Yet Another Indication That The United Nations Should Be Disbanded

In addition to spending most of their time wasting incredible sums of money propping up anti-Western regimes and providing a home for incompetent Third World bureaucrats, the UN lends its veneer of officialdom to blatant efforts to run the world the way fascist, anarchist, leftist, Marxist, feminist, enviro-Nazi activists (but I repeat myself) want it run.  Case in point: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.

IPCC reports on climate change have been constantly cited as the basis for those of us in the civilized world to give up modern energy sources and go back to living in huts because our actions are causing global warming... er, climate change.  Peter Foster of the Financial Post writes about Donna Laframboise’s book, The Delinquent Teenager Who was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert.

In her expose of the IPCC, Ms. Laframboise discovers that the IPCC reports are not even worth the paper they're printed on, much less for setting government and societal policies. As Mr. Foster writes:

In a meticulously referenced and deservedly praised page-turner, Ms. Laframboise, an accomplished journalist who turned to the skeptical blogosphere, demonstrates how the IPCC is a thoroughly political organization. Far from objectively weighing the best available science, it cherry-picks egregiously to support its main objective: to serve its government masters. Its lead authors are not the world’s leading scientists but frequently wet-behind-the-ears graduates, and/or ardent activists. They are also selected on the basis of gender and country “diversity” rather than expertise. The organization, Ms. Laframboise demonstrates, has also been thoroughly infiltrated by environmental NGOs, in particular the World Wildlife Fund.

The book elucidates how the panel’s much-vaunted “peer review” amounts to a “circular, incestuous process. Scientists make decisions as journal editors about what qualifies as peer-reviewed literature. They then cite the same papers they themselves played midwife to while serving as IPCC authors.” IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri’s claim that all the “Climate Bible’s” science is peer reviewed is, in any case, bunk. With a body of volunteers, Ms. Laframboise went through the 2007 report and found that more than 5,000 references — over a third — were from less-than-reliable sources. The most egregious such “grey” reference led to the claim that the Himalayan glaciers were to disappear by 2035. This terrifying assertion was traced back to the top of a non-expert’s head.

But, but... they're scientists, man!  How can such fraudulent activities occur?  Sadly, very easily, because our mainstream media is not about to call them out on it as it would (a) require work and research on their part, and (b) goes against the meme that global warming skeptics are evil conservatives against the planet because they hate polar bears and won't give up their guns, gas guzzling SUVs, and money.  Speaking of skeptics:

She introduces us to numerous well-credentialed skeptics, including Jason Johnston, an expert in environmental law, who set out to verify whether the ­IPCC reports in fact “conformed with the peer-reviewed climate science literature.” His conclusion: “on virtually every major issue in climate change science,” IPCC reports “systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties.”

The Delinquent Teenager reveals how inconvenient science has been buried and sums up: “The IPCC ignores the consensus among hurricane experts that there is no discernable link to global warning. It ignores the consensus among those who study natural disasters that there is no relationship between human greenhouse gas emissions and the rising cost of these disasters. It ignores the consensus among bona fide malaria experts that global warming has not caused malaria to spread. In each case the IPCC substitutes its own version of reality. In each case that version of reality makes global warming appear more frightening than genuine experts believe the available evidence indicates.”

 So, if you're busy hiding or ignoring science that disproves your positions, then there has to be other motivations.  You know, motivations like forcing the wealthy countries of the West to fork over all of their money and power to right thinking bureaucrats and activists to run the planet through treaties and other political bindings... because that's always worked so well in the past, right?

Hat tip: Doug Ross@Journal

Great Post at Powerline

A unified theory of left-wing causes

Steven Den Beste comments on Steve Hayward’s population bomb post:

Isn’t it interesting that no matter what the current global crisis is, according to leftists, the solution is always the same: a benevolent world dictatorship of the enlightened elite, and mass transfer of wealth from rich nations to poor nations.
That’s what they want to do about global warming. It’s what they wanted to do about overpopulation. It’s what they wanted to do about endangered species.

Yeah, I think Jonah Goldberg wrote a good book with this thesis.

JOHN adds: Bear in mind, too, that the remedy for global cooling, when that was feared during the 1970s, was the same as for global warming, overpopulation, etc.

Big ol' hat tip to Powerline

Why Do They Keep Lying? Because They're Scientists, Dammit!

Last week scientists from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project (BEST) at Berkeley, California (where else, of course), published their study claiming that once again the science was all settled--global warming is real, the planet has warmed one degree centigrade since 1950, and that warming is continuing. 

Professor Richard Muller, of Berkeley University in California, and his colleagues from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project team (BEST) claimed to have shown that the planet has warmed by almost a degree  centigrade since 1950 and is warming continually. Published last week ahead of a major United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa, next month, their work was cited around the world as irrefutable evidence that only the most stringent measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions can save civilisation as we know it.

In other words, all of you unbelieving climate skeptics need to shut the hell up and get out of the way of right minded people trying to save the planet.

Of course, what they didn't mention is that one of the study's co-authors threw the bullshit flag and said that's not what the study showed.

Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no  scientific basis.  Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.

It seems that Prof Muller published the studies before they were peer reviewed, and the graph he submitted with his press release was inaccurate, hiding the fact that global temperatures have not increased for 13 years despite rising CO2 levels.

Prof Muller defended his  behaviour yesterday, saying that all he was doing was ‘returning to traditional peer review’, issuing draft papers to give the whole ‘climate community’ a chance to comment.  As for the press release, he claimed he was ‘not seeking  publicity’, adding: ‘This is simply a way of getting the media to report this more accurately.’  He said his decision to publish was completely unrelated to the forthcoming United Nations  climate conference.  This, he said, was ‘irrelevant’, insisting that nothing could have been further from his mind than trying to influence it.

 Oh really? Nothing could have been further from your mind while you sabotaged the peer review process and published a misleading graph conveniently leaving out the halt in global warming?  Why should anyone complain--you were only emulating the lying con men at East Anglia University who conveniently lost all of the data behind their claims to keep others from duplicating their analysis because it was all for the morally superior crusade against man-caused global warming.  (And no one has yet to explain why global warming is a bad thing--think of all the new agricultural growing areas we'd gain in Siberia and Canada... maybe we could even grow grapes again in Greenland like they did several hundred years ago.)

Thank God there are still scientists out there with the integrity of Prof Curry.  The rest should be treated like the con men they are.

Hat tip: Small Dead Animals

Just As Successful As The Soviet Union...

As this chart from the Fed shows, all of the central planning efforts of the Obama Administration have made things much worse, not better.  You would think that three years of data such as the above would be enough to convince them that their methods/courses of action are wrong and that it's time to change.  To date, that has not happened--and thus one is compelled to wonder why.  For a potential explanation, click the link below.

Hat tip: Doug Ross@Journal

The Ultimate Game

 

Hat tip: xkcd

It's Confirmed -- The Universe Is Unfair!

Gleefully swiped from Ethan Siegel on Facebook.

Hat tip: The ever beautiful Bill the Viking, soldier of fortune at Ordo Aurum Malum

Remember, It's For The Children.... Naw, Just Kidding...It's For The Unions

Mark Steyn had yet another brilliant piece on NRO about the amount of money the U.S. spends on education as compared to other countries:

Since 1970, public-school employment has increased ten times faster than public-school enrollment. In 2008, the United States spent more per student on K–12 education than any other developed nation except Switzerland — and at least the Swiss have something to show for it. In 2008, York City School District spent $12,691 per pupil — or about a third more than the Swiss. Slovakia’s total per-student cost is less than York City’s current per-student deficit — and the Slovak kids beat the United States at mathematics, which may explain why their budget arithmetic still has a passing acquaintanceship with reality. As in so many other areas of American life, the problem is not the lack of money but the fact that so much of the money is utterly wasted.

But that’s no reason not to waste even more! So the president spent last week touring around in his weaponized Canadian bus telling Americans that Republicans were blocking plans to “put teachers back in the classroom.” Well, where are they now? Not every schoolmarm is down at the Occupy Wall Street drum circle, is she? No, indeed. And in that respect York City is a most instructive example: Five years ago (the most recent breakdown I have), the district had 440 teachers but 295 administrative and support staff. If you’re thinking that sounds a little out of whack, that just shows what a dummy you are: For every three teachers we “put back in the classroom,” we need to hire two bureaucrats to put back in the bureaucracy to fill in the paperwork to access the federal funds to put teachers back in the classroom. One day it will be three educrats for every two teachers, and the system will operate even more effectively.

That's the reason our taxes are going sky high to keep the education mafia going.  We don't dare say a word about it because the Marxist/Leninist Left, Democrat Party, teacher's unions, and mainstream media (but I repeat myself) will scream that we hate children--and that the only solution to our poor performance in education is to throw even more money at it (which, by the way, goes to the teacher unions who then spend it on buying politicians to keep feeding the education maw).

Sadly, all we are doing is paying for more administrators, union goons, and subsidizing curricula that have turned our children into uneducated idiots who feel really good about themselves.  Instead of being taught how to think and reason, our children are instead being fed pablum and Al Gore movies.  And now we see the full flowering of that indoctrination in the Occupy Wall Street/Wherever demonstrators demanding that we overturn the laws of economics and transform the U.S. into socialism/communism/anarchism because, even though it's failed in every other society in which it's been tried, they are so much smarter and can make it work here.

Well, welcome to the real world where the free market declared that your graduate degree in drumming just isn't worth the $100K you racked up in debt. And the fault for that can be laid directly at the feet of the 'professional' educators who refused to teach you how to reason because that's harder than having you cut out pictures of baby seals and learn all about evil corporations (and, if they taught you how to think and reason, you'd ask way to many embarrassing questions about the crap they've been feeding you all those years).

Arrogant, spoiled assclowns. And you want to spend even more of my tax money to cover your lack of judgement...

Hat tip: National Review Online

The Real 99%

 

 Hat tip: The Troglopundit

The Only Thing They Have To Fear Is... Freedom

Once again, adherents of Islam demonstrate that they have no faith in their faith.  'Extremists' in Somalia beheaded a 17 year old Christian boy.  If you get your news from the mainstream media, you wouldn't know of the continuing slaughter of non-Muslims by Muslims around the world--with the possible exception of the destruction of Christian Copts by our new buddies running Egypt (but that's mostly a by-product of them being there already covering the glorious 'Arab Spring'.)

How sad that Islamists are so uncertain of the durability of their faith that they resort to killing anyone who is not a Muslim--and especially killing anyone who leaves Islam for another religion.  No, rather than compete on the basis of ideas and concepts, they prefer to subjugate the world with the sword.

How insecure one must feel to have to kill anyone who doesn't follow their religion?  How insecure must they feel to keep females in slavery, treating them as property rather than human beings, murdering them at will for the concept of honor?  No wonder they struggle so hard to bring sharia to the West, for they need the shackles of the 14th Century to prevent Western culture and civilization from bringing Islam into the 21st century of tolerance and moderation.  For example, the Maldives passed the Protection of Religious Unity Act in 1994.

The Act outlaws promotion of anything that represents a religion other than Islam or any opinion that disagrees with Islamic scholars. It also prohibits use of any website, blog, newspaper, or magazine that contradicts Islam. Any violation under the Act is punishable by an imprisonment of between two and five years, banishment or house arrest. Foreigners who are found proselytizing are to be deported, it says.

But that's not enough for the current government, which published new regulations to ensure that Maldivans wouldn't be exposed to any new ideas.

The new set of regulations maintains a longtime ban on propagation, display and expression of any religion other than Islam. It also prohibits translation of books with such content into the local language, Dhivehi.

Islamists are scared 13-year-olds with weapons, demanding that we submit to their 'Lord of the Flies' reality.  They fear any competition based on ideals and ideas, because they subconsciously fear that they will lose.  Thus they murder their daughters and wives for the crime of wanting to be free.  Thus they slaughter followers of the 'Prince of Peace' because they obviously must believe that their 'Prophet of the Sword' cannot compete in the open market--and thus hide their fears behind cries of 'blasphemy.'  And their fear continues to burn the bridges between cultures and civilizations for all Muslims.

Islamic intolerance is building across the planet.  Pockets of sanity remain, but they are growing fewer and fewer.  If an Islamic Reformation, led from within by Muslims who want a better way for their faith and their families, does not happen, then I fear it will all come to a very bad end--for all of us.

Hat tip: Atlas Shrugs

And the Pattern Contined to Repeat Itself After the Election

Doug Ross has a great post about how the Obama campaign purposely enabled illegal contributions.  Of course, the mainstream media refused to cover this blatant disregard for U.S. law because it was their candidate doing it.  It also was the harbinger of future actions in which the law was ignored by the winners when it suited them (e.g., voter intimidation, Fast and Furious, vote fraud).

Read the whole piece and remember this is what it will look like in the political trenches of the 2012 election.  Get a helmet.

Occupy Wall Street - More Than Just Hippy Whining

Andrew Breitbart has been on the cutting edge of demonstrating why the mainstream media is no longer a purveyor of news but a provider of cover for the Left and the Democrat Party.  Don't believe me (or Andrew)? Then ask yourself why the MSM has refused to cover the Solyndra scandal in which half a billion taxpayer dollars were funneled to a failing 'green' company, or the 'Fast and Furious' scandal in which taxpayer money was used in at least one case to fund the purchase of arms and transfer to Mexican drug cartels--resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans and two U.S. federal agents (and yet the MSM has no interest in following up on Attorney General Holder's changing responses over time to the questions of what did he know and when did he know it).

It's no  different with the 'Occupy Wall Street' demonstrators.  Breitbart has come into the possession of thousands of emails and documents showing that the 'spontaneous' answer to the Tea Party from the Left was planned for some time.

Per the 8800+ pages of emails (3900+ emails), the Occupy movement has been in the works for some time. Its leaders apparently intend for it to broaden out and intertwine with the Days of Rage global initiative, which is set to begin on Saturday, October 15th. They also intend the demonstrations to continue indefinitely, as suggested in the following email, dated Monday, October 10:

Further, the purpose seems to be more than just bitching about student loans and how big business screws the people:

The true purpose of the Occupy movement appears to be further economic and governmental destabilization, at a time when the world is already facing major financial and political challenges. By embracing the Occupy movement, President Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and their union allies may be supporting an effort to harm both the domestic and global economies; to create social unrest throughout the democratic world; and to embrace other radical causes, including the anti-Israel movement. Ironically, the emails suggest that the President and the Democrat Party may soon find their friends in the Occupy movement to be a political burden. The email below calls for the Occupy movement to begin “executing higher-risk actions, civil disobedience and arrests,” and suggests: “We must draw a line, disavow the Democrats explicitly, make our messaging a little uncomfortable.”

 Note how the organizers are already planning on distancing themselves from the Democrat Party so as not to damage them.

So here's your chance to do a little 'crowd sourcing.'  Follow this link to the email archive and see for yourself.  If the media and the Left (but I repeat myself) had no problem with crowd sourcing all of Sarah Palin's emails, then they shouldn't have a problem with you looking over theirs.

Hat Tip: Big Government

Liberate Wall Street - If Protest Signs Reflected Reality

 

Hat Tip:  The ever righteous The People's Cube

"Flea Party vs. Tea Party"

The Bear is off on vacation, so blogging has been the last thing on his mind; however, others are blogging away saying marvelous things.  Take, for example, Larry Correia, author of Monster Hunter International and other great books.

Larry has a great piece in his personal blog about the Occupy Whatever bunch and the Tea Party.

So Tea Party, doesn’t advocate violence, doesn’t make a mess, is polite, has a simple platform, and then goes back to work the next day = RACIST EXTREMIST VIOLENT NAZI WHACKJOBS!!!

Occupy Wall Street has thousands arrested, makes a mess, wants to guillotine rich folks, has a platform that reads like a less literate version of the Communist Manifesto, and camps out for weeks because they’ve not got anything better to do = REFRESHING VOICE FOR CHANGE.

Sure, nasty disease ridden hippie orgies are fun and all, but let’s take a look at what they’re protesting… For the first few weeks I thought it was that they were against “Greed”.  Wow.  That’s a bold statement. Take that Pro-Greed forces. Okay, specifically, they were against the bailouts. Cool. So was I. Funny, so was the Tea Party. You know what’s ironic though? You know who WASN’T against the bailouts? The guy I’m willing to bet most of the Occupiers voted for last time and will probably vote for again.

So the Tea Party and the Occupiers agree that government bailing out big corporations is bad. The difference between these two protestor groups (besides personal hygiene, coherence, the amount of taxes they’ve paid, and the ability to pass a drug screening) is their answer. The Tea Party wants to make the government smaller so they can’t do stuff like this. The Occupiers want to reward the guilty party and make it bigger and more powerful, because… Hell… I can’t figure it out.

The Tea Party answer goes back to Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin. The Occupier’s answer reads like a bunch of Communist dogma, after its been eaten, digested, and then shat out by a unicorn tripping on hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Go read his whole entry.  You'll learn a lot (and that Larry is funny as hell as a political commentator as well as a fiction writer). Oh, and go buy and read all of his books--you'll thank me later.

Hat Tip: Monster Hunter Nation

Cookies!!!!!!!

Hat tip: Doug Ross@Journal

Yes, We Are That F*cking Stupid

You just can't make this up:

Since the inception of the war in Afghanistan, the United States has lost more than 1,500 lives and spent over $400 billion — much of which devoted to reconstruction, aid, and other forms of direct support.

So when the U.S. government announced last year that Afghanistan may have over $1 trillion in mineral wealth, one might have assumed that it would work with U.S. companies, and companies from other coalition countries, to help them participate in the development of these resources.

Not so. In the most recent installment of “we pay, China plays,” the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) will soon be awarded a 20-year lease on several oil fields in Northern Afghanistan. This follows the other major resource tender in Afghanistan, in 2007, in which the government of Afghanistan awarded a 30-year lease on the country’s largest copper mine to the China Metallurgical Group.

Amazingly, the process that will result in the award to CNPC has been designed and managed by a U.S. Defense Department task force, which is also footing the bill for the international lawyers and consultants who are advising the Afghan government on the tender. The task force set up the process to award the resource to the bidder offering the highest percentage of its revenues from operations to the Afghan government as a royalty — which skews the tender in favor of state-owned Chinese companies more concerned with capturing valuable resources than achieving an attractive return on their investment. The process failed to take into meaningful consideration the bidders’ respective track records on technology, the environment, and local employment, among others, all of which would have played to the strengths of Western companies.

So we spend American lives and treasure so others can profit from our sacrifice because to do otherwise wouldn't be 'fair.'

It makes you want to track down some of the moronic bureaucrats who devised this system and rip their lungs out with a rusty fork. Sigh.  Read the whole disgusting thing at the Corner on NRO.

Christ on a crutch.

Yoda Pie Chart

 

Hat tip: garr.posterous

"Why China Won't Conquer The World"

Ran across an interesting article about a former resident of China's view regarding whether or not China would become a world power.  

If China is to dominate the creative industries as it has manufacturing, it needs to borrow a line from Apple’s marketing department: “Think different”. Liu Jun, a businessman recently crowned one of the “50 most creative individuals in China”, says it’s an uphill struggle.
“The reason the Chinese don’t have global companies is that we don’t have a global vision,” he said recently. “Chinese designers only think about what pleasures them, not the customer. It’s a huge problem.” Chinese corporate structures remain very rigid, and, according to Daniel Altman, a consultant at Dalberg Global Development Advisors, original ideas “have to percolate through so many layers of hierarchy that most won’t survive to the top. China has a long way to go before it will be anything like the US in its ability to foster entrepreneurship.”

The challenges aren't limited to the lack of vision.

And what of the generation the one-child policy has spawned? Children from the biggest 40 cities are living in the three-screen world (television, computer and mobile), wearing global designer brands, travelling first class, and buying houses and cars for their one or two years’ study overseas. For these young “super-rich”, price has become no object, some even flying to and from Hong Kong for a day’s shopping.

 It’s hard to conceive of them becoming China’s next generation of entrepreneurs, when, unlike their parents and grandparents, many have never touched a cooker and barely know how to make their own beds. They may have had superior schooling but many critics believe China’s education system – with its obsession with test-taking and rote memorisation – stifles rather than encourages creativity. Indeed, today’s entry exam for China’s universities, the “gaokao”, has its origins in a recruitment test devised by the imperial government in the sixth century, and, according to Jiang Xueqin, a Yale-educated school administrator in Beijing, rewards “very strong memory; very strong logical and analytical ability; little imagination; little desire to question authority”. China could be seen as a brilliant imitator but a poor innovator – its talents for replicating anything the Western world has to offer evidenced by the recent uncovering of 22 fake Apple stores across Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in south-west China. So convincing were the stores that even staff members believed they were working for Apple. Genius, in a way. But misdirected genius.

We are at the point of seeing China the way we saw Japan back in the 1980s--a industrial and financial juggernaut that was in the process of becoming the dominant power.  And, as then, the truth is somewhat different than the "current wisdom."  People are too quick to downplay the ability of the United States to adapt, overcome, and persevere.  And beginning in November 2012, we will relight the fires of competitiveness again.