Motto: The surest way to get a reputation for being a trouble maker these days is to go about repeating the very phrases that the Founders used in the struggle for independence.
-- C.A. Beard
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On my absence;
I, Serge Pretentiatti, must apologise to you gentle readers, for
the no show status of this rag so far this year. The reasons do not
matter. All that does is that I have been increasingly alarmed and
disappointed in the policies of this govt. across all parties and all
branches. In the ensuing articles, we will see that the rot is
widespread, enduring and likely irreversible at this point.
On last month's Fix;
the answer to last month's Fix,
"Is America still worth dying for?"
is
No, frankly. The US has evolved so far from its original promise, even
those evil Federalists, Washington and Hamilton, would say it has
gone too far. The most recent revelations demonstrate how truly
ineffective airport screening to date has been. Consider, if we can no
longer carry liquids on board planes, if the TSA cannot tell the
difference between TNT and toothpaste, what does that say about the
screening done to date? Care to guess? I'll tell you. It demonstrates
that screening has always been an exercise in probability. When the TSA
actually sniffs your luggage with a gas chromatograph, they have an
excellent chance of detecting an explosive. But the fact is the TSA
does that to less then 5% of luggage. When faced with the certainty
that explosives will be on board, reality compelled a ban on all
liquids since the system in place could not possibly screen it all.
This is analogous to projects Carnivore and Echelon (from
the FBI and NSA respectively) that are responsible for logging all
voice and data transmissions, domestic and foreign. The FBI has
admitted they have over 150,000 hours of Arabic language backlogs
because they have insufficient Arabic speaking analysts.
So, you ask, "But Serge if the screening is totally bogus, why do
it?" Good question. I think the answer is that it forms a cover for a
greater purpose, which is illegal, and that is tracking movements of
citizens. All citizens. A question you should really ask is, how is
security enhanced by asking all passengers to prove their identity? All
that matters is whether a person has the motivation and tools to commit
harm. Several members of the ACLU have challenged the TSA's right to
ask for ID. The TSA refers to a legal authority in " a secret
law"! The same secret law is what gives FBI authority to audit the
library habits of patrons, and slap a gag order on the librarian if
they try to warn the patron. We are about to go one step further.
Today's (Aug. 14) Wall Street Journal reports that in the Knoxville
airport , passengers are being randomly hooked up to POlygraph
machines made by Suspect Detection Systems Ltd of Israel to
determine if they have evil intent - and they are forbidden from
telling anyone what questions are asked. If you think this violates the
4'th and 5'th Amendments protections against unreasonable search and
seizure and self-incrimination, you should be aware that the Supreme
Court has already said 2 weeks ago that constitutional protections do
not apply to Customs areas in international airports.
Soon, it will not matter whether it is a regional or international
airport, because frankly, the Constitution has ceased to matter. A
search on the words "capitated tax" will show that the constitution
bans the concept of the income tax, and the 14'th Amendment did not in
fact overturn that ban. In fact the violation of this goes back much
further, when none other then king George Washington, only 10 years or
so after repulsing the British, applied the illegal whisky tax on
Pennsylvania farmers to raise money. When the farmers refused to pay,
King George brought in a few thousand troops to quell the "tax cheats"
in what should be considered the first civil war, but instead was
called the Whiskey Rebellion. Lincoln further sullied the new
continent's promise. Where the 9'th and 10'th Amendments clearly imply
that states have the right to secede, Lincoln suppressed those rights
under an illegal second civil war. FDR made it a crime for individuals
to own large amounts of precious medals.
Today we are faced with gun controls (violating the second
ammendment) and
owning the means to powerfully encrypt messages (4'th and 5'th)
is now bordering on a felony owing to the "war on terror". Further,
eminent domain seizures are now expanded to take land from one private
individual to give to another, if the receiver will pay more in taxes.
I have chronicled the operational deaths of the 2'nd, 4'th, 5'th,
9'th and 10'th amendments, and the lost freedom from illegal taxes. I
put it to you, gentle readers, how can we say our soldiers are fighting
to protect the "land of the free" when we no longer own the fruit of
our labors, when owning hard currency is a felony, when owning the
means to protect personal secrets is a crime, and everything that the
govt. desires to hide is anointed with the unapproachable moniker of
national security?
On Freedom and Environmentalism;
As you read through this month's issue, you will see two common
threads. Loss of liberty, and the discredited nature of the
environmentalist movement. What should become clear to you is that
these two topics are not unrelated; in fact, it is probably not
overstating the case to say environmentalism is one of the last
surviving vehicles to advance worldwide socialism. At first, socialism
was seen by Karl Marx and others as the vehicle for supporting enhanced
quality of life versus evil capitalist regimes. But even a casual
glance at the world today reveals that the areas with the least
starvation and highest standards of living correlate to the areas of
greatest liberty and open markets. So, what is a budding
socialist to do? Convince those that have that they are poisoning
the world for the have-nots. Make regression stylish. Make it
seem noble to live a life of denial and sacrifice.
in fact, as you read the Guest Editorial below you might even notice
a certain sense of regret that the author has to let mankind somewhat
off the hook for causing global disaster.
"The IPCC has been forced to halve its predictions for sea-level rise by 2100"
As we shall see throughout the rest of this issue, the data is starting to pile up that humans are not in fact the evil primal cause of global warming. And yet another reason for being socialist dries up. And long time readers of this tome will know, "See, we told you so"
On testing your environmental IQ;
|
Mankind has had less effect on global warming than previously supposed, a United Nations report on climate change will claim next year. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent. In a final draft of its fourth assessment report, to be published in February, the panel reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms. The panel, however, has lowered predictions of how much sea levels will rise in comparison with its last report in 2001. Climate change sceptics are expected to seize on the revised figures as evidence that action to combat global warming is less urgent. Scientists insist that the lower estimates for sea levels and the human impact on global warming are simply a refinement due to better data on how climate works rather than a reduction in the risk posed by global warming. One leading UK climate scientist, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity surrounding the report before it is published, said: "The bottom line is that the climate is still warming while our greenhouse gas emissions have accelerated, so we are storing up problems for ourselves in the future." The IPCC report, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, has been handed to the Government for review before publication. It warns that carbon dioxide emissions have risen during the past five years by three per cent, well above the 0.4 per cent a year average of the previous two decades. The authors also state that the climate is almost certain to warm by at least 1.5 C during the next 100 years. Such a rise would be enough to take average summer temperatures in Britain to those seen during the 2003 heatwave, when August temperatures reached a record-breaking 38 C. Unseasonable warmth this year has left many Alpine resorts without snow by the time the ski season started. Britain can expect more storms of similar ferocity to those that wreaked havoc across the country last week, even bringing a tornado to north-west London. The IPCC has been forced to halve its predictions for sea-level rise by 2100, one of the key threats from climate change. It says improved data have reduced the upper estimate from 34 in to 17 in. It also says that the overall human effect on global warming since the industrial revolution is less than had been thought, due to the unexpected levels of cooling caused by aerosol sprays, which reflect heat from the sun. Large amounts of heat have been absorbed by the oceans, masking the warming effect. Prof Rick Battarbee, the director of the Environmental Change Research Centre at University College London, warned these masking effects had helped to delay global warming but would lead to larger changes in the future. He said: "The oceans have been acting like giant storage heaters by trapping heat and carbon dioxide. They might be bit of a time-bomb as they have been masking the real effects of the carbon dioxide we have been releasing into the atmosphere. "People are very worried about what will happen in 2030 to 2050, as we think that at that point the oceans will no longer be able to absorb the carbon dioxide being emitted. It will be a tipping point and that is why it is now critical to act to counter any acceleration that will occur when this happens." The report paints a bleak picture for future generations unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. It predicts that the climate will warm by 0.2 C a decade for the next two decades if emissions continue at current levels. The report states that snow cover in mountainous regions will contract and permafrost in polar regions will decline. However, Julian Morris, executive director of the International Policy Network, urged governments to be cautious. "There needs to be better data before billions of pounds are spent on policy measures that may have little impact," he said. |
1. Dec 2, Wall Street J: Recall the days when the largest threat to
the third world and Africa in particular was starvation? A recent
ordered list of the greatest threats facing Africa is violence, AIDS,
and obesity caused diabetes.
2. Dec 4, Wall Street Journal: Senators are now threatening law
suits for the excercise of Free Speech. On Oct 27 Dem Senators Jay
Rockefeller (WV) and Olympia Snow (Maine) sent the following letter to
Exxon Mobile CEO Rex Tillerson. Go ahead and read it now.
edited for length
We are convinced that Exxon's long-standing support of a small group of
global climate change skeptics, and those skeptics access to and
influence on government policymakers, have made it increasingly
difficult for United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs
across all facets of its diplomacy. obviously, other factors complicate
our foreign policy. However, we are persuaded that the climate
change denial strategy carried out by and for Exxon has helped foster
the perception that the United States is insensitive to a matter of
great urgency for all mankind, and has thus damaged the statue of our
nation internationally.
We fervently hope that reports
that Exxon intends to end its funding of the climate change denial
campaign of the Competitive Enterprise Institute are true. ... however,
in casual review of available literature, as performed by personal for
the royal society reveals that Exxon is or has been the primary funding
source for the skepticism of not only CEI, but for dozens of other
overlapping and interlocking front groups sharing the same obfuscation
agenda. Exxon and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy,
sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all too reminiscent of
those used by the tobacco industry for so many years.
Large corporations and related
industries have joined Exxon to provide significant and consistent
financial support of this pseudoscientific, nine peer-reviewed echo
chamber. The goal has not been to prevail in the scientific
debate, but to obscure it. This climate change denial confederacy
has exerted an influence out of all proportion to its size or relative
scientific credibility. Through relentless pressure on the media
to present the issue objectively, and by challenging the consensus on
climate change science by miss dating both the nature of what consensus
means and what this particular consensus is, Exxon and its allies have
confused the public and given cover to infuse senior elected and
appointed government officials whose positions and opinions enable them
to damage US and ability abroad.
A study to be released in November
by an American scientific group will release that Exxon has spent more
than $19 million since the late 1990s on a strategy of information
laundering, or enabling a small number of professional skeptics working
through scientific sounding organizations to follow their viewpoints
through nine peer-reviewed web sites such as the Tech Central
Station. The Internet has provided Exxon the means to wreak its
havoc on US credibility, while avoiding the rigors of refereed journals.
We would recommend that Exxon
publicly ackknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role
of humans in causing or exacerbating it. Second, Exxon should
repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its
funding history. Finally, we believe that there would be a
benefit to the United States's if one of the world's largest carbon
emitters headquartered here devoted at least some of the money that's
invested to climate change denial pseudoscience to global remediation
efforts.
Now that you have read it, consider what it says. The authors claim
that "everyone agrees on the facts and consequences of climate change."
But they are so afraid of debate they are ordering Exxon to stop
funding dissenting researchers. The head spins. On the side of Exxon
there is the Competitive Enterprise Institute, on the "consensus" side
are Pew Charitible Trusts, the UN, EU, Sierra Club, Environmental
Defense Fund, Hollywood and Al Gore.
Oddly, Rockefellar's personal wealth comes from the founder of the very corporation he is now threatening, great grandpa John D Rockefeller. The Senators are not so stupid as to put in writing the exact threat, but a windfall profits tax is now in the works, and the recent example of the tobacco companies is alluded to in the letter.