Best of comments

From James Cameron at this page-

With the global-warming jolly about to open in Durban, the CRU whistle-blower released a second tranche of Climategate emails just as tawdry and demeaning as the first. Few outside the ranks of professional physicists consider they are able to adjudicate but most people are capable of recognizing when an investigative procedure is flawed.
It is clear the IPCC assessment process has so many serious material defects as to put into grave doubt the soundness and reliability of any of its heavily promoted claims. We know the IPCC report-writing teams are cherry-picked in an opaque process by a secretive bureau in Geneva with no effort to ensure representation of diverse viewpoints. Conflicts of interest abound in the report-writing process and favoured authors review both their own work and that of their critics, inevitably concluding in their own favour. Environmentalist campaign groups are ludicrously overrepresented among the authors who can overrule academic peer review procedures and subsequently rewrite the texts. It is this disreputable behaviour which has been exposed so damagingly by the e-mails and in files subsequently obtained under recent U.K. freedom of information rulings. They show that an IPCC chapter author recruits a contributing author not on the basis of his knowledge or past work but with cloying cronyism which decides if he is 'one of us'. The Canadian investigative journalist Donna Laframboise has recently released her book 'The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert'. It is a classic exposé showing how the IPCC evolved into an activist organization bearing no resemblance to the picture of scientific probity painted by its promoters and its allies. The claim that the IPCC is made up of thousands of the world's top scientists with the most rigorous and exhaustive review processes in the history of science is totally risible. In fact, far from ensuring 'balance, transparency and accountability' the apathetic plenary panel made up from the 195 member governments is the greatest block to reform. Those countries truly seeking objective, balanced and rigorous information about climate science on which to base momentous policy decisions should simply withdraw. Like so much of the UN, the IPCC is irredeemably corrupt and a new assessment body is needed made up scientists rather than green zealots, political placemen and celebrities.

(bolding mine)

Now why can't all those environmental reporters scrambling feverishly like headless chickens put it as simply and precisely as this instead of copy pasting press releases from green groups? 

Bad day for Phil Joneses

First the Phil Jones of the Climategate infamy is found further vitiating the scientific process in the new release of Climategate emails with mails like this-

Jones:
I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process

Then Phil Jones, the Manchester United center back, scores an own goal in a crunch match with Benefica that United needed to win. The match was drawn

There is still hope about America-
Anti-Obama sales outpace pro-Obama nearly fourfold at popular online clothier

Climategate strikes again!

With some explosive emails of climate "scientists" (the scare quotes seem quite appropriate) like-

Thorne:
I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.

Wils:
[2007] What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably [...]

Wilson:
Although I agree that GHGs are important in the 19th/20th century (especially since the 1970s), if the weighting of solar forcing was stronger in the models,surely this would diminish the significance of GHGs.
[...] it seems to me that by weighting the solar irradiance more strongly in the models, then much of the 19th to mid 20th century warming can be explained from the sun alone.

Wigley:
Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive [...] there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC [...]

Mann:
 I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she think’s she’s doing, but its not helping the cause

Mann:
the important thing is to make sure they’re loosing the PR battle. That’s what the site [Real Climate] is about.

Cook:
A growing body of evidence clearly shows [2008] that hydroclimatic variability during the putative MWP (more appropriately and inclusively called the “Medieval Climate Anomaly” or MCA period) was more regionally extreme (mainly in terms of the frequency and duration of megadroughts) than anything we have seen in the 20th century, except perhaps for the Sahel. So in certain ways the MCA period may have been more climatically extreme than in modern times.

Jones:
[FOI, temperature data]
Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (US Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.

Jones:
Basic problem is that all models are wrong – not got enough middle and low level clouds.

Jones:
I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process 

So much for truth and honesty in science.

Government support of science has corrupted it -like everything it touches. We now have tax-payer funded activists whose only 'science' is to find/stretch/twist/make up evidence for their religious  beliefs(hard to call them scientific theories).

There is much, much more here and here.

The Renewable Scam

Renewable Energy: Bubble, Scam, or Both

When private industry starts looking to Washington as their primary area to make profits, we’ve made a mess of things.

Read it all.

Oxford bends rules for a torturer

What is it with the love affairs among the Western intellectual elites and Third World brutes-

Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani -  the brute Oxford bent over to please

The torturer Oxford “bent over backwards” to admit

The son of a former Iranian President has been found culpable of torture and has been ordered to pay his victim millions of dollars in compensation while studying for a DPhil at Oxford.

Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani – who was admitted to the University with a “let-off clause” for language skills – had a judgement brought against him by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in August for ordering the torture of a Iranian businessman who refused to surrender control of his oil consultancy to Rafsanjani and pay a demanded $50 million.

In the judgement made against the 42-year-old, seen exclusively by this newspaper, the judge described how Mr Houshang Bouzari suffered “unspeakably outrageous torture at the hands of the defendant or at his instigation”.

Read it all here and find out what Michael Rubin calls

the murky deals Oxford University appears to have made in order to get its hands on just a small portion of former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s multi-billion dollar nest egg. The price? Apparently, to admit Rafsanjani’s son, waive his language requirement, and ignore the fact that the son was working elsewhere when he was supposed to be studying.

And speaking of left wing historians-
India's young Chomsky, Pankaj Mishra reviews Niall Ferguson's new book Civilisation: The West and the Rest and shit hits the fan.

Which was inevitable, given the loads of gobar (cow dung) with which Mishra's upper hollow is stuffed.

So England started WW2?

Russia invades Georgia- and lefties blame the victim!

No, Condoleezza Rice Does Not Blame Georgia for the War
Strangely preoccupied with undercutting the pro-Georgia attitudes prevalent in the American national security establishment’s position on the sometimes-violent Russia-Georgia conflict, leftist writers have sought—unconvincingly—to portray Georgia as the aggressor in the two countries’ August 2008 war.

Read it all.
Turning facts upside down is all in a day's work for left wing scholars and historians. Unfortunately, their joke of a 'history' is force fed to children in text books. Child abuse!

BTW, I missed all those anti-imperialist rallies against Russia. It's as if the lefties didn't care about a small, independent country being attacked by a traditionally imperialist power. Either that or I must have been hibernating in a cave.

Top News

Red Green threat

China and bullying ought to be next to each other in the dictionary:

China Threatens Massive Venting of Super Greenhouse Gases in Attempt to Extort Billions as UNFCCC Meeting Approaches

In the run-up to the international climate negotiations in Durban later this month, China has responded to efforts to ban the trading of widely discredited HFC-23 offsets by threatening to release huge amounts of the potent industrial chemical into the atmosphere unless other nations pay what amounts to a climate ransom.



China's threat comes after the European Union and other nations moved to ban HFC-23 credits from internal carbon markets in recognition of the perverse incentives created by these credits under the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The vast amounts paid for HFC-23 offsets have led factories in China and elsewhere to manufacture far more HCFC-22 and its HFC-23 by-product than necessary, just to maximize the amounts paid to destroy HFC-23 through the UN-backed carbon trading scheme.

Green fail continues.

Do read it all.

Welcome to the 21st century!

Mother models lingerie with her 19-year-old daughter

Down with stupid taboos!

The parallel lives of Laura Pollan and Prof. Mushirul Hasan

Laura Pollan was born in 1948 in the pre-Castro Cuba.

Mushirul Hasan came on this planet a year later in a newly independent India.

Laura Pollan - Cuban freedom fighter

Laura Pollan, a simple housewife, a mother and a teacher, died recently of medical complications possibly caused by a long, wrenching struggle against a brutal regime that had imprisoned her husband for being an independent journalist.

 Prof. Mushirul Hasan - influential academic and Castro admirer
image source 

Prof. Mushirul Hasan, a world famous scholar and academic, is a vocal champion of that regime.


Prof. Mushirul Hasan, son of a  noted historian and professor, is a former Vice-Chancellor of Delhi's famous Jamia Millia Islamia University and has written several scholarly books.


 Laura Pollan was a bit like him -

She was ......... a teacher: someone who loved literature and had taught peasants to read in the early years of the revolution.    

Prof. Mushirul Hasan was

the elected President of the Indian History Congress in 2002. In 2007, He was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India and the Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French Government in 2010. In May 2010, he was appointed the director-general of the National Archives of India.(wikipedia)

Prof. Mushirul Hasan lives in the comfortable and spacious environs that are available as perks to the government-academic elites in India even as the hundreds of millions of Indians who pay for their cozy existence squeeze into their hovels and worry about paying bills.

Prof. Mushirul Hasan at home in the JNU campus
image source

Laura Pollan had been less privileged and much less lucky-

Prior to her husband's arrest in March of 2003 she was an apolitical high school literature teacher who loved cats and plants. That all changed when her husband, Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez, was sentenced to an unjust 20 year prison sentence for his activities as an independent journalist. He had been a nuclear engineer until being demoted in 1992 for ideological errors.

Laura Pollan, instead of sucking up to a barbaric regime like Prof. Mushirul Hasan does, decided against all odds to take it on- 

Within days of the March 2003 show trials and the unjust prison sentences the Ladies in White came into existence and Laura Pollan was one of the founders of the movement. Their demands were simple and direct. The freedom of their loved ones. Their methods were nonviolent, strategic, and well thought out.

and-

Short, blonde and stout, she was not cut out to be hauled into a bus by the police. All she wanted was to see Héctor back, and all the others. Her group would meet each Sunday at the church of Santa Rita in Miramar, Havana’s grandest district, say the rosary, hear mass, and then walk ten blocks in silence along Quinta Avenida on the green verges under the palm trees. The women wore white, symbolising pure intentions, and carried gladioli, a single stem each.

Unlike the cozy environment available to tenured leftist professors in India protected in their group-think, things are tough in Cuba for those of independent minds-

Ms. Pollan, whose resources were limited, ran the protest operation from her Havana home. Branded as a “mercenary,” she lived the dangerous life of a dissident. The government tormented her and other wives by moving the men to prisons far from their homes.

and-

Shock mobs of other women were especially bused in to attack them, beat them and pull their hair. Ms Pollán could fight back with the best: when a man called her “Puta!” once, she threw her gladioli in his face. In one battle in September she was crushed against a wall, which may have set off the breathing troubles that killed her.

 Prof. Mushirul Hasan is such a partisan of the regime that brutalized Laura Pollan that during his time as the Vice-Chancellor he decided to name a university café after his beloved dictator in 2007-

Welcome to Castro cafe at Jamia Milia
--

Vice chancellor of the university Mushirul Hasan said the varsity will be soon naming a cafeteria after Castro. Earlier, he spoke about how Castro had become a symbol of “anti-colonial movement” across the world.

--

Visiting Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque was the chief guest...

Prof. Mushirul Hasan, like so many of his ilk, is in fact a serial admirer of dodgy characters-

 

(In Jamia)There is Noam Chomsky Complex, the big Edward Said Hall, the smaller Yasser Arafat Hall, and the smallest KM Ashraf Hall named after the Marxist historian. Not to forget the coolest spot to hang out — the Castro Café with its award-winning white and black design.  

--
As Jamia’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Mushirul Hasan, says, “These names reflect Jamia’s cosmopolitan and secular character reflecting a continuity in its history and a link with future.”

So we have here totalitarian apologists( Noam Chomsky, Edward Said,  KM Ashraf ) and a terrorist (Yasser Arafat). Nice friend list, professor!




Laura Pollan,  unfortunately, could not much enjoy the world built on the ideals of these comfortable Marxist theoreticians-

   ....the (protesting)women were repeatedly assaulted by government-organized “shock brigades,” claiming to represent the ire of the popular masses against “counter-revolutionaries, in the pay if the U.S. empire.”  These thugs also took up intense harassment, occupying the sidewalks outside Pollán’s home on Havana’s Neptuno Street.  During one of the Ladies in White peaceful marches through Havana, video cameras show them being physically attacked before police arrest them, not the attackers, and piling them into a bus to be hauled off to jail.  At one point it became unclear whether the police or the mob did more physical harm to the women.  

Laura Pollan probably never heard of  Mushirul Hasan.


Prof. Mushirul Hasan has most likely heard of Laura Pollan (and if he hasn't, what kind of a historian is he?).



I wonder professor, is there is just an itsy-bitsy chance that you would like to dedicate just a small, lonely chair at the Castro café to this brave freedom fighter?

No need to answer, professor - we all know.

Best of comments

Razlon-

At the tail end of the Vietnam era, I served as an Air Force public affairs NCO. What was striking, even at the time, was the wide gulf between the Ernie Pyle and the David Halbertram generations of civilian journalists.

The former were overwhelmingly veterans themselves, never went to J school, had a wide variety of life experiences outside both the classroom and the newsroom, and regarded what they did as a trade learned on the job. The later were virtually all graduates J schools, regarded the military with open contempt,had little to no life experiences outside of journalism, felt they were on a mission to "improve" society, and considered themselves practitioners of a noble profession. Today they are the managing editors and publishers who, without any reflection or self-awareness, decide what the rest of us need to know.

No wonder the profession is dying.

Media - wiping Obama's ass

Media Attempt to Cover up Obama Comments on Israel

--
There are a couple of excellent articles about this, though not much in the mainstream media: one is by Arnold Ahlert in Jewish World Review, in which he writes that “it is hard to decide which part of this story is more revealing: the incident itself, or the subsequent reaction by the Fourth Estaters whose commitment to the standards of journalistic integrity—or perhaps more accurately JournO-listic integrity—seemingly never reach the bottom of an apparently bottomless barrel.” And to the issue of reporters agreeing, after the fact, to keep this quiet, Ahlert writes, “What reporter in his right mind would sign anything that prevents him from reporting on a story made available, not by subterfuge or anything else resembling illegality, but by the carelessness of two world leaders? Since when did a legitimate ‘gotcha’ moment become off limits to the press?”

Read it all. Free press has willingly become King's courtiers. 

All is not for the BEST

Remember that BEST study(non-peer reviewed if I might add, as if that matters to the Warmists) that was supposed to blow up the AGW skeptics' case to outer space?

Turns out that the BEST is not good enough-

The skeptics have now counter-attacked Muller and BEST, in a controversy that could swell to Hockey-Stick dimensions.

On October 30, the UK’s Daily Mail interviewed Judith Curry, Muller's second-named co-author of the four Berkeley study papers. Professor Curry chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

She said that Muller's claim that he had proved warming skeptics wrong was a 'huge mistake' with no scientific basis. She said the Berkeley data showed that there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties. "This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting," she said.  In fact the standstill in warming  was making many non-skeptic scientists take the skeptic arguments more seriously, she said.

Curry was not consulted by Muller before Muller published his results to the media. "I think they have made errors and I distance myself from what they did," she said.
She said two of the four papers were not publication-ready and a graph given to the press by Muller involved a 'hide the decline' subterfuge. It was also misleading of Muller to claim that the urban heat island issue had been settled.

-- snip --


High-profile anti-BEST scientist, Fred Singer, is an atmospheric and space physicist. He was, among other things, founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service.  He wrote in the Wall Street Journal (November 3)  that  the BEST study merely re-works the same contaminated temperature data used by the Climategate team, covering less than 30% of the earth’s surface. Even so, a third of the BEST data series show cooling, while the absence of warming in the marine atmosphere suggest solar variability, not CO2, is the main climate driver.

Singer says global warming theory and modeling predict atmospheric warming but weather satellites and weather balloon radiosondes (two independent measures), show no atmospheric warming over the 1987-97 period. He concludes:

The Berkeley team's research paper comments: ‘The human component of global warming may be somewhat overestimated.’ I commend Mr. Muller and his team for their honesty and skepticism. 

Catch it all here.

LNC Quote Shop " "

Like so many people, in so many countries, who started out to "spread the wealth," Barack Obama has ended up spreading poverty
 -Thomas Sowell

Does this mean Rajendra Pachauri is a liar?

Donna Laframboise who has researched the IPCC and is out with a new book exposing this shoddy -organization -

Rajendra Pachauri- the dodgy Dr.Doom

Yet even though the IPCC evaluates matters in which trillions of dollars are at stake, well into the 21st century it saw no need to even discuss conflict-of-interest. This organization is so arrogant, so used to being praised and admired, that its leaders failed to take the most ordinary of precautions.

Alas, this is only one of many troubling signs. In 2009 Pachauri assured a US Senate committee that his organization mobilizes "the best talent available across the world." On other occasions he has insisted that IPCC authors are at the top of their profession and are chosen for their impressive track records.


But as anyone who does a little math can discover for themselves, the IPCC has been relying on the expert judgment of 20-something graduate students for years.


In one instance, a young man who hadn't even acquired his Masters degree was recruited to be a lead author. In another, a woman 16 years away from completing her doctorate (and three years from the publication of her first academic paper) was one of only 21 people in the entire world selected by the IPCC to write about climate change and human health.


But why stop at students when you can recruit brazen activists, as well? Richard Moss has been involved with the IPCC for nearly two decades. During part of that time he was on the World Wildlife Fund's payroll – as a vice president, no less.


Richard Hare is considered a Greenpeace "legend." He has been one of its spokespeople since 1992 and was its chief climate negotiator in 2007. None of this prevented him from being admitted to the IPCC's inner circle. In 2007, Hare was one of only 40 people on the "core writing team" for the overall, big-picture IPCC summary known as the Synthesis Report.


Chairman Pachauri has further insisted that the IPCC bases its reports solely, only, and exclusively on research that has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals. In testimony before U.S. lawmakers he has said that the IPCC doesn't "settle for anything less." He has further declared that non-peer-reviewed material should be tossed "into the dustbin."


Yet it turns out that one in three sources relied on by the IPCC's landmark 2007 report didn't come within a mile of a peer-reviewed journal. Or, to rephrase that: one third of the sources referenced by the Climate Bible are to material the IPCC's own chairman has said belongs in the trashcan.


How could he have been so mistaken? How could he have repeatedly made the 100% peer-reviewed claim before he'd personally taken steps to ensure it had actually happened that way?

Read  it all.

Otherwise India is a free country

So is our political class okay with this, since it is their policies and illiberal attitudes that cause such State crimes-

Police in India’s Kashmir Valley detained and beat converts from Islam and were expected to arrest Christian workers after Muslim leaders alleged that Muslim youth were being “lured” to Christianity.


Police in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley picked up seven converts who were recently baptized in All Saints Church in Srinagar, a local Christian who spoke to the converts after their release on Nov. 2 told Compass. Srinagar is the summer capital of the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir and the main city of the Kashmir Valley.


The source, who requested anonymity, said police beat the converts and asked if Christians had given them money for their conversion. Most of the converts were from Budgam district, about 18 miles from Srinagar, and pastors there fearful of being arrested were in hiding, he added.

India's Gangster State

Yes, we are a free people - free to be beaten up by the State's goons in uniform following State's laws. Jai Hind!

So Google wants to take over the world?

Reading this one gets that ominous tingly feeling - we have seen too many movies about creepy corporates that, while providing a useful nay indispensable service, really want to take over the world(RoboCop I can think of offhand but I have seen others).

Google may still track your location, even if you prevent Latitude from blabbing to your friends. When you open a map, a little flashing crosshairs appears just to let you know that Google has you in its sights. But the tracking doesn’t stop when you close the map. Google monitors your location continuously, day and night, even if no apps are running.

-- snip --

Good programmers like finding clever ways to nudge users. If you visit Latitude’s Web page on your PC, for example, Google will ask you for permission to share your location. If you click “no,” you get an alert box with only one button — “go back.” (And get asked for permission again.) No is not an option.

Even as I type this post in Google Chrome to be published on a Google Blogger blog, with images found by using Google search and using Gmail as my primary mail, I have to say creepy sounds about right.

Google's motto is - Don't Be Evil.

But it is putting in place an apparatus and a network to potentially do a lot of evil.

Horror care

Readers of this blog know that I am wont to say that there is not much welfare in the welfare state or much compassion in the 'compassionate' policies of  the 'social justice' variety. Whatever be the theories, in practice it always means misery and death.

From John Hinderaker on Britain's NHS, that shining example of government health care-

We noted here that under socialized medicine in the U.K., the death panel process has been delegated to hospital staff who enter “do not resuscitate” orders on patients’ charts without the knowledge of the patient or his or her relatives. Now, another horror story about “The National Hell Service:”

A Mum died gasping for breath in hospital after she was WRONGLY given a “do not resuscitate” tag. The frantic husband of Immacolata Lacovara, 74, watched in horror as nurses stood by refusing to help.

Others involved elderly patients left starving, thirsty and in agony after being denied drug relief.
The case was revealed yesterday in the latest damning report on the hellish neglect suffered by elderly patients on wards across the nation.

The blunder over Mrs Lacovara — who died in North West London — was among 16 shocking cases highlighted by the Patients Association out of thousands of calls to its helpline.

So much callousness in this 'compassionate' system.

Arab winter approaching?

TROUBLED REVOLUTIONS

Fight against female genital mutilation (FGM) weakens post-Mubarak.

The Palestinian State Gets Anti-Air Missiles:

Haaretz reported yesterday the Hamas state in-all-but-name in Gaza is the beneficiary of the chaos of the collapse of the Qaddafi regime in Libya. The paper says that some of the late dictator’s arsenal of Russian-manufactured missiles have been successfully smuggled into Gaza and given Hamas forces a credible anti-aircraft capability.

Al Qaeda flag flies aloft Benghazi's courthouse:

Al Qaeda flag flies in Libya post-Qaddafi

The Arab spring threatens to become winter.

As American power declines, thanks to Obama, we shall see more and more of these incidents and eventually all out wars -

The (Israel-Cyprus Military)exercises are particularly noteworthy in light of a rumored incident over Cypriot airspace, where Israeli and Turkish planes may or may not have almost had an “aerial encounter.” If there are to be incidents in the area as American influence precipitously declines, the signal is presumably being sent–Cyprus and Israel will be on one side and Turkey will be on the other. Israel and Cyprus’s newly forged ties are in line with recent moves made by Athens and Sofia to solidify their mutual defense interests with Israel.

Is the American government run like a mafia where minions try to please and enrich their boss-

The dwindling band of federal taxpayers will be heartened to discover that its hard-earned dollars are not merely being sluiced to green start-ups to build unwanted eco-cars in Finland or used to buy guns for Mexican drug cartels to kill large numbers of people. They’re also being deployed to stimulate the publishing industry by purchasing huge numbers of the president’s books at public expense to give away to all the new friends America has around the world. From the Washington Times:

The U.S. Embassy in Egypt, for instance, spent $28,636 in August 2009 for copies of Mr. Obama’s best-selling 1995 memoir. Six weeks earlier, the embassy had placed another order for the same book for more than $9,000, federal purchasing records show.

So the U.S. Embassy in Cairo spent $38,000 on Dreams From My Father?

The Obama administration has been one of the most disgraceful in history.

American decline - sponsored by Barack Obama:

 Instead of hope and change, the Obama presidency has delivered decline and despair on a scale not seen in America since the dying days of the Carter administration. Both at home and abroad, the United States is perceived to be a sinking power, and with good reason. The big-spending interventionist economic policies of the current administration have been little short of disastrous, and have saddled the US with its biggest debts since 1945. The liberal experiment of the past few years has knocked the stuffing out of the American economy. Job creation has been barely non-existent, and millions of Americans are now significantly worse off than they were a few years ago. Even The New York Times has acknowledged "soaring poverty" in Obama's America, citing a Census Bureau report showing the number of Americans officially living below the poverty line (46.2 million) at its highest level for more than half a century, since 1959.

No hope, much change( for the worse).

If you are against economic inequality, you are for recession!

Economic falsehoods, like Green ones, have created a lot of misery and continue to do so. Myths like "Government spending stimulates the economy", "Government policies create jobs", "Anti-poverty programs reduce poverty", "Planning commission is staffed by knowledgeable experts", "Manmohan Singh is an intelligent economist" and hordes of others.

One such pernicious myth is that income inequality is bad, like you know, really bad.

Wrong! A CBO study finds that economic inequalities increase during good times and decrease during recessions.

Income inequality increases during good times and decreases during bad times, as the CBO noted:

[T]he distribution of market income became more unequal almost continuously between 1979 and 2007 except during the recessions in 1990–1991 and 2001.

This pattern is seen during every recession. It is a good thing for the federal government, too, that incomes have increased at the higher end since 1979, as this has resulted in a huge inflow of tax revenues. One of the reasons for Washington’s current deficits is that upper incomes are depressed, so that a relatively low share of GDP is being paid in income taxes.
Stories about the “richest” 1%, 5%, 20%, or whatever are inherently misleading because they implicitly assume that those groups are static. Of course, they are not. The two biggest reasons why families are in one quintile or another are 1) age and 2) the number of jobs held by members of the household. At any given moment, by definition, only 20% of households are in the top quintile, but probably more than half of all households are in that quintile at some point. It is a great thing for incomes in the top quintiles to be much higher than those in lower quintiles. That means that workers are not stuck in dead-end jobs that pay the same at age 50 as at age 20, but rather are able to take advantage of training, education and a growing economy to move up the ladder. “Income inequality” is another term for opportunity.

The CBO noted another interesting trend–membership in the top 1% is more meritocratic than ever:

The composition of income for the 1 percent of the population with the highest income changed significantly from 1979 to 2007, as the shares from labor and business income increased and the share of income represented by capital income decreased. That pattern is consistent with a longer-term trend: Over the entire 20th century, labor income has become a larger share of income for high-income taxpayers, while capital income has declined as a share of their income.

In other words, the top 1% earn their money, they don’t clip coupons.

(emphasis mine)

So if you are against economic inequality, you are for recession!

However, as the article notes, the usual idiots will see it as a justification for higher taxes on the rich. For like Pavlovian dogs, that is all they know to do.

Obama's Department of Justice screening a film glorifying mass murder?!

I know it doesn't sound nice but let's call a spade a spade and let's call environmentalism for what it is - a profoundly human hating cult.

On October 27, the DOJ is hosting a screening of Silent Spring at 1pm.

-- snip --

Sounds pretty tame, right? Wrong. Silent Spring is one of the most destructive books/movies ever made. The book claimed that DDT weakened some bird egg shells so badly that it threatened to render some species extinct. Leftist fans of Rachel Carson might not want to hear it, but it is hard to deny that Silent Spring has played a central role in the deaths of millions of human beings. How? Because Silent Spring led directly to the ban on DDT used to kill mosquitoes and keep mosquito borne-illnesses at bay for the cause of bird egg shell strength. Millions of humans died as a result of Rachel Carson’s work and eco-activism.

Malaria - sponsored by Greenpeace

America stabbed itself when it elected Obama. Now the question is if 2012 elections will begin the the process of the wound healing or if the knife would twist.



BTW, the author of the article is J.Christian Adams whose exposé of the Obama administration is our Book of the Month.

   

  Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department by J. Christian Adams

Dog bites man - Michael Moore lies.

OWS Supporter Michael Moore Lies on National Television About His Wealth: No I'm Not Worth Millions

When in fact-

  According to our friends at Celebrity Net Worth, Moore's fortune currently totals $50 million:
Fahrenheit 911 raked in $230 million in theaters and another $3 million in DVD sales. After the theaters take their traditional 50% cut, that leaves roughly $130 million. Take away marketing, production and distribution expenses and Moore is conservatively left with $80 million. Moore was able to secure a deal from Miramax which guaranteed him 27% of his film’s net revenues, or roughly $21.6 million. Michael also was entitled to 50% of the profits of Sicko which are estimated to be $17 million.

Moore wants to dress and act as if he's just a regular guy part of the 99 percenters, but he is every bit a multimillionaire doing everything in his power to make more money for himself.
He invests his fortune in stocks - including the Left's most-hated company Halliburton! - and isn't pro-union when it comes to managing his own business.

Liar, liar, huge pants on fire!

The mess that is the Socialist Republic of India

In India just about everything is controlled ('regulated') by a power mad and grasping elite that wrings and squeezes us painfully to mold us to the grotesque shape of their social engineering blueprints and then extorts us to relieve that pain just a little bit. Regulation creates corruption.The venal State feeds off it. We are supposed to accept, nay admire it is because it done in the name of poor, compassion, welfare, children....

This article in WSJ reminds us of the oppressive control of land by the State that is destroying property and property owners and creating general misery. Much like most things done by the Socialist Republic of India.

Land is increasingly the focus of political battles in India. Farmers have long complained that local governments seize their land and sell it to companies on the cheap.

And-

India's local governments use—and abuse—the power to take land by eminent domain with little compensation and transfer it to industry. Any genuine effort at land reform would start by limiting these powers.

To its credit, the government is finally trying to narrow the scope of such takings. In practice, however, the demand for land is such that the bill's obstructions may force more buyers to look to local governments for help, inevitably resulting in more cronyism. Real estate is already the source of much of India's corruption due to a welter of regulations that give officials huge discretionary power.

And-

These rules effectively weaken India's already feeble property rights. India stripped property of its core constitutional protection in 1978. It has also invested little in the process of registering land titles, which has spawned mafias that make a living by usurping deeds.

(emphasis mine)

Read it all and weep. However not much good that would do.

Battle 2012 - 20-20 vs. 9-9-9

I would settle for 0-1-0 (0% Business Tax, 1% Individual Flat Tax, 0% National Sales Tax) or 1-0-0
for a transitional period on the way to the ideal 0-0-0. We need to starve the beast that is the predatory state.

Rahul Gandhi compared to the Spice Girls and Anna Kournikova.

No, it's not a compliment.

Plus this-

If there is one party to be held responsible for damaging the aspirations of a free India it has to be the Congress. Why? Because for most part it was Congress that was dividing the nation at every single opportunity. The two Indias, which is RG’s pet theory, is a creation of his own party. What does it say about a two bit man-child who runs off to some European location to celebrate his birthday? If anyone has to introspect it has to be the Congress and not the people. In July 2011 RG is reported to have stated that “UP is being run by Dalals”. Hmm! Who’s running the Congress?

(emphasis mine)

I have no idea!

I'm afraid the clueless boy-king is going to become another in an unending line of clueless prime ministers. When will the nightmare end?

Moral foreign policy, my foot!

Australia, Britain and Canada vs. India, South Africa, Sri Lanka and others on human rights-

A proposal to appoint a Commonwealth human rights commissioner to steer a more proactive rights agenda looks set to test a leaders' summit this week, with host Australia backing the plan but India and South Africa reported to oppose it.

I don't know if the idea of a human rights commissioner is a good idea or not but the the historical view of the developing countries has been that we shall bloody well do what we wish to our subjects, you mind your own business, you Imperialists! And by the way we demand more foreign aid!



Which is exactly what they have done -the ruling elites of the Third World have royally screwed their hapless denizens including here in India while the guilt ridden West often meekly looked away. And when it dared to whimper, what it received was a barrage of indignant macho lectures from the two bit Third World leaders and intellectuals.

Thus, as America in particular and the West in general were excoriated in such gaseous chambers as NAM (Non Aligned Movement)summits, nobody bothered that among the ranks were such distinguished butchers as Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi or Castro. That they slaughtered their own people and in large numbers didn't matter to the anti-imperialist crowd, other wise ultra-prickly about any perceived insult from the West.

This, laughably, was known as India's 'moral'and 'principled' foreign policy!

Moral, my foot!

Scoundrels looking out for other scoundrels- Russia tries to block report on Iran nukes

Plus this-

Since the beginning of the last decade, Iran has played Western diplomats for fools with Russian assistance. Every effort to reach out to Tehran, including the Bush administration’s try at outsourcing diplomacy via France and Germany and Barack Obama’s celebrated and disastrous “engagement” policy has been a failure, though not from lack of Western effort. The Iranians, with Russia standing by as their helpful partner, have become experts at stringing along American and European envoys with proposals about stopping their nuclear plans or rendering it harmless. But every time even one of these largely symbolic measures gets close to fruition, the ayatollahs back away.

Note that this is very much against the media narrative of West itching to bomb Iran. If fools were to vanish from the media offices and the universities, only janitors would be left. And they very likely would do a better job.

OWS protester -Power of greed makes you work long hours.

Or maybe it's the work ethic thing, dude. Not something that most OWS protesters would be caught dead with.

OWS Zombies

Sauvik Chakraverti takes on the thankless task of explaining to the editors of a top mainstream newspaper that REFORM means LIBERTY or else it is not a reform at all.

Good luck with that.

This Diwali, Stop Hesitating and Donate, says Shefali Anand.

Yes, please do
Support LIBERTY NEWS CENTRAL. We are among the very few genuine liberty lovers in the this vast land ruled by collectivists, brain washed by leftist academics and informed by a generally clueless media.

Donate via Paypal

As our not so catchy but direct slogan says-
Even 10 dollars will do - we are not finicky!

Plus this from Ms. Anand's article-

Recent studies have shown that we give away a much smaller percentage of our wealth than our counterparts in Western countries

Yet for decades we have been fed on the notion that the culture of the West is a callous one, indifferent to compassion. Like much else peddled by the academic-intellectual-media axis of evil, pure poppycock!

Have gun, must shoot, will kill -the welfare state mentality

Bjorn Lomborg : Government shouldn't be picking Solyndras

The lesson from the federal government's failed backing of Solyndra is not that the United States should abandon energy innovation. It is that the government should not try to pick industry winners in the race to replace fossil fuels with an alternative.

Solyndra is the now-bankrupt solar-panel manufacturer that received a $535 million federal loan guarantee in 2009..

-- snip --

But the danger is when politicians and bureaucrats attempt to predict which technologies will be winners and back them to build an industry.

The danger is to the taxpayers not to the politicians and bureaucrats who retire away with their loot on generous pensions, lucrative lecture tours, ceremonial titles and presidentships of corporate and NGO entities.

Plus what is the point of having power if not to exercise it, whatever may be the harm done?  Have gun, must shoot, will kill -that is the welfare state mentality.

China jails former officials for leaking data

The two men leaked data on gross domestic product, consumer prices and money supply to securities industry employees between June 2009 and January 2011, an official with China's top prosecutorial body told a news conference on Monday.

-- snip --

"The leaking of national macroeconomic data harms economic operations, prevents fair market competition and affects government credibility, thereby causing heavy losses to the interests of the country, society and individuals," said Li Zhongcheng, deputy director general of the Procuratorial Department of Dereliction of Duty and Infringement on Citizen's Rights, which polices misconduct among bureaucrats.

(emphasis mine)

While transparency is worshiped in West, such basic data as "gross domestic product, consumer prices and money supply" are national secrets. For chrissake!!

It's almost as if the ruling Chinese communists take their economy to be a weapon of war.

TROUBLED REVOLUTIONS
Moderate Islamist Party Set to Win Tunisian Vote

Tunisia's moderate Islamist Nahda Party appears set for a decisive victory in the country's elections for a constituent assembly

-- snip --

If official results, which may be released as early as Tuesday, support those results, it would be a substantially better showing for the Islamists than many predicted. The center-left Tekatil Party and a party lead by a leading human-rights activist, the Congress Party for the Republic, looked set to come in second and third. The party most predicted to place second, the staunchly secular Progressive Democratic Party and Nahda's most outspoken critics, did far worse than expected.

So is it good news that they are moderate or bad news that they are Islamist? Hasn't the history of Islamic parties been that the moderates eventually get swept aside into the dustbin of history?

Plus can there really be a moderate Islamist party?

Questions, questions ....

We were wrong! Obama is not about class envy and warfare-

The president and his advisers are correct when they say his policies are not class warfare — that would imply that one class is prioritized over another. Looking at the results of his policies, everyone loses, regardless of whether they are rich or poor.

Heh!

Is this the height of irony or what? Mexico is complaining about illegal immigrants to US returning back to Mexico!

After Arizona passed a mandatory E-Verify law in 2007, lots of illegal aliens left the state and headed back across the border. Mexican officials were outraged at the burdens imposed on them by these immigrants

-- snip --

Rafael Fernandez de Castro, head of the International Relations studies at the Monterrey Technological Institute, told the conference that about 200,000 Mexicans per year are returning to their country, and that Mexican schools are facing a new problem: tens of thousands of Mexican children are coming back each year with little or no Spanish.

As a famous blogger is wont to say, heh!

Is this alright or is it as crazy as it sounds to me -

The Indian government expects a fiscal deficit (you know, the difference between the amount it burns and the loot it hauls in) to be Rs 412,817 crore ( I crore = 10 million). It is going to borrow Rs 470,000 crore this fiscal year, up 53,000 crore from last estimate! That sounds like a lot of money either way.

I'm not an economist. Far from it. But I became interested in this science(?) when I learnt that so much our blood, sweat and tears went into paying off the parasitic, blood sucking state. I'm still stumbling my way around the labyrinthine and tortuous jargon blocked alleyways of Economics.

So somebody tell me - why can't these professional bugs politicos live within their our means? Why do they have to spend like a senseless drunk and borrow like no tomorrow? Is this 'normal' economics? Or is it as mad as hatter?


Update-

The Economic Times-

India's widening fiscal deficit has triggered fresh worries about the possibility of a ratings downgrade of the nation by a leading ratings agency.

 Though no ratings agency has officially hinted at this outcome yet, the market is rife with speculation that India is vulnerable to a ratings downgrade amid the slowdown in the economy.

 A section of the market feels such a move could happen if the RBI raises policy rates on Tuesday for the thirteenth time since February 2010.

 Economists see fiscal deficit widening up to 5.6% of GDP in the current fiscal against government's target of 4.6%.

 Average yields on government bonds have firmed up further of late on worries about higher borrowing and rising policy rates. A ratings downgrade could trigger the next bout of correction in stocks, brokers said.

So it is mad as hatter then? 

Best of comments-

No one disputes the importance of inflation control. If the government has failed in fiscal control, should ordinary people be punished for it. Housing loan EMI has become unbearable. In addtion to increased prices for all consumer items from cooking gas to vegetables, we have to pay high EMIs. Should we sell our houses, repay the loans and shift to some unauthorised slum! There is a saying in my language'if you lose in the market, go and blame your mother for it'. Should government's failure be blamed on people.

By S.K.Nair at this article on the inability of the government or the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) to control rampant inflation and on the impending interest rate hikes.

All Utopian schemes come to a bad end-

The single currency is close to collapse

But not before they have made many lives miserable.

Good news-
Cult of Global Warming Is Losing Influence

Also-

On Oct. 22, 1844, thousand of Millerites, having sold all their possessions, climbed to the top of hills in Upstate New York to await the return of Jesus and the end of the world. They suffered "the great disappointment" when it didn't happen.

I suspect when everyone learns that Global Warming is not the bugbear it is made out to be, there will be many disappointed souls in the environmental movement. They want disaster to happen to, you know, teach a lesson to mankind.

Americans are dying for these people ? -

  Hamid Karzai has said if the United States and Pakistan ever went to war, Afghanistan would back Islamabad

Wow! It's as if they deserve Taliban.

TROUBLED REVOLUTIONS
Happy days are here again in Libya-

.... the chairman of the National Transitional Council and de facto president, announced that Libyan laws would have Sharia as their “basic source.” Just to get the ball rolling, he immediately lifted one law from Gaddafi’s era that he said was in conflict with Sharia — the law banning polygamy.

Don't get me wrong. As a libertarian I'm all for polygamy - but in a non-discriminatory way, for women as well as men. Let anyone have four wives or ten husbands or a hundred if one so chooses. It's about happiness and freedom and, as they said in Kung Fu Panda 2, inner peace, not social oppression.

The fate of India has been to be ruled by economic idiots

Growth equals inflation -RBI (Reserve Bank of India) and the government continue to play this false narrative of  economic growth causing inflation.

Despite the recent spate of concerns about moderating growth, the Reserve Bank of India came out with guns blazing against inflation. The higher than expected 50 basis points hike caught the pundits and markets wrong footed.

-- snip --

The bank is not overly concerned about growth moderating. It says that it will “manage the risk of growth falling significantly below trend.”

Even when they have a clue-

The bank also noted the possibility that commodity prices may still go up because of abundant liquidity even if demand is subdued.

they are clueless.

These eminent experts do 'know' that prices go up even if demand goes down due to "abundant liquidity". And yet they continue to act as if that knowing did not really register in the important areas of their cerebral cortex. How did the liquidity become abundant - did it just drop from the skies? They have no idea that they collectively (politicians, state economists, planners, state bankers) are the cause of general stress now felt by the common man.


 Henry Hazlitt had something to say about it (What You Should Know About Inflation) in 1960-

Yet the plain truth is that our political leaders have brought on inflation by their own money and fiscal policies. They are promising to fight with their right hand the conditions brought on with their left.

Inflation, always and everywhere, is primarily caused by an increase in the supply of money and credit.

This is so important that it is worth repeating and highlighting-

Inflation, always and everywhere, is primarily caused by an increase in the supply of money and credit.

I strongly recommend reading all of it. Pdf of Hazlitt's book is here.
His book came out over 50 years ago! How the things have not changed. False narratives and bad ideas are like zombies - nothing seems to kill them.


The Indian government has been peddling this hogwash of 'Growth equals inflation' to shirk blame for the high inflation spreading misery for the last few years but I'm afraid these people really do believe it. After all, India's Prime Minister is a lifelong government and academic economist as is his cabal of economic advisers. Amartya Sen and Keynes are their models not Milton Friedman or Von Mises. Times change, data changes -but the musty and stifling bureaucratic mindset of state economists and their colleagues tenured in the universities is a constant.

Just as the fate of Russia has been to be ruled by strongmen, the fate of India has been to be ruled by economic idiots.

Liberal columnist Michael Tomasky asks -

Is (Herman)Cain not that bright?

He gets a response in the comments(by hound)-

on Cains brightness
- bachelors degrees in mathematics, masters in computer Science
- he was actually a rocket scientist, he computed missile trajectories for the Navy
- VP of Data systems for Pillsbury
this was before he was 35
after 35
- in 3 years he toook 400 of Burger Kings poorest performing restuarants and transformed them into the best performing in the nation
- in 14 months he transformed Godfathers from near bankruptcy to a prefit making chain
- Chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.

those are only some of his achievements, compare that to Barrack Obama's

Mr Tomasky is berating Cain on the fact he is not a professional politician as Obama is. To me that is a big plus, not a negative.

Yes, what exactly are Obama's achievements? Apart from writing successful books - about himself!

A better question is -
Are Tomasky and the hordes of other Obamabots in the media bright?

And am I bright to pose such a question when the answer is obvious?
As stupid as asking if Barkha Dutt is bright.

There is a predictable dreariness about Obama - his championing of one bad, already failed idea after another:

Increased infrastructure spending has significant support in Washington these days. President Obama wants a new federal infrastructure bank, and some members of both parties want to pass big highway and air-traffic-control funding bills.

-- snip --

Their histories show that the federal government shouldn’t be in the infrastructure business. Rather, state governments and the private sector are best equipped to provide it.

-- snip --

Some of the highest-profile failures include the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. That disaster dramatically proved the shortcomings of the Corps’ approach to flood control, which it had stubbornly defended despite outside criticism. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was like a dreadful repeat. The flooding was in large part a man-made disaster stemming from poor engineering by the Corps and misdirected funding by Congress.

(emphasis mine)

Wait that can't be!  Katrina was unleashed by the evil Bush to hurt black people!

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would rather see turks die than to have them rescued by Israelis -

"Over 1,000 persons are feared dead in the aftermath of a quake that measured 7.2 on the Richter scale. With workers battling to save those trapped in collapsed buildings in towns and cities near the Iranian border, it’s more than likely that Israel’s experienced rescue teams — which participated in previous earthquake relief efforts in Turkey — would be of value to the effort. But according to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has told the Israelis they are not wanted. Erdoğan would apparently prefer to see his compatriots die rather than to allow Jews to help them."

Too often Jew hatred is cloaked in 'protest' against Israel's policies. When will this racism end? And why are the world elites, uber-sensitive about Western racism, blind to it if not actually supportive?

Top news

Top News is going to be a running section here. This shall be about that which is highlighted at the top of this page but in more detail than is possible there.

The first Top News is about the continuing "Green" energy fail. Why the scary quotes around green? When something kills and creates general misery, the scary quotes are the least of the opprobrium it deserves.

Green taxes now killing more Brits per year than car crashes

Patrick Michaels on the fool's rush for the "Green" energy-

Our friends in the U.K. and Europe are especially green.  Just hop off the plane in London and pick up the papers.  Global warming is everywhere, and, for decades, the religion’s been that carbon dioxide reductions are fine, virtuous, and they’re going to make everyone rich. I have a social security system I would like to sell them.

------- snip ---------

At the same time, consumers got an extra bill to support wind farms that, because of the inconstancy of the wind, operate at 25% of their capacity (figure from the British Wind Energy Association) or 8% (according to E.on, a large operator of UK wind farms).

Guess what?  Electricity prices have gone through the roof.  The average U.K. household bill is a tad under $200 per month, and so the thermostat goes down.  It’s pretty chilly there for much of the year, and a cold house has consequences.  A study just came out today on the health costs of what they call “fuel poverty”, commissioned by the Energy and Climate Change Secretary (don’t we need one of  those?), Chris Huhne.  Bottom line:   the chill from green taxes is now killing more Brits per year than car crashes.

London has suddenly awoken to the costs of indiscriminate greenness and is proposing to reduce the solar subsidies and — this is big — now threatens the multibillion dollar subsidies for its massive (and massively ugly) wind power scam.

(emphasis mine)


Do read the whole thing.


And speaking of car crashes, Sauvik Chakraverti points out the State failure on road accidents in his usual mild way (Fuck The Indian Police, And Fuck Chidambaram, Too - For Gross Dereliction Of Duty)
-

It's official! A report by the highways ministry has said that 1,60,000 people are killed on our roads every year, and more than 5,00,000 are injured, most of them seriously. A Times of India news report adds that a Member of the Planning Commission, BK Chaturvedi, estimated that road accidents cost India 1 lakh crore rupees annually - that is, 1,000,000,000,000 rupees.
------- snip ---------

Chidambaram (India's Home Minister), to me, seems to be a "house-trained" Police Minister, a puppet in the hands of his officials, all of whom are deeply involved in political skullduggery. The man is effeminate - and thoroughly incompetent. He - and the entire police top brass - need to be taken to task over the FACT that some 1000 people per day are killed or permanently disabled on our fucked-up roads.

(emphasis mine)



Green and State fail go hand in hand, in fact hand in glove.