the loss of life”. Ultimately, Obama will follow Netanyahu’s attempt to justify the actions of the Israeli soldiers, saying they were “defending themselves” after being attacked. The same old political scam.
Obama Regime Blocks Condemnation of Israeli Crimes at UNSC Meeting
In defiance of international law the United States refuses to condemn Israel’s murder of peace activists in international waters.
Hamsayeh.Net – June 01, 2010
An emergency meeting of United Nation Security Council ended with United States once again blocking international efforts to condemn an Israeli attack on the peace flotilla on Monday morning.
A strong formal statement by Turkey demanding condemnation of Israel, a U.N. investigation, prosecution of those responsible for murder of peace activists, payment of compensation to the victims and an end to the Gaza blockade was vetoed by the US.
The Obama administration which according to some observers is under Zionist control tried to whitewash Israel’s crime on Monday. Many large corporations, media and financial centers in the United States function directly under a large network of Zionist elitites, which in turn handpick the North American country’s so-called democratically elected president every four years.
Following Monday’s attacks many countries condemned Israel’s crime against the international community. In Caracas Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called Israel’s action ‘an act of war’ on innocent civilians carrying relief supplies to Gaza Strip. ‘Venezuela will continue to denounce the terrorist and criminal nature of Israel’s government, even as it reiterates, today more than ever, its unbreakable commitment to the fight of the Palestinian people for freedom, national sovereignty, and dignity,’ Chavez said in a statement on Monday.
Likewise, Russia’s Foreign Ministry condemned the Israeli attack on the humanitarian aid flotilla as a gross breach of international law. ‘Russia’s Foreign Ministry expresses ‘condemnation and profound concern’ over the incident,’ read a statement. Russian Foreign Ministry demanded an immediate end to illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza Strip.
Let’s Follow the Brits’ Lead in Restoring Civil Liberties
By Michael Tennant | 28 May 2010
Here in the United States, liberal Democrats claim to be defenders of civil liberties, yet since taking power in January 2009 they have done little to restore lost liberties and much to encroach further upon them.
In just the past couple of weeks, for example, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives has voted to pay state governments to collect the DNA of Americans arrested for, but not necessarily guilty of, crimes and to store that information in a centralized FBI database; and the Democrat-controlled Senate has voted to allow the federal government to collect detailed data on Americans’ every financial transaction.
Over in Great Britain, however, the leader of the Liberal Democrat party, Nick Clegg, not only campaigned on restoring Britons’ civil liberties but is actually making good on those promises just two weeks after assuming the office of Deputy Prime Minister in a coalition government with the Conservative Party. The government’s first initiative under Clegg and Prime Minister David Cameron is a bill to repeal a national ID card and database, reports the U.K. Guardian. (This was not a hard sell to Cameron, who is also opposed to national ID cards.)
Just as 9/11 was used as an excuse to clamp down on civil liberties here in the former British colonies, so it was in the mother country. The Guardian writes that “compulsory identity cards … were first floated by the then-home secretary David Blunkett in the aftermath of 9/11.” After numerous attempts to pass legislation enacting a national ID card, it finally passed in 2006. Then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised in 2009 that the cards would not be compulsory, though that was only true, as the Guardian reported, if one did not “want to leave the country or legally drive a car” since obtaining a passport or driver’s license would automatically register a person in the national database.
Approximately 15,000 people have obtained national ID cards in the past four years; under the new legislation those cards will also be invalidated. “The role of the identity commissioner, created in an effort to prevent data blunders and leaks, will be abolished,” says the Guardian. The government expects to save one billion pounds between this legislation and other legislation “to cancel the next generation of biometric fingerprint passports,” the Guardian reports.
According to the Guardian, Clegg’s comment on the upcoming legislation was: “The wasteful, bureaucratic and intrusive ID card system represents everything that has been wrong with government in recent years.” This is in keeping with his campaign rhetoric, as in this Associated Press report: “‘This government will end the culture of spying on its citizens,’ Clegg said during a speech in north London. ‘It is outrageous that decent, law-abiding people are regularly treated as if they have something to hide. It has to stop.’” Among the civil-liberties violations Clegg promised to end or restrict were, in addition to the national ID card and database, the use of closed-circuit TV cameras to monitor citizens’ activities and a national DNA database. The AP points out that British police “currently have the power to take DNA or fingerprints from anyone at the point of arrest, and can hold the information of those found innocent for years.” Sound familiar?
The British government, having heard from its fed-up citizens that it was intruding on their privacy, is actually taking steps to rein in the worst of its abuses. Meanwhile, in the alleged land of the free, our government is headed in the opposite direction. The House wants to expand the national DNA database to include innocent people’s biometric data. U.S. cities are installing TV cameras at an ever-increasing pace; the AP noted, for instance, that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited London in an effort to learn how the British government spies on its citizens with cameras so that he could do likewise in the Big Apple. The REAL ID Act, which would create a de facto national ID card, although officially opposed by at least half the states, is still scheduled to go into effect next year despite then-Senator Barack Obama’s “flatly opposing” it in his response to a CNET questionnaire of 2008 presidential candidates. It’s time our government heard from its fed-up citizens and started cutting back on its violations of our privacy, too. Let’s not keep our opinions on the subject private.
Pure Kafka
By Glenn Greenwald| May 29, 2010
The first paragraph of today’s New York Times article by Charlie Savage:
The 48 Guantánamo Bay detainees whom the Obama administration has decided to keep holding without trial include several for whom there is no evidence of involvement in any specific terrorist plot, according to a report disclosed Friday.
The Report itself, in a matter-of-fact-tone, describes the individuals to be kept in a cage indefinitely without charges this way:
They can’t even be prosecuted in the due-process-abridging military commissions we invented out of whole cloth for those who can’t be convicted in a real court. In other words: of course we’ll provide a fair tribunal for proving your guilt — as long as we’re certain we can convict you — otherwise, we’ll just imprison you indefinitely without charges. All this even though 72% of Guantanamo detainees have been found to be wrongfully held since the Supreme Court compelled habeas hearings in 2008. And then there are the numerous Yemeni prisoners who have been cleared for release but who will be kept in a cage anyway because we arbitrarily decreed that we’re not going to release even innocent prisoners back to Yemen.
Here’s one other passage from Savage’s article worth noting:
Of that group, the 48 whom the administration has designated for continued indefinite detention without trial have attracted the greatest controversy, in part because many Democrats sharply criticized that policy when the Bush administration created it after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Yes, I also vaguely recall the days when Democrats criticized the policy of imprisoning people indefinitely without charges. Harper‘s Scott Horton has more on all of this:
The Obama Administration came to Washington promising to clean up the Bush-era detentions policy and make it conform to the clear requirements of law. Then it seems to have decided that the law wasn’t so convenient and that simply providing for unbridled executive authority à la Bush-Cheney wasn’t such a bad idea after all. In terms of Washington power politics, that decision seems to have taken the form of letting Robert Gates make the call on all these issues. The two figures in the Administration who took the most credible stance for implementing the Obama campaign-era promises on detentions policy — Greg Craig and Phil Carter — resigned within a few weeks of one another, offering no believable reasons for departing. Then press reports began to appear about secret prisons, operated by JSOC and DIA and applying rules different from those applied in the “normal” DOD prisons, including plenty of torture-lite techniques under Appendix M of the Army Field Manual (PDF).
This passage in the National Security Strategy makes clear that Barack Obama and his team have abandoned the promises they made to reform detentions policy in the 2008 campaign. Even the commitment to stop torture does not appear to have been fully implemented, given the unaccountable practices of JSOC and the DIA in Afghanistan. Barack Obama’s belief in the rule of law apparently takes the back seat to Barack Obama’s belief in his own ability to make the right call as executive. History will judge whether his confidence in his own abilities is warranted, but the distortion of the constitutional system presents a continuing challenge for those who believe in the older and more fundamental principle of accountability under the law.
Yes — being as sentimental as I am — I, too, harbor nostalgia for that “older principle of accountability under the law”: you know, that idealized time when everyone was entitled to be charged with crimes before being imprisoned forever (rather than only those for whom prosecution was “feasible”) and when Presidents weren’t actually allowed to target American citizens for murder without at least some due process being granted. Anyway, did Sarah Palin post something to her Facebook page today? And isn’t that Glenn Beck crazy?
Compulsory Armageddon
By JOHN V. WALSH | May 24, 2010
The April 20 Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico is a gift from British Petroleum that keeps on giving – 11 human lives lost, 2,940,000 gallons of oil daily a 2,500 square mile oil slick, underwater plumes ten miles across, softball size tar balls washing up on beaches of Louisiana, marshes and wildlife wiped out, the regional economy dealt a body blow and now the oil looping around Florida and up the Atlantic Coast where the Driller in Chief, Barack Obama, outdoing George W. Bush, recently approved new drilling.
Key to the disaster is the malfunction of several devices and procedures designed to prevent a blowout. Some simply malfunctioned, one perhaps because one its batteries was dead; others were not properly implemented or not implemented at all. Such fail-safe devices inevitably fail – even when they are put in place.
Days later on May 1 in Boston, my home town, an enormous metal collar, the latest in technology, connecting parts of a water pipeline blew out and washed away, leaving 2 million with no potable water for days. The collar has yet to be found and the reason for the failure remains a mystery – at least to the public. Of course aqua disasters are nothing new to Boston, with the Big Dig, another engineering marvel, leaking like a sieve, a malfunction less well known than the ceiling collapse which killed one hapless motorist.
In the interval between those two calamities on April 26, fell the anniversary of the nuclear reactor disaster in1986 in Chernobyl, now a ghost town as are neighboring villages in the “zone of alienation.” Here again fail-safe measures failed and the impact in terms of lives lost and to be lost numbers in the thousands and perhaps much higher. Of course such a “zone of alienation” will be radioactive for a long time to come. That, however, has not deterred the Obama administration from moving forward on nuclear power plants, going again where no Bush dared to go before.
In physics, there is a maxim attributed to Murray Gell-Mann, “Whatever is not forbidden is compulsory, “ which demands a stronger statement of Murphy’s Law, “If anything can go wrong, it must.”
These events all came upon us in the weeks leading up to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Conference at the UN on May 3 where the United States wasted the opening trying to demonize Iran, a ploy which was foiled in the eyes of most of the world by the tough and wily Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who called for a nuclear free zone in the Middle East, much to the horror of the United States and Israel.
On May 4, I contemplated all these events while sitting in on a national board meeting of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), US affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), the recipient in 1985 of the Nobel Peace Prize, so recently besmirched by our hawkish Laureate in Chief. As we discussed the details of the world’s nuclear arsenals, I was reminded again of the 3000 nuclear warheads maintained by the U.S. and Russia in silos and on submarines on hair trigger alert, technically known as “Launch on Warning”. Should these weapons of mass destruction ever escape control, the result would make the worst of the dubious projections on Global Warming resemble a beach party. Hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of humans would die, and the entire species would be put at risk.
But of course we have fail-safe devices on these criminal instruments, don’t we? It should be clear that such devices are not subject to failure only on BP drilling platforms or on Boston water mains or Russian nuclear power plants. In fact such mechanisms of control have nearly failed at least five times since the end of the Cold War. For example on January 25, 1995 the U.S. launch of a weather satellite from Norway to study the Northern Lights was misinterpreted by Russian radar as the beginning of a nuclear attack on Russia. (Someone forgot to notify the Russians!) The vodka-soaked Boris Yeltsin was given five minutes to press his wobbly finger to the button. For whatever reason Yeltsin demurred. (Famously, Ronald Reagan was not worried about such matters because he believed that the missiles could be recalled, an ignorance as dangerous as any form of dipsomania.) And then there is the matter of the recent collision of French and British submarines armed with a likely total of more than 100 nuclear warheads on board.
It is certainly a crime of enormous proportions to keep humanity in this state of peril, and IPPNW and PSR call for its termination at once as an urgent first step in de-nuclearization. Nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies the continuation of this hair-trigger nuclear standoff. Whatever can go wrong eventually must go wrong. It is compulsory.
It would be a mistake to believe that the general public is not interested in or frightened by nuclear Armageddon. Whenever the U.S. Empire wants to go after an inconvenient country, the specter of WMD, most notably nuclear weapons, is raised. Thus, for Iraq in 2003 and thus now for Iran. The possibility of taking these weapons off hair trigger alert and removing the great bulk of them is a task to which the public is open. It cannot be relegated to a time long after Obama has departed this earth, as he has suggested. The stakes are too high, and we have been lucky for a little too long.
John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com
Democrats and the McCarthyite attack on detainee lawyers
By Glenn Greenwald | May 27, 2010
Over at Balkinization, Law Professor Steve Vladeck has done a superb job highlighting a truly vile provision in the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2011, which directs the Pentagon’s Inspector General to “conduct an investigation of the conduct and practices of lawyers” who have represented Guantanamo detainees and then report back to Congress. That provision is the brainchild of GOP Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida, who has labeled efforts to represent detainees (specifically as part of the John Adams Project) a “treacherous enterprise” and smeared those lawyers as “disloyal.” Vladeck thoroughly documents how the lawyer conduct that is targeted by the mandated investigation is so broad that it could easily encompass every act of defending Guantanamo detainees, and thus, standing alone, could serve to intimidate and deter lawyers from vigorously representing those detainees in the future.
This is all an outgrowth of the incomparably repellent McCarthyite, “Al Qaeda 7” campaign by Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney to smear detainee lawyers as disloyal Terrorist lovers, and more broadly, of the endless fear-mongering over Terrorism that continues to grip the U.S. Government. The Weekly Standard has long been targeting the John Adams lawyers for doing their job (i.e., seeking the identity of CIA interrogators who tortured their clients), and that magazine now claims that it’s the CIA that is demanding an investigation into these lawyers (Look Forward, Not Backward is, as we’ve seen repeatedly, only available for torturers and criminal eavesdroppers). Reflecting this intensifying mood is the latest hysterical right-wing book, this one by anti-Islam obsessive (and media favorite) Andy McCarthy, who warns — in the title — that “Islam and the Left” are jointly engaged in a “Grand Jihad” to “Sabotage America” (the blurbs and summaries of his book are so inane and extreme that, despite how repulsive is this screed, it’s difficult to suppress one’s laughter when reading them; based on small book excerpts alone, Conor Friedersdorf documents how McCarthy’s book is suffused with lies). This is the McCarthyite fever swamp that is the genesis of this lawyer-targeted provision.
Writing at Matt Yglesias’ Center for American Progress blog, CAP’s Satyam Khanna says this:
The DOD budget bill is a pretty huge document; so I would hope this was furtively slipped in by some GOP staffer, to be removed shortly.
Yes, it sure would be nice to believe that the Democrats who control Congress — and who control the House Armed Services Committee which passed the bill containing this provision — somehow had nothing to do with its inclusion. Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly), that’s simply not the case, as The New York Times‘ Charlie Savage explains:
Democrats on the committee agreed to Mr. Miller’s proposal after several modifications. One change added the requirement of “reasonable suspicion” of wrongdoing before a lawyer would be investigated by the inspector general. Another enabled Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to halt such an inquiry if it would interfere with a related criminal investigation. Detainee lawyers argue that even with such modifications, Mr. Miller’s amendment is broad enough to give pause to all lawyers representing Guantánamo detainees — including the far larger numbers who have sought judicial hearings for prisoners who contend that they are not terrorists and are being held by mistake.
Those “modifications” are cosmetic at best, as Vladeck explains:
[T]he “reasonable suspicion” standard could itself force counsel to think twice before challenging extant DoD policies governing their interactions with their clients, thereby interfering with counsel’s ability zealously to represent their clients. The mere threat of investigation could easily force compliance with troubling policies limiting lawyer-client interaction that counsel might otherwise seek to challenge. Say what you will about the merits of these cases, but I had thought we’d long-since settled the appropriateness of allowing lawyers in these cases vigorously to represent their clients in court, consistent with the highest traditions of the profession.
This is yet another example of repellent, fear-based policies that could not be (or at least were not) enacted during the Bush years yet are finding new life under Democratic Party rule. Recall that Bush Pentagon official Cully Stimson was actually forced to apologize for suggesting that lawyers who represented Guantanamo detainees were engaged in disloyal and improper acts. Yet with the Democrats in control of Washington, a provision grounded in exactly that rotted premise has now been unanimously reported out of a major House Committee. There are still barriers it has to overcome in order to become law — including a House floor vote, a mark-up in the Senate, and then, if it makes it that far, the President’s signature — so it’s still possible it can be stopped. But for that to happen, Democrats are going to have to insist on its removal. It remains to be seen if they are willing to do that.
War on whistle-blowers intensifies
By Glenn Greenwald | May 25, 2010
AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
In this March 19, 2010, file photo, President Barack Obama speaks at the Patriot Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.
The Obama administration’s war on whistleblowers — whose disclosures are one of the very few remaining avenues for learning what our government actually does — continues to intensify. Last month, the DOJ announced it had obtained an indictment against NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who exposed serious waste, abuse and possible illegality. Then, the DOJ re-issued a Bush era subpoena to Jim Risen of The New York Times, demanding the identity of his source who revealed an extremely inept and damaging CIA effort to infiltrate the Iranian nuclear program. And now, as Politico‘s Josh Gerstein reports, an FBI linguist who leaked what he believed to be evidence of lawbreaking is to receive a prison term that is “likely to become the longest ever served by a government employee accused of passing national security secrets to a member of the media.” As Gerstein explains:
[I]t reflects a surprising development: President Barack Obama’s Justice Department has taken a hard line against leakers, and Obama himself has expressed anger about disclosures of national security deliberations in the press. . . .
“They’re going after this at every opportunity and with unmatched vigor,” said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, a critic of government classification policy. . . .
Some experts said the administration and the Justice Department may be trying to appease the intelligence community after angering many by releasing the so-called torture memos and by reopening inquiries into alleged torture by CIA personnel. Others said intelligence personnel are terrified by outlets like Wikileaks, on which classified information can be posted without any meaningful chance for officials to argue for the withholding of details that could damage U.S. intelligence efforts.
Notably (and unsurprisingly), the article quotes the neocon Gabriel Schoenfeld — who spent years demanding that the Bush DOJ criminally prosecute whistleblowers and even journalists responsible for stories such as the NYT‘s NSA eavesdropping revelation, and who then wrote a whole book arguing for greater government secrecy — heaping praise on the Obama DOJ:
“I think it’s remarkable,” said Gabriel Schoenfeld, a fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute who urged prosecution of The New York Times for publishing details of the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program in 2005. “This is the administration that came in pledging maximum transparency. Plugging leaks is … traditionally not associated with openness”. . . .
“If Thomas Drake is convicted and sentenced to jail, this will be the first president to send two leakers to prison in his term in office. That’s never happened before,’ said Schoenfeld, author of the book “Necessary Secrets.” “You wouldn’t have expected the Holder Justice Department to be particularly hawkish in these matters.”
Schoenfeld was frequently critical of what he considered to be the Bush DOJ’s lackadaisical attitude toward punishing whistleblowers, but he is obviously pleased with the Obama administration’s aggression in that regard.
It isn’t hard to see why Obama despises leaks. Just look at the front page of The New York Times today, which details a secret order from Gen. David Petraeus last fall ordering vastly increased Special Forces operations in a variety of Middle Eastern countries, including “allies” such as Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and “enemies” such as Iran and Syria. As Iran experts Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett contend, this constitutes, at the very least, “the intensification of America’s covert war against Iran.” That is how we also learned of what is, in essence, a covert war in Yemen as well (not to mention the covert war in Pakistan). Most of what our Government does of any real significance happens in the dark. Whistleblowers are one of the very few avenues we have left for learning about any of that. And politicians eager to preserve their own power and ability to operate in secret — such as Barack Obama — see whistleblowers as their Top Enemy.
Hence, we have a series of aggressive prosecutions from the Obama administration of Bush era exposures of abuse and illegality — acts that flagrantly violate Obama’s Look Forward, Not Backward decree used to protect high-level Bush administration criminals. As John Cole has suggested, perhaps if these whistleblowers had tortured some people and illegally eavesdropped on others, they would receive the immunity that Obama has so magnanimously and selectively granted. Instead, they merely exposed secret government corruption and illegality to the world, and thus must be punished.
While it’s true that leaks can be both damaging and illegal, these prosecutions are occurring without any showing whatsoever of harm to national security, and with ample evidence that they were undertaken to expose high-level wrongdoing. Some secrets are legitimate, but the balance has swung so far in the direction of excess secrecy that it’s extraordinary to watch the Obama administration move the anti-whistleblower persecution far beyond what the Bush administration did. And as Hilary Bok argued back in 2008 when the Right was demanding that NSA whistleblower Thomas Tamm be prosecuted: while it is generally preferable for whistleblowers to invoke the internal systems that exist rather than leak to the media, such an expectation is misguided under the circumstances that have prevailed for the last decade:
But there’s one big exception to this rule: when the system has itself been corrupted. When you’re operating within a system in which whistle-blowers’ concerns are not addressed — where the likelihood that any complaint you make within the system will be addressed is near zero, while the likelihood that you will be targeted for reprisals is high — then no sane person who is motivated by a desire to have his or her concern addressed will work within that system.
What makes this trend of escalated anti-whistleblower activity particularly notable is that Obama, during his career in the Senate and when running for President, feigned serious support for whistleblowers. Today, Bush DOJ whistleblower Jesselyn Raddack — while pointing out that “Bush harassed whistleblowers mercilessly, but Obama is prosecuting them and sending them to jail” — notes that Obama previously made commitments like this one (click on image to enlarge):
All of that led to the widespread perception that the vital act of whistleblowing would, under an Obama administration, be protected rather than persecuted. This Washington Post article from December, 2008, was typical and reflects what Obama led people to believe:
As the Post article summarized: “there is plenty of evidence to make whistleblower advocates think the future for their issue will be better than its past.” I think they have now been decisively disabused of such expectations. The Most Transparent Administration Ever seems to despise nobody quite as much as those who exposed Bush era corruption and lawbreaking, all with an eye towards deterring anyone who might do the same during this administration.
US to expand secret operations
Press TV – May 25, 2010
The United States is planning to expand its secret military operations across the Middle East, central Asia and east Africa, a newly-released report says.
The secret activities are apparently designed to “penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy” terror cells such as al-Qaeda, the New York Times said on Monday, citing a military document.
The directive was approved in September by US General David Petraeus. The targeted countries are said to be Iran, Saudi Arabia and Somalia.
The order also focuses on intelligence gathering “by American troops, foreign businesspeople, academics or others” to forge “persistent situational awareness” in the target countries, the Times said.
Alongside those goals, the order also permits secret efforts that would prepare for potential future attacks by US forces in those nations.
Even though the document doesn’t single out a specific country for a strike, it does allow for reconnaissance ahead of possible military action, such as in Iran over its nuclear program.
The order, known as the Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force Execute, is not under full supervision by the administration nor does it report to Congress. This means that it “cannot or will not be accomplished” by the regular military apparatus, the Times said.
General Petraeus’s order is however expected to have a “close relationship” with the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, a CIA source told the newspaper.
The new directive not only echoes moves by former president George W. Bush’s administration to expand military operations outside of warzones, but it also intends to make such efforts more systematic and long-term.
Obama wins the right to detain people with no habeas review
By Glenn Greenwald | May 21, 2010
Few issues highlight Barack Obama’s extreme hypocrisy the way that Bagram does. As everyone knows, one of George Bush’s most extreme policies was abducting people from all over the world — far away from any battlefield — and then detaining them at Guantanamo with no legal rights of any kind, not even the most minimal right to a habeas review in a federal court. Back in the day, this was called “Bush’s legal black hole.” In 2006, Congress codified that policy by enacting the Military Commissions Act, but in 2008, the Supreme Court, in Boumediene v. Bush, ruled that provision unconstitutional, holding that the Constitution grants habeas corpus rights even to foreign nationals held at Guantanamo. Since then, detainees have won 35 out of 48 habeas hearings brought pursuant to Boumediene, on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to justify their detention.
Immediately following Boumediene, the Bush administration argued that the decision was inapplicable to detainees at Bagram — including even those detained outside of Afghanistan but then flown to Afghanistan to be imprisoned. Amazingly, the Bush DOJ — in a lawsuit brought by Bagram detainees seeking habeas review of their detention — contended that if they abduct someone and ship them to Guantanamo, then that person (under Boumediene) has the right to a habeas hearing, but if they instead ship them to Bagram, then the detainee has no rights of any kind. In other words, the detainee’s Constitutional rights depends on where the Government decides to drop them off to be encaged. One of the first acts undertaken by the Obama DOJ that actually shocked civil libertarians was when, last February, as The New York Times put it, Obama lawyers “told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team.”
But last April, John Bates, the Bush-43-appointed, right-wing judge overseeing the case, rejected the Bush/Obama position and held that Boumediene applies to detainees picked up outside of Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram. I reviewed that ruling here, in which Judge Bates explained that the Bagram detainees are “virtually identical to the detainees in Boumediene,” and that the Constitutional issue was exactly the same: namely, “the concern that the President could move detainees physically beyond the reach of the Constitution and detain them indefinitely.”
But the Obama administration was undeterred by this loss. They quickly appealed Judge Bates’ ruling. As the NYT put it about that appeal: “The decision signaled that the administration was not backing down in its effort to maintain the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight.” Today, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals adopted the Bush/Obama position, holding that even detainees abducted outside of Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram have no right to contest the legitimacy of their detention in a U.S. federal court, because Boumediene does not apply to prisons located within war zones (such as Afghanistan).
So congratulations to the United States and Barack Obama for winning the power to abduct people anywhere in the world and then imprison them for as long as they want with no judicial review of any kind. When the Boumediene decision was issued in the middle of the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.” But Obama hailed it as “a rejection of the Bush Administration’s attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo,” and he praised the Court for “rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus.” Even worse, when Obama went to the Senate floor in September, 2006, to speak against the habeas-denying provisions of the Military Commissions Act, this is what he melodramatically intoned:
As a parent, I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to Guantanamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were being held and being able to prove their innocence. . . .
By giving suspects a chance — even one chance — to challenge the terms of their detention in court, to have a judge confirm that the Government has detained the right person for the right suspicions, we could solve this problem without harming our efforts in the war on terror one bit. . . .
Most of us have been willing to make some sacrifices because we know that, in the end, it helps to make us safer. But restricting somebody’s right to challenge their imprisonment indefinitely is not going to make us safer. In fact, recent evidence shows it is probably making us less safe.
Can you smell the hypocrisy? How could anyone miss its pungent, suffocating odor? Apparently, what Obama called “a legal black hole at Guantanamo” is a heinous injustice, but “a legal black hole at Bagram” is the Embodiment of Hope. And evidently, Obama would only feel “terror” if his child were abducted and taken to Guantanamo and imprisoned “without even getting one chance to ask why and prove their innocence.” But if the very same child were instead taken to Bagram and treated exactly the same way, that would be called Justice — or, to use his jargon, Pragmatism. And what kind of person hails a Supreme Court decision as “protecting our core values” — as Obama said of Boumediene — only to then turn around and make a complete mockery of that ruling by insisting that the Cherished, Sacred Rights it recognized are purely a function of where the President orders a detainee-carrying military plane to land?
Independently, what happened to Obama’s eloquent insistence that “restricting somebody’s right to challenge their imprisonment indefinitely is not going to make us safer; in fact, recent evidence shows it is probably making us less safe“? How does our policy of invading Afghanistan and then putting people at Bagram with no charges of any kind dispose people in that country, and the broader Muslim world, to the United States? If a country invaded the U.S. and set up prisons where Americans from around the world where detained indefinitely and denied all rights to have their detention reviewed, how would it dispose you to the country which was doing that?
One other point: this decision is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court, which serves to further highlight how important the Kagan-for-Stevens replacement could be. If the Court were to accept the appeal, Kagan would be required to recuse herself (since it was her Solicitor General’s office that argued the administration’s position here), which means that a 4-4 ruling would be likely, thus leaving this appellate decision undisturbed. More broadly, though, if Kagan were as sympathetic to Obama’s executive power claims as her colleagues in the Obama administration are, then her confirmation could easily convert decisions on these types of questions from a 5-4 victory (which is what Boumediene was, with Stevens in the majority) into a 5-4 defeat. Maybe we should try to find out what her views are before putting her on that Court for the next 40 years?
This is what Barack Obama has done to the habeas clause of the Constitution: if you are in Thailand (as one of the petitioners in this case was) and the U.S. abducts you and flies you to Guantanamo, then you have the right to have a federal court determine if there is sufficient evidence to hold you. If, however, President Obama orders that you be taken to from Thailand to Bagram rather than to Guantanamo, then you will have no rights of any kind, and he can order you detained there indefinitely without any right to a habeas review. That type of change is so very inspiring — almost an exact replica of his vow to close Guantanamo . . . all in order to move its core attributes (including indefinite detention) a few thousand miles North to Thompson, Illinois.
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Book Review
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
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- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
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- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
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- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
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