Thursday, March 29, 2007

Deja Vu?

It is the position of ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ that the West finds itself in a situation similar to that which obtained on the Italian peninsula in the mid 4th century AD to wit: The capital is occupied (nay obsessed) with the palace political intrigues by those whose sole objective is the exercise of power. The population continues to wallow in its decadent and comfortable lifestyle and the defense of the realm is delegated to "allies" including some of the barbarian tribes which have been infiltrating the frontiers of the provinces. In the present instance the greatest danger is the rot caused by the ascendance of the Marxist anti liberal dogmas infecting the powerful media and academic sectors of our culture and forming an alliance with a fanatical group of jihadists .
Following Tet [offensive] of 1968, the North Vietnamese, militarily defeated by their own admission, were ready to sue for peace. So, why didn’t they? [Answer: Jane Fonda, John Kerrey et al]

They saw the protesters in our streets preaching about American imperialism and war atrocities. Never brought up were the plentiful atrocities committed by the other side, not that it would ever justify any of our own, that would put a face on the enemy. Instead, the enemy was painted as a peasant victim of an American war of aggression. The news media in those days was as biased as it is today.

The difference is that today we have many people to point out the bias. Trusted newsmen of the major networks (there was no cable or satellite television, no Internet blogs and AM radio played the Rolling Stones) never let facts like the military defeat of the North in Tet of 1968 get in the way of reporting their personal beliefs. Probably the most trusted name in news at the time, Walter Cronkite, told America that following Tet, America was defeated in Vietnam. America trusted what Uncle Wally told them. Did you ever wonder how many names were added to the Vietnam Memorial Wall after the North Vietnamese military defeat in 1968? I wonder if Walter knows.
With our troops all but gone and promised logistical and combat air support not forthcoming, the South Vietnamese Army’s combat capability deteriorated to the point that it couldn’t defend itself against a Soviet and Chinese backed North Vietnam. Uncle Ho and Uncle Wally became forever allies in the war against American aggression.
Welcome to 1968, 39 years later. I wonder if the Islamists care that it’s the year of the pig. In Iraq, we are training an Army to defend its country. At some point, we’ll equip that Army and then we’ll begin to leave along with our promises to continue support. We’re seeing an Islamist Tet now. They’re trying to kill as many innocent people as possible. Not to discourage the Iraqis, but to discourage the Americans at home whom they expect will be true to their current history of abandoning fights, and forsaking allies.
ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ believes that the situation will not improve with regard to the likely survival of western civilization until it deteriorates further.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Monday, March 26, 2007

A Dangerous Place

According to reliable Hill sources, a staffer for freshman Sen. Jim Webb (D.-Va.) was arrested earlier today when he tried to pass through security carrying a bag containing a pistol and a quantity of ammunition. Capitol Police apparently broadcast the arrest on their personal radios and then went quiet. Carrying a handgun and trying to penetrate Senate security with it is a rather serious felony.
This one is a real head-scratcher. The U.S. Congress is famous for exempting itself from its own laws but this incident is puzzling on at least two levels. One, the last time ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ read the second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution it stated in part: "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." True enough, the amendment is routinely violated, ignored and subverted but the "suspect" in this incident is an aide to a U.S. Senator. Secondly, this staffer works for a member of the current Senate majority and members of that political party (Democrat) are historically given considerable latitude by the Police e.g. Cynthia McKinney, Joe and Ted Kennedy et al.
One can only speculate on the scenario had the staffer been in the employ of Trent Lott (R MS).

Phillip Thompson was carrying the bag through exray security at the Russell Senate Office building while the senator was parking his car, according to a Senate staffer cited by the Drudge Report.

"Thompson was booked for carrying a pistol without a license and for possessing unregistered ammunition, the staffer said."
And what pray tell constitutes "unregistered" ammunition?

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Update: 08:05 AM 27 Mar. 2007

Earlier reports indicating that members of Congress are NOT exempt from the rules governing possession of firearms on federal property were inaccurate. Congress has in fact as usual exempted itself from the prohibition.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Going Going....

If Mr. Podhoretz of the New York Post is correct, the yearlong ordeal/farce of the 3 Duke University LaCrosse team members accused of multiple trumped up sexual assault charges will soon be ending.
March 23, 2007 -- IT seems that the trumped-up charges against three young men who played for the la crosse team at Duke University will be dismissed either today or sometime next week.

That will mostly end their ordeal, though they'll still have to deal with millions of dollars in legal fees (which, in the end, the city of Durham, N.C., will probably have to pick up).

The same can't be said of their false accuser - who is in a world of trouble, since you're not supposed to make false accusations to the authorities.

It will be interesting to follow the drama as it plays out and determine if justice will in fact prevail. It may well be that Mr. Nifong (pictured here), the prosecutor in the case will be disbarred by the North Carolina Bar association and forced to face charges of perjury. In addition, the President of Duke University will come under pressure to resign but as Mr. Podhoretz points out, the lynch mob consisting of a full 10% of the University faculty will skate free from any inconvenience.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Friday, March 23, 2007

Attention ELF!!


A little objective research reveals the farce that most of the enviro nazi theatre consists of. For example the much maligned Hummer sport utility vehicle that is the focus of much of green propaganda is more environmentally benign than the hybrid Toyota Prius

Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?

Wait, I haven’t even got to the best part yet.

When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis.

Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust,” the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.

The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.

May we expect Toyota dealerships to soon come under vandalism attack by activists from the Earth Liberation Front?

hat tip: Rikalonius

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

"Muzzled" NASA drone


A NASA "scientist" who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming recently acknowledged to Congress that he'd done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years.

James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who argues global warming could be catastrophic, said NASA staffers denied his request to do a National Public radio [socialist] interview "because they didn't want his message to get out".

But Committee members advised him of the hundreds of other interviews he did that belie his broad claim he was being "silenced".

"We have over 1,400 instances that you've availed yourself [of to get your message out], and yet you call it, ... being 'stifled'," said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican.

Mr. Hansen responded: "For the sake of the taxpayers, they should be availed [?] of my expertise. I shouldn't be required to parrot some company line." Only the warmista, Kerry, Gore line!

Mr. Hansen received a $250,000 grant from the Heinz foundation, which is controlled by Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat. Mr. Hansen was a vocal supporter of Mr. Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. Heinz and government grants Good, Exxon Mobil grants Bad!

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Persian or Muslim?

In this article Victor Davis Hanson calls attention to the Islamic Republic of Iran's ironic condemnation of the recently released film "300". He also points out that the Greek city state of Thespia lost more than twice the number (700) killed in the battle at Thermopylae than the Spartans 300.
The film’s producers must be delighted at the furor of the Iranian government. But how odd! The Islamic Republic believes that history started in the 7th century with Islam, so why all of a sudden are they harkening back 1100 years to infidel Persia?

In this regard, when an unpopular government like the mullacracy wishes to rally Iranians around getting the bomb, it usually appeals to nationalism, in the manner a despised Stalin after the June, 1941 Nazi invasion, suddenly began talking of Mother Russia rather than the Soviet Union.

It is true that Xerxes in Herodotus’s account is bearded, seated on a throne, fully masculine, and a somewhat tragic figure who weeps at the fragility of the human condition. But the Iranians should at least be happy that their ancestral king was not shown decapitating Leonidas, or ordering the eldest son of Pythius to be cut in half, the torso put on one side of the royal way, the legs on the other, or having the waters of the Hellespont lashed and branded—in other words, there is an entire corpus in Herodotus of antidotes [anecdotes?] that might make the King seem far worse and sillier than the comic-book portrayal in the movie.

It is true that the surviving story of Thermopylae is from Greek sources only (Herodotus, various works of Plutarch, Diodorus, etc.), but that fact too illustrates the difference between an autocratic imperial east and the decentralized and autonomous city-state in which history was not merely the deeds of an autocrat chiseled on stone honorific monuments.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Gore Lied People Cried


The self proclaimed prophet of the global warmista religion who stated that "in order to garner support for the "unjustified" attack of Saddam Hussein's Iraq President Bush "lied to Congress and the American people" by "playing on our fears" and exaggerating the the danger has recently revealed himself to be a shameless hypocrite:
After our item on scientists critical of Al Gore's "global warming" alarmism, a reader called our attention to an interview with Gore that appeared last May in a publication called Grist:

Q: There's a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What's the right mix?

Gore: I think the answer to that depends on where your audience's head is. In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.

"An over-representation of factual presentations of how dangerous it is." Isn't that what people accused President Bush of offering vis-à-vis the erstwhile Iraqi regime? Didn't this lead a certain former vice president to thunder, "He betrayed this country! He played on our fears!"?

And it's not as if Gore's "over-representations" don't have harmful effects. They've caused a lot of people to get really sad and stressed out. Consider this report from BusinessWeek:
In recent years, the TED conference has gained a reputation for blissfully big ideas buoyed by unrelenting optimism. So few conference goers were prepared for venture capitalist John Doerr to choke up with emotion as he kicked off the second day of talks on Mar. 9.

"I'm scared," he told the audience, looking down at his 15-year-old daughter in the front row. "I don't think we're going to make it."

Doerr issued a passionate call to action for everyone to make environmental concerns their "next big thing."

And this one from the Post-Chronicle, about someone called Jennifer Garner:

Jennifer has also confessed she cries more now she is a mother. The actress believes the experience has made her more caring.

She said: "Since I became a mother, I cry more because I care about things more.

"I can't watch a movie where something happens to a child. And I've always cared about global warming and breast cancer, but now there seems to be an urgency about them."
I guess it's OK for the warmistas to use hype but not proponents of the war on the jihadis.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Sainthood Postponed


ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ has long averred that the current global warming frenzy is nothing more than an Elmer Gantry con job by Al Gore and his acolytes to tout the seizure of additional power by politicians. Last months cancellation of a warmista confab was cancelled due to an ICE storm and now this :
By PATRICK CONDON, Associated Press Writer
MINNEAPOLIS -
A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment.

"Ann said losing toes and going forward at all costs was never part of the journey," said Ann Atwood, who helped organize the expedition.

On Monday, the pair was at Canada's Ward Hunt Island, awaiting a plane to take them to Resolute, Canada, where they were to return to Minneapolis later this week.

Bancroft, 51, became the first woman to cross the North Pole on a 1986 expedition. She and Arnesen, 53, of Oslo, Norway, were the first women to ski across Antarctica in 2001.

But the latest trek got off to a bad start. The day they set off from Ward Hunt Island, a plane landing near the women hit their gear, punching a hole in Bancroft's sled and damaging one of Arnesen's snowshoes.

They repaired the snowshoe with binding from a ski, but Atwood said the patch job created pressure on Arnesen's left foot, which led to blisters that then turned into frostbite.

Then there was the cold — quite a bit colder, Atwood said, then Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times, Atwood said.

"My first reaction when they called to say there were calling it off was that they just sounded really, really cold," Atwood said.

She said Bancroft and Arnesen were applying hot water bottles to Arnesen's foot every night, but had to wake up periodically because the bottles froze.

The explorers had planned to call in regular updates to school groups by satellite phone, and had planned online posts with photographic evidence of global warming. In contrast to Bancroft's 1986 trek across the Arctic with fellow Minnesota explorer Will Steger, this time she and Arnesen were prepared to don body suits and swim through areas where polar ice has melted.

Atwood said there was some irony that a trip to call attention to global warming was scuttled in part by extreme cold temperatures. "They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming," Atwood said. "But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

I thought the global warming schtick was ALL about predictability. Silly me. It would however appear that the beautification of these two worthy females as saints in the Warmista religion will be postponed.

hat tip: Clayton Cramer

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Bush Derangement Syndrome



After President Bush's visit to Iximche, Guatemala today, Mayan "priests" will "cleanse the sacred site" of "evil spirits". Juan Tiney (or is it tiny?) the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday. He stated "that a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture,"
Tiney was not quite clear as to whether the site has been purified since the original Mayan inhabitants conducted their ritual murders there.
"After extraction of the heart, which was offered to the idol, the heads were put on poles on a special altar dedicated to this purpose, where they remained for some time, after which they were buried. The bodies of the sacrificed were cooked and eaten as sanctified flesh (Guillemin, 1969:27; 1977:258). Aspects of this religious complex show up in the human remains excavated at Iximche, the Kaqchikel Maya capital."

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ is curious if these religious ceremonies will be part of Tiney's "purification ceremony".
ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ is no great fan of George Bush, but this seems a bit much even for the sufferers of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome)
hat tip: John Ray

Thursday, March 08, 2007

From the Socialist Paradise


Guillermo Fariñas pictured here was recently arrested and beaten by officers of the National Revolutionary Police in Santa Clara, Cuba for among other things attempting to connect to the internet without government approval.







Nevertheless, Tania de la Torre was able to file this report by telephone before being cut off by Cuban State Security:
State of emergency in Santiago de Cuba By Tania de la Torre

Urgent appeal from Tania de la Torre Montesino, director of the Independent Press Bureau

I want to inform the world about the current situation in Santiago de Cuba. There is a general state of alarm in the province because there is a shortage of milk for children. They have spent two months drinking tea, sugar water, and anything else that happens to come along.

There is not enough money, meat is nowhere to be found, and the situation is worsening because the dengue fever epidemic continues to spread. Additionally, the potable water situation is critical. There are neighborhoods that have spent six months without any. All this before the backdrop of Santiago’s broken streets and septic tanks that contaminate the environment.

We are calling upon the authorities, above all on State Security agents who are repressing and harassing opposition activists. We ask that they go over to the people’s side, because it is now Cuba’s time. It is the right moment to reflect and to help the Cuban people. To help the Cuban people is not to cooperate with the dictatorship and to do everything within one’s reach so that change may come about.

Note: At this point, State Security abruptly interrupted the telephone link between the independent journalist and the Cuban Democratic Directorate.


I wonder what the "Pastors for Peace," dear Congressman Rangel and his delightful colleague Ms. Waters, not to mention a slew of others (like the Congressional Black Caucus) would make of this. Actually, I don't wonder at all. They'd make the same of it as they have of the horrendous plight of Dr. Biscet, another extremely brave black man rotting in a hellhole of a Cuban jail for opposing the designs of the Plantation-Owner-in-Chief.
comment by:
asombra

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Computer Models for Me but Not for Thee

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ has long found it strange that "progressives" are willing to implement social /government policies on the basis of complicated computer models IF such policies involve a) increased taxation or b) regulation of human activity i.e. limiting liberty. If implied/proposed policies result in the reduction of taxes or regulation, they are strenuously opposed.

By Jerry Schmitt
Let's compare and contrast Liberals' view of two mathematical models:

On the one hand, Liberals demand immediate drastic and costly policies to curtail man-made greenhouse gases based on complex mathematical climate models that predict global warming sometime in the distant future - models based on questionable data resulting in predictions that cannot be tested for at least 50 years. Meteorologists and Climatologists who dissent with this liberal view are equated with holocaust-deniers with demands made to withdraw their professional credentials.

On the other hand, Liberals ignore and discount the enormous historical evidence showing the accuracy and efficacy of "supply-side" economic models developed by Nobel-prize winner Milton Friedman, Arthur Laffer and others that were implemented as tax-cut policies by John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. This evidence includes sustained economic growth, sustained employment growth resulting in low-rates of unemployment, and enormous (albeit minimally reported) increases in Federal Tax revenues and reductions in the Federal budget deficit - all of them accurate predictions of the models!

Further confirming evidence can be found elsewhere in the world in countries such as Chile, Estonia and Britain under Margaret Thatcher. Despite this overwhelming evidence, Liberals still question the utility of tax-cuts as means for government to stimulate the economy and increase tax revenues. Indeed, despite his unrelieved record of erroneous forecasts of impending economic recession over many, many years now, no Liberal is questioning Paul Krugman's credentials as Princeton Professor of Economics or New York Times columnist.

This dichotomy only underscores the conviction that modern Liberalism is a quasi-religious set of beliefs that cannot be perturbed by facts or evidence.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/03/liberal_math.html
By Jerry Schmitt
Let's compare and contrast Liberals' view of two mathematical models:

On the one hand, Liberals demand immediate drastic and costly policies to curtail man-made greenhouse gases based on complex mathematical climate models that predict global warming sometime in the distant future - models based on questionable data resulting in predictions that cannot be tested for at least 50 years. Meteorologists and Climatologists who dissent with this liberal view are equated with holocaust-deniers with demands made to withdraw their professional credentials.

On the other hand, Liberals ignore and discount the enormous historical evidence showing the accuracy and efficacy of "supply-side" economic models developed by Nobel-prize winner Milton Friedman, Arthur Laffer and others that were implemented as tax-cut policies by John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. This evidence includes sustained economic growth, sustained employment growth resulting in low-rates of unemployment, and enormous (albeit minimally reported) increases in Federal Tax revenues and reductions in the Federal budget deficit - all of them accurate predictions of the models!

Further confirming evidence can be found elsewhere in the world in countries such as Chile, Estonia and Britain under Margaret Thatcher. Despite this overwhelming evidence, Liberals still question the utility of tax-cuts as means for government to stimulate the economy and increase tax revenues. Indeed, despite his unrelieved record of erroneous forecasts of impending economic recession over many, many years now, no Liberal is questioning Paul Krugman's credentials as Princeton Professor of Economics or New York Times columnist.

This dichotomy only underscores the conviction that modern Liberalism is a quasi-religious set of beliefs that cannot be perturbed by facts or evidence.

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ would go even further and aver that the insistence on forcing a rigid set of dogmas on a hapless population in order to achieve new taxes and strict compliance with an unprovable doctrine is in fact religion.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Could Use Some Global Warming!

SAFE ASHORE: Lidia Estel Lugo, 34, huddles with her 9-year-old son, Jose Carlos Rodrigues Lugo, after wading ashore on Key Biscayne at dawn with a group of refugees from Cuba.




Soaked, shivering and disoriented,
two groups of migrants walked up to the Key Biscayne toll booth this morning, where they received coffee and blankets from strangers.

The first group of five arrived at 6:30 a.m. That group included men, women and children.

Workers at the toll booth separating Key Biscayne from the mainland kept them warm and gave them coffee until the U.S. Border Patrol arrived. One of the five walked away but the others stayed put.

Thirty minutes later, six other migrants showed up -- also wet, also shivering.

Four of the six in the latter group identified themselves as Lidia Lugo, 34; son Jose Carlos Rodrigues Lugo, 9; daughter Amanda Rodrigues Lugo, 15; and 13-year-old Mario Nuñez, who is not related.

An employee of Miami-Dade County let them huddle in his truck for warmth until the Border Patrol could return.

A Miami police sergeant showed up and summoned fire rescue. Fire rescue workers advised the group to take off their wet shoes and gave them blankets.

Lidia Lugo said they left Sunday from Cuba's Pinar del Rio. She declined to say how they made the voyage, only that they waded ashore.

She said she has a relative in Hialeah named Clara and the toll booth employee let her call Clara on a cell phone. The woman had the phone number memorized.

``Gracias a Dios,'' she said, shortly before the Border Patrol took her and the children away for processing.
hat tip: The Real Cuba

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Monday, March 05, 2007

Out of Their own Mouths

Now that Al Gore has an oscar in hand for his propaganda crockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and Hollywood has been officially been declared "green", it is appropriate to list some quotes from those ordained by the new religion to pronounce on its behalf.

The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state. - Kenneth Boulding, originator of the "Spaceship Earth" concept (as quoted by William Tucker in Progress and Privilege, 1982)

We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion -- guilt-free at last! -- Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue

Free Enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process . . . Capitalism is destroying the earth. -- Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists

We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects . . . We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land. -- David Foreman, Earth First!

Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed. -- Pentti Linkola

If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other. -- Amory Lovins in The Mother Earth - Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p. 22

The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world -- John Shuttleworth

What we've got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. -- Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado)

Kill 'Em All And Let God Sort 'Em Out

I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems. -- John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs. -- John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing....This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run. -- Economist editorial

We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight -- David Foreman, Earth First!

Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental. -- Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First!

If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS -- Earth First! Newsletter

Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planets...Some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along. -- David Graber, biologist, National Park Service

The collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans. -- Dr. Reed F. Noss, The Wildlands Project

If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels. -- Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund

Cannibalism is a "radical but realistic solution to the problem of overpopulation." -- Lyall Watson, The Financial Times, 15 July 1995

Poverty For 'Those People'

We, in the green movement, aspire to a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year-old children to Asian brothels. -- Carl Amery

Every time you turn on an electric light, you are making another brainless baby -- Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists

To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem -- Lamont Cole

If there is going to be electricity, I would like it to be decentralized, small, solar-powered -- Gar Smith -- editor of the Earth Island Institute's online magazine The Edge

The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States: We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the U.S. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are. And it is important to the rest of the world to make sure that they don't suffer economically by virtue of our stopping them. -- Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund

Wrong Again

The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population. -- Reid Bryson, "Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man", (1971)

The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer -- Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb (1968)

I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 -- Paul Ehrlich in (1969)

In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. -- Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)

Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion -- Paul Ehrlich in (1976)

This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century -- Peter Gwynne, Newsweek 1976

There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon... The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it. -- Newsweek, April 28, (1975)

This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976

If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. -- Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)


When confronted by skeptics, the warmistas invariably dismiss contrary opinions as invalid and only held by "kooks" and the "idiot" fringe. In other words, your views are due to your not having been ordained into the "consensus" of the new religion. I will leave it to you, gentle reader, to judge who are the "kooks".

Update: 030607 2120hrs EST

We have the release of the International Panel on Climate Change "report" (still referred to that way throughout the legacy media, despite the fact that the actual report isn't due out for several months yet).
The entire effort was obviously building up to the revelation of "What Must Be Done!!", to be delivered in tones of thunder to a world agonized to the breaking point. Instead it comes across as the standard piece of useless UN paper - of the type dealing with fisheries policy in the Maldives or primary schooling in Slovakia. What was the solution? Umm... what else, carbon taxes! Oh, and Al Gore paying himself "carbon offsets".


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Friday, March 02, 2007

And Then??

When President Bush goes into the Texas sunset, and especially if he is replaced by an enlightened, world-embracing Democrat, [the Europeans', not to mention the anti war "libertarian" crowd's] one excuse, their sole explanation for all human suffering in the world will disappear too. And they may just find that the world is not as simple as they thought it was.

It’s been a great ride for the past six years, hasn’t it? George Bush and Dick Cheney and all those pantomime villains that succour him — the gay-bashing foot soldiers of the religious Right, the forktailed neoconservatives with their devotion to Israel, the dark titans of American corporate boardrooms spewing their carbon emissions above the pristine European skies. Having those guys around for so long provided a comfortable substitute for thinking hard about global challenges, a kind of intellectual escapism.
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