The Death Of Global Warming Skepticism, Or The Birth Of Straw Men?

Editor's Note:  This article suggests that there are positive aspects to the warming trend, but indigenous populations worldwide report that the warming trend has already produced extreme, often negative effects on the environment in different territories.  This article is chosen because it spells out the most obvious point: the Berkeley Study is merely confirming a past warming trend - not the cause of the warming trend.  Timing is also a likely factor for the BBC's hysterical article about the study, which appears to be so clean that it contradicts the desired outcome of its funding sources.   Reporting of the Berkeley study occurs two weeks after the court in Virginia ruled against Michael Mann and his ridiculous attempt to prevent public disclosure of the data used in his taxpayer-funded studies.   If the Berkeley study was as rigorous as they claim, shouldn't this have been the appropriate action for East Anglia instead of investing in a PR firm?

Forbes Magazine
James Taylor

The mainstream media has been spiking the football in the proverbial end zone ever since a paper released last Friday claimed two-thirds of global temperature stations show some warming occurred during the past century. The media have been claiming the new paper delivers a death blow to skepticism, but the paper itself brings almost nothing new to the global warming debate and instead shows how far global warming advocates are from presenting credible evidence of a crisis. Rather than delivering a death blow to skepticism, the media has merely invented and shredded an insignificant straw man.


University of California, Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller analyzed land-based temperature readings from temperature stations around the world and found two-thirds indicate warming temperatures and one-third indicate cooling temperatures. As a result, “Global warming is real,” summarized Muller in an editorial he wrote in the October 21 Wall Street Journal .

Muller acknowledged that many of the stations produced incomplete temperature records and had poor quality control. He claimed that he nevertheless included them in the study to avoid “data-selection bias.” Scientists such as Anthony Watts have pointed out several additional flaws in the Muller paper. But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Muller’s paper is flawless in its conclusion that two-thirds of land-based temperature stations report warming rather than cooling. Even under such an assumption, Muller’s paper does nothing to dispel skeptical objections to the theory that humans are causing a global warming crisis.

The case for a human-induced global warming crisis requires the demonstration of several components. These include (1) that global temperatures are rising, (2) that global temperatures will likely continue to rise in the future, (3) that the rise in temperatures is or will be sufficiently rapid and substantial to cause enormous negative consequences that far outweigh the benefits of such warming and (4) that human emissions of greenhouse gases account for all such temperature rise or enough of the temperature rise to elevate the temperature rise to crisis levels.

Gadhafi son seeks flight to Hague war crimes court

The Vancouver Sun

Saif al-Islam Gadhafi

DUBAI - Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, fearing for his life if captured in Libya, has tried to arrange for an aircraft to fly him out of his desert refuge and into the custody of the Hague war crimes court, a Libyan official said on Thursday.

Details were sketchy and confirmation not available but a picture has built up since his father's grisly killing while in the hands of vengeful rebel fighters a week ago that suggests Moammar Gadhafi's 39-year-old heir-apparent has taken refuge among Sahara nomads and is seeking a safe haven abroad.

Even if he can still draw on some of the vast fortune the Gadhafi clan built up abroad during 42 years in control of North Africa's main oilfields, his indictment by the International Criminal Court at The Hague over his efforts to crush the revolt limits the options open to Saif al-Islam.

That may explain an apparent willingness, in communications monitored by intelligence services and shared with Libya's interim rulers, to discuss a surrender to the ICC, whereas his mother and surviving siblings simply fled to Algeria and Niger.

The Court, which relies on signatory states to hand over suspects, said it was trying to confirm the whereabouts and intentions of Saif al-Islam and ex-intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, the third man indicted along with the elder Gadhafi.

A source with Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC), which drove the Gadhafis from power in Tripoli in August, told Reuters the two surviving indictees were together, protected by Tuareg nomads, in the rugged wilderness of the "Triangle", close to the borders of Algeria and Niger.

"Saif is concerned about his safety," the source said. "He believes handing himself over is the best option for him."

The younger Gadhafi, once seen as a potential liberal reformer but who adopted a belligerent,

win-or-die persona at his father's side this year, was looking for help from abroad, possibly Algeria or Tunisia, to fly out and take his chances at The Hague, where there is no death penalty:

"He wants to be sent an aircraft," the NTC source said by telephone from Libya. "He wants assurances."

COURT SEEKS CONFIRMATION

ICC spokesman Fadi El Abdallah said the court was trying to confirm the NTC comments and work out how to move the suspects:

Military to Have a Greater Influence in CIA Intelligence Reports

Washington Post
Kimberly Dozier

David Petraeus

WASHINGTON — David Petraeus, the former general who led the Afghanistan war and now heads the CIA, has ordered his intelligence analysts to give greater weight to the opinions of troops in the fight, U.S. officials said.

CIA analysts now will consult with battlefield commanders earlier in the process as they help create elements of a National Intelligence Estimate on the course of the war, to more fully include the military’s take on the conflict, U.S. officials say.

Their input could improve the upcoming report card for the war.

The most recent U.S. intelligence assessment offered a dim view of progress in Afghanistan despite the counterinsurgency campaign Petraeus oversaw there and painted a stark contrast to the generally upbeat predictions of progress from Petraeus and other military leaders. Petraeus has made no secret of his frustration with recent negative assessments coming primarily from the CIA, and said during his confirmation hearing that he planned to change the way the civilian analysts grade wars.

The CIA’s analysis makes up the bulk of national intelligence estimates, which help guide the White House and Congress in drafting future policy.

The CIA says Petraeus’ tweaks to the agency’s part of the assessment will add to its accuracy, not tilt the results, and that military commanders’ views were always part of the equation.

“Analytic debate and discussion haven’t been chilled; they’ve been promoted,” CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood said.

The change has been backed by National Intelligence Director James Clapper, another senior U.S. official said.

VIDEO - Marine Scott Olsen Moments Before He Was Shot By The Oakland Police, Olsen Now In 'Critical' Condition

Daily Bail

If the police claim that Scott Olsen attacked them, show them this clip.

Olsen remains in critical condition. Officials at Highland Hospital in Oakland are refusing further comment at this time. At first, Doctors told Olsen's friends that he was stable. Now they're being told that his skull has been fractured and his brain is beginning to swell. Neurologists are in the process of determining whether or not he will require surgery.

According to Keith Shannon, a friend who served with Olsen in Iraq, Olsen was shot in the head with a tear gas or smoke canister, and he has the scar to prove it. Police policy specifically prohibits the firing of these weapons at a person's head.

Meanwhile, Oakland police admit that they used tear gas and baton rounds, but have denied the use of flash bang grenades (even though this video shows conclusively that an officer lobbed a flash grenade into the crowd attending to Olsen).

Olsen hails from Wisconsin, served tours of Iraq in 2006 and 2007, and is active in both Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Address for the hospital where Scott Olsen is recovering, if you wish to send a card.

Highland Hospital
1411 E. 31st Street
Oakland, CA 94602

Oakland Policeman Throws Flash Grenade Into Crowd Trying To Help Scott Olsen

Endgame: When Debt is Fraud, Debt Forgiveness is the Last and Only Remedy

OfTwoMinds

We hold this to be self-evident: When Debt is Fraud, Debt Forgiveness is the Last and Only Remedy. Today I present an important guest essay by long-time contributor Zeus Yiamouyiannis, who suggests that when debt is essentially fraudulent, then debt forgiveness is both the logical and the only remedy. In case you missed his previous analyses on oftwominds.com, I list some of Zeus's previous essays at the end of the entry.

---

Endgame: When Debt is Fraud, Debt Forgiveness is the Last and Only Remedy, by Zeus Yiamouyiannis, Ph.D., copyright 2011.
Introduction

Finally serious economists are considering a position I have been maintaining and writing about since the 2008 financial meltdown. Whatever its name— erasure, repudiation, abolishment, cancellation, jubilee—debt forgiveness, will have to eventually emerge forefront in global efforts to solve an ongoing systemic financial crisis.

“On a grand scale the only way to erase counterfeit money and (counterfeit) assets of hundreds of trillions of dollars is to erase the debts associated with those fake assets. (Let me underscore again, these are not “toxic” assets, they are fake assets.)… Forgiveness in general, and forgiveness of debt in particular, stand as virtues if they free us up to acknowledge, address, and learn from our culpability, start anew, and create forward.” ( The Big Squeeze, Part 3: The Quiet Rebellion: Civil Disobedience, Local Markets, and Debt Erasure (January 29, 2011)

Debt forgiveness, therefore, accomplishes two important things. It eliminates the increasing and outsized portion of productive enterprise to pay off unproductive obligations, and it clears the ground for new opportunities, new thinking, invention, and entrepreneurialism. This is why the ability to declare bankruptcy is so essential in the pursuit of both happiness and innovation.

Currently we are mired in a “new normal” and calls for “austerity” which are nothing more than the delusional efforts of a status quo to avoid the consequences of its own error and fraud and to profit evermore. So bedazzled by the false wealth created by debt multiplication and its concomitant fantasy of ever-higher returns, this status quo continues to be stupidly amazed that people are not spending and that the economy is not picking up. But how could it be otherwise?

America's Endless Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

Global Research
Jack A. Smith

The 10th anniversary of Washington's invasion, occupation and seemingly endless war in Afghanistan was observed Oct. 7, but despite President Barack Obama's pledge to terminate the U.S. "combat mission" by the end of 2014, American military involvement will continue many years longer.

The Afghan war is expanding even further, not only with increasing drone attacks in neighboring Pakistani territory but because of U.S. threats to take far greater unilateral military action within Pakistan unless the Islamabad government roots out "extremists" and cracks down harder on cross-border fighters.

Washington's tone was so threatening that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to assure the Pakistani press Oct. 21 that the U.S. did not plan a ground offensive against Pakistan. The next day, Afghan President Hamid Karzai shocked Washington by declaring "God forbid, If ever there is a war between Pakistan and America, Afghanistan will side with Pakistan.... If Pakistan is attacked and if the people of Pakistan needs Afghanistan’s help, Afghanistan will be there with you.”

At the same time, Washington has just suffered a spectacular setback in Iraq, where the Obama Administration has been applying extraordinary pressure on the Baghdad government for over a year to permit many thousands of U.S. troops to remain indefinitely after all American forces are supposed to withdraw at the end of this year.

President Obama received the Iraqi government's rejection from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki Oct. 21, and promptly issued a public statement intended to completely conceal the fact that a long-sought U.S. goal has just been obliterated, causing considerable disruption to U.S. plans. Obama made a virtue of necessity by stressing that "Today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year."

This article will first discuss the situation in Afghanistan after 10 years, then take up the Iraq question and what the U.S. may do to compensate for a humiliating and disruptive rebuff.

The United States is well aware it will never win a decisive victory in Afghanistan. At this point, the Obama Administration is anxious to convert the military stalemate into a form of permanent truce, if only the Taliban were willing to accept what amounts to a power sharing deal that would allow Washington to claim the semblance of success after a decade of war.

In addition President Obama seeks to retain a large post-"withdrawal" military presence throughout the country mainly for these reasons:

• To protect its client regime in Kabul led by Karzai, as well as Washington's other political an commercial interests in the country, and to maintain a menacing military presence on Iran's eastern border, especially if U.S. troops cannot now remain in Iraq.

• To retain territory in Central Asia for U.S. and NATO military forces positioned close to what Washington perceives to be its two main (though never publicly identified) enemies — China and Russia — at a time when the American government is increasing its political pressure on both countries. Obama is intent upon transforming NATO from a regional into a global adjunct to Washington's quest for retaining and extending world hegemony. NATO's recent victory in Libya is a big advance for U.S. ambitions in Africa, even if the bulk of commercial spoils go to France and England. A permanent NATO presence in Central Asia is a logical next step. In essence, Washington's geopolitical focus is expanding from the Middle East to Central Asia and Africa in the quest for resources, military expansion and unassailable hegemony, especially from the political and economic challenge of rising nations of the global south, led China.

There has been an element of public deception about withdrawing U.S. "combat troops" from Iraq and Afghanistan dating from the first Obama election campaign in 2007-8. Combat troops belong to combat brigades. In a variant of bait-and-switch trickery, the White House reported that all combat brigades departed Iraq in August 2010. Technically this is true, because those that did not depart were simply renamed "advise and assist brigades." According to a 2009 Army field manual such brigades are entirely capable, "if necessary," of shifting from "security force assistance" back to combat duties.

In Afghanistan, after the theoretical pullout date, it is probable that many "advise and assist brigades" will remain along with a large complement of elite Joint Special Operations Forces strike teams (SEALs, Green Berets, etc.) and other officially "non-combat" units — from the CIA, drone operators, fighter pilots, government security employees plus "contractor security" personnel, including mercenaries. Thousands of other "non-combat" American soldiers will remain to train the Afghan army.

According to an Oct. 8 Associated Press dispatch, "Senior U.S. officials have spoken of keeping a mix of 10,000 such [special operations-type] forces in Afghanistan, and drawing down to between 20,000 and 30,000 conventional forces to provide logistics and support. But at this point, the figures are as fuzzy as the future strategy." Estimates of how long the Pentagon will remain in Afghanistan range from 2017 to 2024 to "indefinitely."

Obama marked the 10th anniversary with a public statement alleging that "Thanks to the extraordinary service of these [military] Americans, our citizens are safer and our nation is more secure"— the most recent of the continuous praise of war-fighters and the conduct of these wars of choice from the White House since the 2001 bombing, invasion and occupation.

Just two days earlier a surprising Pew Social Trend poll of post-9/11 veterans was made public casting doubt about such a characterization. Half the vets said the Afghanistan war wasn't worth fighting in terms of benefits and costs to the U.S. Only 44% thought the Iraq war was worth fighting. One-third opined that both wars were not worth waging. Opposition to the wars has been higher among the U.S. civilian population. But it's unusual in a non-conscript army for its veterans to emerge with such views about the wars they volunteered to fight.

The U.S. and its NATO allies issued an unusually optimistic assessment of the Afghan war on Oct. 15, but it immediately drew widespread skepticism. According to the New York Times the next day, "Despite a sharp increase in assassinations and a continuing flood of civilian casualties, NATO officials said that they had reversed the momentum of the Taliban insurgency as enemy attacks were falling for the first time in years.... [This verdict] runs counter to dimmer appraisals from some Afghan officials and other international agencies, including the United Nations. With the United States preparing to withdraw 10,000 troops by the end of this year and 23,000 more by next October, it raises questions about whether NATO’s claims of success can be sustained."

Less than two weeks earlier German Gen. Harald Kujat, who planned his country's military support mission in Afghanistan, declared that "the mission fulfilled the political aim of showing solidarity with the United States. But if you measure progress against the goal of stabilizing a country and a region, then the mission has failed."

Occupy Oakland protests - live coverage

Guardian

Police used tear gas to disperse an Occupy Oakland march overnight, with reports of injuries from rubber bullets or baton rounds. Follow live developments here

Occupy Oakland protesters trying to make a stand and protect their encampment at Frank Ogawa plaza run from tear gas deployed by police. 

10am: Good morning. Police used teargas at Occupy Oakland overnight after scuffles broke out between officers and protesters demonstrating against dozens of arrests.

The 1,000 strong march was intended to reclaim the occupations original base at Frank Ogawa plaza, which police cleared in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

At least 85 people were arrested as the camp was cleared.

Sam Jones writes that on Tuesday afternoon, protesters marched through the streets of Oakland towards city hall, vowing to retake the plaza. During the march, a small group scuffled with police not far from the city centre, and several were arrested.

Reuters reported that police dispersed the crowd with teargas and what appeared to be a stun grenade.
At Frank Ogawa Plaza, police ordered protesters to move away and they were largely co-operative.
"I'm here because I'm incredibly sad and incredibly angry," said one protester, Samsarah Morgan. "I'm hoping our city government comes to their senses and stops dealing with us like a fascist state."
Another protester, Jeremy Tully, a 30-year-old internet company worker, accused the authorities of using unnecessary force.

"I left work early today to come and stand up against the kind of repression that happened this morning," he said.

City chiefs said they had told protesters last Thursday to cease camping and cooking at the plaza. More warnings were issued on Friday and Monday.

Report: US, Afghan Troops Forced Locals to Walk Mined Road

Military News

Villagers in Afghanistan say they were forced to walk ahead of Afghan and U.S. Soldiers along roads in areas believed to be mined by the Taliban.

National Public Radio reports villagers said the Afghan and U.S. troops pulled them from their homes one evening in early September and forced them to walk in front of the troops for more than a mile in the Panjwai district, southwest of Kandahar city.

No one was injured, but if the incident happened, it would appear to violate the Geneva Conventions governing treatment of civilians, NPR said.

The Afghan general in charge of Afghan troops in the Panjwai district and Panjwai's district governor denied the villagers' accounts, while a spokesman for NATO's joint command said the incident was under investigation.

 

The Panjwai district had been a Taliban stronghold until the U.S. troop surge in 2010 started to displace insurgents, NPR said. The Taliban now use roadside bombs and suicide bombers to fight there, said Faizal Mahmud, the deputy head of Panjwai's council of elders.

He said scores of villagers at a district meeting hall in Panjwai complained last month they had been taken from their homes and forced to walk along roadway in an area believed to be mined by the Taliban.

NPR said local residents corroborated Mahmud's account.

Ahmad, a 22-year-old from Zangabat, said Soldiers forced him to walk along what he believed a mined road.

"[Soldiers] kept telling us to show the mines," Ahmad told NPR. "We said we didn't know where the Taliban planted mines. Then they told us to move forward to the next village [and] on the way if anything happens, you are responsible for the consequences. We kept praying, 'Oh, God, save us.' "

Hillary Clinton knew of Qaddafi ‘White Flag’ truce: US drone fired at Qaddafi convoy after negotiated truce

Asia Tribune

Libyan Leader Muammar Qaddafi was traveling under a negotiated “White Flag” truce last Thursday in an agreement to leave Libya. More claims from sources inside Misrata, Libya that the Libyan National Transitional Council did in fact agree to allow Qaddafi and his convoy safe passage out of Libya.

In addition rebel sources in Misrata claim US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was informed of the “White Flag” truce negotiated and agreed to by Libya’s NTC while visiting Libya Wednesday October 19.

A widely read Internet blog site Larry Sinclair.org reveals the above information noting that the site received them from reliable sources inside Libya.

The question now emerge is whether Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama engage in the firing on a White Flag convoy with the intent to assist in the capture and murder of Libyan Leader Muammar Qaddafi?

The web site Larry Sinclair.org further reports: “It is our opinion that the information received from our sources inside Libya is factual. It has also been reported that journalists were not immediately allowed to report from the site of the US Drone attack on Qaddafi’s convoy until the rebels had the opportunity to dispose of any remaining evidence of the “White Flags” which were clearly connected to the convoy vehicles.”

The question today is: Was Secretary Clinton told of the “White Flag” truce giving Qaddafi safe passage out of Libya? Did Secretary Clinton use this information to prepare a US Drone attack on Qaddafi’s “White Flag” convoy? Who authorized the US Predator Drone strike on the “White Flag” convoy? Will Barack Obama be called to answer for the US firing on a “White Flag” convoy?

Wednesday October 19 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Libya meeting with the Libyan armed rebels. It has come to the attention of Larry Sinclair.org Web Site via sources inside Libya that the Qaddafi convoy was traveling under a White Flag of truce which sources say had been negotiated with Qaddafi. If the information concerning a negotiated truce to allow Qaddafi to leave Libya is true and verifiable, and the United States was involved in or even made aware of this agreement, the US Drone strike on the convoy would be in direct violation of the Geneva Convention and a war crime.