08/6/15

Ernest Moniz, Iran and the Imprimatur of Science

By: Benjamin Weingarten

Ernest Moniz

Ernest Moniz

Watching the Obama administration trot out Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on the Sunday shows and in testimony to Congress following the consummation of what I believe will be a nuclear weapon-ensuring deal for not only the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad in Iran, but their Sunni counterparts, it should have been clear to all what a charade it was.

Moniz — an MIT physicist turned Obama administration shill — was there to provide the imprimatur of unimpeachable Science™ to the transparently deceptive deal. And who can fight with science, especially of the kind that is already settled?

In this light, I am reminded of a quote from an expert in financial markets and economic history, Jim Grant, he of the legendary Wall Street newsletter Grant’s Interest Rate Observer.

During an address delivered on June 2, 2015 to the Manhattan Institute in connection with his winning of the Hayek Prize, Grant stated:

In the 1960s, John Cowperthwaite, British governor of Hong Kong, refused to allow the collection of economic statistics lest the bureaucrats misappropriate that information in the service of governmental macroeconomic manipulation (the very word “statistics” derives from “the state”).

Such an act would be heresy today in a world in which the state, governing according to scientific principles, is the church for our progressive elites.

Cowperthwaite knew that politicians would conflate science and public policy to justify their agendas and grow their power.

For it is science that legitimates the Iran deal.

It is science that legitimates the disruption of human activity, and with it trillions of dollars in wealth through global climate regulation.

Indeed, it is science that legitimates any number of government intrusions into our daily lives.

Science ought to be celebrated. But politicians can manipulate it towards destructive ends.

Winston Churchill saw this early on when he expressed fears about the power of mass weaponry. Of course it is not the weapons that are the problem in and of themselves, but the prospect of evil people obtaining them and using them towards genocidal ends that ought to keep us awake at night.

Today America is aiding, abetting and enabling just these types of people.

In fact, as an aside, Ernest Moniz, again our Secretary of Energy, when asked about government findings on another mass weapon, electromagnetic pulse (EMP) during Congressional testimony — the use of which Iran has endorsed and for which we have yet to harden our grid — effectively pleaded ignorance.

Ernest Moniz is a fitting living embodiment of the fusion of science and state.

06/9/15

Retired NASA Scientists Take on Pope

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

With the papal encyclical on climate change scheduled for a June 18 release, the liberal media can be expected to portray the Vatican document as a major step forward for the United Nations agenda of controlling and taxing the use of natural resources by governments and people. But a group of retired NASA scientists is taking on the pope directly, armed with the expertise that has come through decades of planning U.S. space missions and dealing with the most complex and difficult issues of climate science.

Their verdict: the pope is risking his moral status and his credibility.

In fact, this group is directly warning Pope Francis that if he embraces the climate agenda of the United Nations, he will be violating both scientific principles and the religious values he embodies that are supposed to be reflected in direct aid for the poor people of the earth.

But the pope is apparently counting on his status as “the most popular person on the Earth,” in the words of Dan Misleh, executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant organization, to make the “moral” case that we live on “an abundant yet finite planet,” and that global limits to industrial growth have to be imposed on a worldwide basis.

The battle, now taking shape, will likely help determine whether U.S. sovereignty will be sacrificed in order to make possible a system of “global governance” or world government.

In a controversial decision that could backfire, Republican House Speaker John Boehner (OH) has invited Pope Francis to deliver an address to Congress in September, an opportunity he could use to push the similar climate change agendas of both the Vatican and the Obama administration.

That a research team composed primarily of retired NASA scientists and engineers has entered the debate is relatively new and particularly noteworthy. These individuals have a lot of experience in the climate change area, as a result of sending astronauts into the atmosphere and outer space and returning them to earth.

The members of the group, the Right Climate Stuff Research Team, are veterans of the NASA Apollo program that landed astronauts on the moon and returned them safely during the decade of the 1960s, according to the introduction to their letter to the pope. They maintain a website setting forth their view that there is no convincing evidence that the planet is in a “climate crisis.”

These retired scientists suggest that the pope is making a big mistake by using unreliable or untested computer models that predict a “climate disaster.” They assert, “Our strict NASA policies, based on common sense concepts of the Scientific Method, trained us to ignore projections of un-validated models for critical design or operational decisions involving human safety, and instead, base such decisions on available physical data.”

Their spokesman is Harold H. Doiron, who serves as chairman of the Right Climate Stuff Research Team. He tells the pontiff in a letter that “There is no compelling scientific or humanitarian reason for immediate enactment of world-wide CO2 emission controls, as the UN is urging you to recommend…”

What’s more, Doiron and his colleagues argue, the poor in the developing world “need unfettered access to relatively inexpensive fossil fuel energy sources to improve their quality of life,” and if higher atmospheric CO2 levels do in fact occur, they will not hinder the development of poor nations but rather result in “increased food production” that will benefit them.

Rejecting the idea of CO2 as a pollutant that should be regulated, they said, “we know that CO2 is a very special colorless, odorless and non-polluting gas designed by our Creator to be an essential chemical compound for sustaining all plant, animal and human life.”

Doiron made a presentation in Rome on April 28 as part of a Heartland Institute event designed to warn the Vatican against rushing to embrace the U.N. climate change agenda. He included a PowerPoint presentation titled “An Independent, Objective Assessment of the Human-Caused Global Warming Issue,” which refers to the U.N. agenda as “climate alarmism” based on faulty models, not actual data.

He is scheduled to speak this week in Washington, D.C. at the Tenth International Conference on Climate Change.

At his presentation in Rome, Doiron said he was a member of a Catholic parish in Texas where fellow parishioners were “praying that Pope Francis will have discernment as he looks into this global warming controversy.” On Fox News Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a practicing Catholic, said “there are more pressing problems on Earth” for the pontiff to be addressing than climate change.

Ignoring the concerns of conservative Catholics that the church should focus on moral issues, The New York Times ran a story, “Pope Francis Steps Up Campaign on Climate Change, to Conservatives’ Alarm,” reporting that the papal encyclical “will be accompanied by a 12-week campaign, now being prepared with the participation of some Catholic bishops, to raise the issue of climate change and environmental stewardship in sermons, homilies, news media interviews and letters to newspaper editors…”

The source of this statement was Dan Misleh, who has been invited inside the Vatican to help coordinate the campaign. He previously directed the educational and outreach efforts of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development.

His group has now become part of the Global Catholic Climate Movement, whose website shows poor people walking through flood waters, hurricanes, and smokestacks, as visitors to the site are urged to “change our course,” and to pray and then act.

04/24/15

The DNA Deniers in the Media

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The media have launched a major campaign on behalf of the “transgendered.” The Bruce Jenner ABC News interview is the most visible manifestation of this campaign. However, the NBC Nightly News on Wednesday ran a story by Kate Snow about the “transgender grandchild” of Democratic Rep. Mike Honda of Hawaii. Lacking in the coverage is any concrete definition of the term “transgendered” or any discussion of how children are now being used to promote an increasingly bizarre sexual agenda that requires physically mutilating or chemically treating very confused young people.

The Human Rights Campaign, a group co-founded by accused sex offender Terry Bean, a major Democratic Party fundraiser, quickly highlighted this latest NBC News report in a continuing series on “transgender youth.”

However, just like the terms lesbian, gay, and bisexual, the word “transgendered” applies to certain behaviors or appearances and does not signify anything scientific or biological about a person.

Regardless of what you may see or read in the media, nature has given humanity two sexes, male and female, which are defined by DNA. People can call themselves anything they want, but the biological facts of life cannot be denied.

This is why, when The Washington Post ran a recent story about a “transgendered” soldier who claims to be a man, the paper noted that the military regards “him” as a “her,” because biologically that is what he really is. You cannot change your DNA.

The point is that those claiming to be one of any number of categories of alleged sexual minorities can accurately be labeled DNA deniers if they deny their fundamental biological identity.

The liberals and their media allies always claim they are in favor of science on matters such as global warming or climate change. But strangely, on the matter of human sexuality, science is denied and people are allowed to make up “facts” about themselves, describing their sexuality in terms that happen to be pleasing to them for any reason at all. A new category is “questioning,” meaning that a person can decide, apparently from day to day, what sexual minority they belong to.

If someone feels he or she is a member of the opposite sex, then that is perfectly acceptable, according to the LGBT community and its supporters.

But facts are facts, and science is science. Even liberal publications have to admit this. “The simplest thing DNA can tell you is whether someone is male or female,” notes the Guardian.

But consider the NBC story. Snow referred to Rep. Honda as having “tweeted a photo of himself on Twitter back in February, grinning next to his beautiful 8-year-old granddaughter Malisa…” But Malisa is not a girl. Malisa is biologically a boy. He was born with the name Brody.

Snow reported that the parents “thought their second child would be a boy. But by the time their child was three, she had chosen a new name for herself—Malisa.” A child at the age of three decided to become a girl? Could it be that the child was going through a phase and living in a fantasy? It seems apparent that the child was born a boy and was going through some confusion about his sexual identity. The parents decided to encourage this confusion by allowing the child to now identify as a girl.

Rather than celebrate this bizarre development, the parents should be questioned about their child-rearing skills. What the child (and the parents) may need is serious psychological counseling.

Of course, the homosexuals and their supporters, most notably President Barack Obama, adamantly oppose any kind of change therapy to return troubled young people to their biologically-based sexual orientation.

Snow reported, “Although there are no exact numbers, Malisa joined what experts say is a growing number of children transitioning at a young age.” No exact numbers? Experts? Who are they? This is propaganda masquerading as journalism. It is designed to feed the notion that nature’s determination that humans are born male and female is a gross miscalculation, and that humans can decide whether they are male or female, or whatever.

What Snow is describing is sexual confusion brought on by a culture (and possibly parents) which has obscured the sexual differences between men and women. This is where the homosexual movement has brought our nation.

Snow reports, “The family knows they are just at the beginning of this journey with Malisa, and work closely with a team of doctors. As she approaches puberty, they’ll have to consider whether to use so called puberty blockers and hormone therapy.”

The “puberty blockers” will be designed to stop “Malisa” from being the boy “she” is. They will stop the growth of facial hair and an Adam’s apple. He may also have to undergo some form of sex change surgery or other medical treatment.

Rather than challenge this insidious campaign of making children into pawns of the sexual “liberation” movement, some conservative and Republican politicians on Capitol Hill are voting for measures to in some way “protect” or outlaw alleged “discrimination” against sexual minorities.

For example, ten Republican senators voted for a measure introduced by far left-wing Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy (VT) to protect alleged “LGBT homeless youth.” They were Senators Kelly Ayotte (NH), Shelley Moore Capito (WV), Susan Collins (ME), Dean Heller (NV), Mark Kirk (IL), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Rand Paul (KY), Rob Portman (OH), Dan Sullivan (AK) and Pat Toomey (PA).

The term “LGBT homeless youth” is designed to expand the reach of the federal government into yet another area of human activity, based on questionable surveys and experts.

The power of the propaganda emanating from the media has created the perception, even among these Republicans, that this is a major problem that the federal government must address.

Not surprisingly, the homosexual movement was ecstatic. Thanks to those 10 Republicans, the headline over the AP article was, “A Majority Of The Senate Is Voting For LGBT Rights.”

The DNA deniers are on the march, making serious inroads into the national Republican Party.

03/24/15

FEMA and the Science of Extortion

By: T F Stern
The Moral Liberal

FEMA logo

There are several articles on the Internet which put forth the idea that FEMA intends to withhold money from states which don’t sign on to the premise of man made global warming.   They use the updated term, Climate Change; but their religion of man made harm to Mother Earth continues as the foundation of their faith.

Frank Minero’s piece, Sorry Rick Scott, Admit Climate Change Is Real Or Florida Loses $100 + In FEMA Funding, caught my attention as it contained some rather inflammatory language.

“They’ll need to think long and hard on this one. The stakes are high. If they stick with their ignorant, anti-science rhetoric, they stand to lose millions in federal aid.” (emphasis added)

Would someone define ‘anti-science rhetoric’?  Doesn’t Minero mean folks who won’t fall for junk science substituted for real science and the political agenda associated with the Church of Man Made Global Warming?

At one time science was the search for truth regardless of where that path led; but we live in a time when political agendas foretell results and computer generated models validate theories without the need for actual or authentic data, how convenient!

Minero does a touchdown dance at the end zone of his article proving that Climate Change ‘science’ is nothing more than a political hoax.

“Here’s a list of the eighteen offending states: Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Dakota and Wyoming. Not surprisingly, most of the anti-science policy comes from red states.

This is great news for the people living in red states. Now petty politics and greed won’t doom them to the absolute worst consequences of climate change.”  (again, emphasis added)

Those who voted for the Democrat/Socialist/Communist (interchangeable) agenda of man made global warming will be rewarded with taxpayer funding  (a politically incorrect term to be replaced with ‘people’)  of FEMA programs.

If, on the other hand, you require proof of this unsettled science, which is nothing more than a shake down scheme to redistribute wealth, then we will use the power of media to ridicule your pathetic attempts to stave off being robbed in order to advance the liberal agenda.

Never mind that actual scientific findings prove the IPCC report as having been considerably flawed, to the extent that it might have been a total fabrication.  Never mind that the World’s top climate scientists confess: Global warming is just [a] Quarter what we thought – and computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong.

Coin FlipImagine that, the global warming ‘estimates’ were off by around 75%!  The data fed into computer models used to twist the arms of law makers in order to bring about a United Nations one world government isn’t accurate.  Flipping a coin would give better results; at least that way you’d be right half the time.

If that isn’t enough, Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace recently shot down the Climate Change hoax when he addressed the Senate committee charged with coming up with legislation to combat global warming.

“There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years,” he said as he explained, “he left the group when it became more interested in politics than the environment.”

It would appear the anti-science rhetoric being spread around has been by the environmental alarmists.

02/10/15

Say Her Name: Vaccine Victim Hannah Poling

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Brian Williams’ “chopper whoppers” about his exploits as a correspondent flying into Iraq are making him look foolish. It’s not clear whether he can survive in the anchor chair. But don’t think the Williams case means that the media are now on guard for misrepresentations and false claims. The controversy over vaccines has been another media low point. We are being told they are completely safe with no side effects. That’s a blatant lie.

Anybody who watches Williams’ newscasts can see who pays the bills: pharmaceutical companies. Commercials for various pills, and even vaccines, are regular fare and dominate the several minutes of time that pay for the newscast itself. You would have to be a fool to think these companies don’t try to exercise influence over what appears on the broadcasts.

Former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s book, Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington, offers evidence of how powerful these companies are. She explains how pharmaceutical companies, their front groups, and public relations representatives work to manipulate news coverage and hide the truth from the American people about injuries caused by vaccines.

Attkisson, an Emmy Award winner who received the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2012, left the network when it became clear that her investigative stories, especially of Obama administration misdeeds, were not welcome. One of the stories she had been covering on a regular basis for many years was the vaccine-autism link. She continues to do so on her own website.

This is an area where the truth affects many people, not just Brian Williams’ career. The developmental disorder known as autism is estimated to affect two million people. It involves difficulties in social interaction and verbal and nonverbal communication. Hiring doctors and therapists to treat the disorder can cost a family $50,000 or more a year. However, there is no cure.

The number of cases have risen from an estimated one in 5,000 in 1975 to one in 64 today, a more than 600 percent increase. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) claims it can’t identify the cause, but has consistently claimed that the disorder is not linked to the growing number of vaccines required for children.

The pro-vaccination side has increasingly resorted to vicious name calling and smears against those favoring informed consent and parental choice on vaccines. The Washington Post published a piece by Arthur L. Caplan, an alleged expert on medical ethics, comparing the opponents of vaccines to Holocaust deniers. He said that doctors favoring choice on vaccines should have their licenses lifted.

There is one name these proponents of mandatory vaccines in the media desperately want to avoid: vaccine victim Hannah Poling. You can search in vain for her name in the recent coverage of alleged vaccine safety.

Attkisson notes in her book that in 2008, the federal government agreed to pay damages to the family of Hannah Poling, “a child who developed autism after multiple vaccinations.” Attkisson explained that the “landmark case” amounted to $1.5 million for the girl the first year and $500,000 each year after. In total, the compensation could amount to $20 million over the child’s lifetime.

The Poling case was just one of thousands of cases filed in the National Vaccine Injury Program. But it was selected as a “test case” to evaluate the arguments underlying most of the other vaccine-autism claims.

Attkisson writes that the case was “ordered sealed, protecting the pharmaceutical vaccine industry and keeping the crucial information hidden from other families who have autistic children and also believe vaccines to be the culprit.” But word leaked out.

At the time, the head of the federal Centers for Disease Control, which assures the public of vaccine safety, was Dr. Julie Gerberding. After insisting the settlement of the Poling case was not an admission of a direct vaccine-autism link, she left the CDC to become president of vaccines for Merck. Last December she was promoted to executive vice president for strategic communications, global public policy and population health at Merck.

Attkisson reported on the Poling case for CBS News on March 6, 2008. She said, “While the Poling case is the first of its kind to become public, a CBS News investigation uncovered at least nine other cases as far back as 1990, where records show the court ordered the government to compensate families whose children developed autism or autistic-like symptoms in children, including toddlers, who had been called ‘very smart’ and ‘impressed’ doctors with their ‘intelligence and curiosity’ … until their vaccinations. They were children just like Hannah Poling.”

In a September 10, 2010, story on the vaccine-injury court award, Attkisson reported, “Hannah was described as normal, happy and precocious in her first 18 months. Then, in July 2000, she was vaccinated against nine diseases in one doctor’s visit: measles, mumps, rubella, polio, varicella, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, and Haemophilus influenzae. Afterward, her health declined rapidly. She developed high fevers, stopped eating, didn’t respond when spoken to, began showing signs of autism, and began having screaming fits.”

Not surprisingly, Attkisson reports in her book, the vaccine makers didn’t appreciate her stories. She said that after word leaked out about the government’s settlement in the Poling case, “vaccine makers and their government partners” worked hard “to controversialize and tamp down all news coverage of the facts.” She notes that their strategy included “a full-forced attack on me and my ongoing reporting.” She learned in June 2008, after the fact, that “PR officials and a top attorney for vaccine maker Wyeth have managed to get a private meeting to spin two Evening News senior producers in New York about my reports.”

Attkisson names one of the pharmaceutical PR officials as former ABC and CNN reporter Eileen O’Connor, who now works at the State Department under President Obama.

Attkisson comments on the pressure campaign: “It’s wrong on so many levels, in my opinion. Improper for the meeting to be conducted without my participation or knowledge. Unethical to offer the powerful corporate interests—who are also advertisers—special access, while those on the other side aren’t given an audience to be heard. Inappropriate because the producers haven’t been in the chain of command on any of my vaccine-related stories.”

She notes in the book that some of the “hardest pushback” she ever received for a story came after CBS Evening News Executive Producer Jim Murphy assigned her to look into the reported cover-up of adverse effects of various prescription drugs and military vaccinations. She writes, “That series of reports leads to me to investigate related stories about childhood vaccinations and their links to harmful side effects, including brain damage and autism. At the time, the Bush administration is marching in lockstep with the pharmaceutical industry in denying problems with the prescription drugs at issue as well as both military and childhood vaccines.”

She writes, “It’s one thing for them to want their side of the story told: that’s understandable. But it’s quite another for them to want the stories censored entirely. They’re trying to keep them from airing altogether.”

She reports that just minutes before one of her first stories about childhood vaccinations and autism was to air, a spokesman for a nonprofit group called Every Child by Two called CBS in New York. “The spokesman evokes the name of former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who cofounded the group,” Attkisson says. “The call reaches Murphy, who then calls me on the hotline that rings directly into the Washington bureau newsroom. I’m preparing for my live shot. ‘Why is some group called Every Child by Two, supposedly fronted by Rosalynn Carter, calling me about your story?’” Murphy asks.

Attkisson responded, “I have no idea,” and said she had never heard of the group. She then learned that it “promotes children getting fully vaccinated by age two and rejects the idea of investigating harmful vaccine side effects that could injure the very youngsters they purported to protect.”

Attkisson recounted how she also later learned that Every Child by Two is funded by the major vaccine manufacturer, Wyeth, and a Wyeth spokesman was listed as the group’s treasurer. She writes that she wondered “how they knew we planned to air a story on the news that night.” Nevertheless, CBS went ahead with the story.

In a 2011 story, “Vaccines and Autism: a new scientific review,” Attkisson cited an article in the Journal of Immunotoxicology entitled, “Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes—A review.” It was a review of studies finding cases of autism following vaccination.

You don’t have to be a scientist to notice this pattern. I have heard from several parents who have seen it for themselves. One told me, “Our son was affected by vaccines and there are too many out there with the same story. I’m sick of hearing and reading news reports saying there is no correlation between autism and vaccines.”

On her website, Attkisson is described as an investigative journalist “who tries to give you information others don’t want you to have.” That certainly is the case with vaccine safety. She’s one of the few journalists with national stature willing to tackle this issue.

As we have recently commented, the media across the political spectrum seem unwilling to cover vaccine-related injury cases. Many reporters and commentators are mindlessly spouting claims about “vaccine safety” and dismissing a vaccine-autism link without even mentioning cases like that of Hannah Poling.

Attkisson has vigorously defended her stories. Indeed, when challenged by CNN reporter Brian Stelter about her stories linking vaccines to autism, she replied, “…those were some of the most important stories I’ve done and I would like to continue along those lines, at some point. It continues to be a very important debate.

Now a senior independent contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s The Daily Signal, Attkisson continues to cover the vaccine problem on her own website and is now quoting CDC’s immunization safety director as saying it’s a “possibility” that vaccines rarely trigger autism but “it’s hard to predict who those children might be.”

Attkisson comments, “It is a significant admission from a leading health official at an agency that has worked for nearly 15 years to dispel the public of any notion of a tie between vaccines and autism. Vaccines are among the most heralded medical inventions of our time. Billions of people have been vaccinated worldwide, countless lives have been saved and debilitating injuries prevented. The possibility that vaccines may also partly be responsible for autism, in individual cases, is not something public health officials are typically eager to address.”

The major media are not eager to address it, either. But the people are demanding that the truth be told. They do not believe the media’s declarations of vaccine safety and effectiveness.

Whatever the fate of Brian Williams, the credibility of the media will continue to nosedive.

02/9/15

It’s Not Just Brian Williams

By: Alan Caruba
Warning Signs

Barack Obama

“When reporters forfeit their credibility by making up stories, sources, or quotes, we are right to mock them. When their violations are significant or repeated, they should be fired,” says Charles Lipson, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. “Demanding honest reporting has nothing to do with the reporter’s politics, personality, or personal life. It is about professional standards and our reasonable expectations.”

Writing at Real Clear Politics.com, Prof. Lipson concluded by saying, “It’s essential for our news organizations, and it matters for our democracy.”

Are we seeing a trend here? Dan Rather at CBS and now Brian Williams at NBC? Well, two news anchors are not a trend, but biased and bad reporting is. It’s not new, but it does seem to be gathering momentum and nowhere has it been more apparent than the millions of words written and spoken about “global warming” and now “climate change.”

It would be easy and convenient to lay the blame on America’s Liar-in-Chief, President Barack Obama, but the “global warming” hoax began well before he came on the scene. It was the invention of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) dating back to its creation in 1988 when it was established by the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization.

The IPCC came to world attention with the creation of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty that committed the nations that signed it to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions” based on the premise that global warming—a dramatic increase—was real and that it was man-made. The Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on December 11, 1997. The United States Senate rejected it and our neighbor, Canada, later withdrew from it. Both China and India were exempted, free to continue building numerous coal-fired plants to generate the energy they need for development.

Today, though, the President is an unrelenting voice about the dangers of “climate change” which he and John Kerry, our Secretary of State, have rated the “greatest threat” to the world. Obama’s national security strategy document was released just a day before he equated the history of Christianity with the barbarism of today’s Islamic State.

The national security document included terrorism to which it devoted one out of its 29 pages. Essentially Obama sees all the problems of the world, real and imagined, as challenges that require “strategic patience and persistence.” This is his way of justifying doing nothing or as little as possible.

Still, according to Obama, the climate is such a threat, his new budget would allocate $4 billion to the Environmental Protection Agency for a new “Clean Power State Incentive Fund” to bribe more states to close even more power plants around the nation. He wants to increase the EPA’s overall budget by 6% to $8.6 billion. The Republican Congress is not likely to allocate such funding.

As for the environment, there have been so many lies put forth by the government and by a panoply of environmental organizations of every description, buoyed by legions of “scientists” and academics lining their pockets with billions in grants, that it is understandable that many Americans still think that “global warming” is real despite the fact that the Earth is now 19 years into a well-documented cooling cycle.

Not only are all the children in our schools still being taught utter garbage about it, but none who have graduated in recent years ever lived a day during the non-existent “global warming.”

On February 7, Christopher Booker, writing in The Telegraph, a British daily newspaper, wrote an article, “The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever.” You are not likely to find any comparable reporting in a U.S. daily newspaper.

Citing research comparing the official temperature graphs from three weather stations in Paraguay against what had originally been reported by them, it turned out that their cooling trend had been reversed by the U.S. government’s Global Historical Climate Network and then amplified by “two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the National Climate Data Center.”

Why should we be surprised that the national media continues to report on “global warming” when our government has been engaged in the deliberate distortion of the actual data? It is, however, the same national media that has provided virtually no investigative journalism to reveal what has been going on for decades.

What fate befalls Brian Williams is a mere blip on the screen of events. At this writing, I cannot see how NBC could ever keep him as the managing editor and news anchor.

What matters regarding much of the product of the mainstream media is the continuing torrent of “news” about “global warming” and “climate change”; the former is a complete hoax and the latter a factor of life on planet Earth over which humans have no control, nor contribute to in any fashion.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

02/5/15

Can You Handle the Truth About Vaccines?

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

NBC accuses Republicans of accepting bad “science” on vaccines, while Fox News fires back, accusing liberals of spreading bad “science” on vaccines. Each side is trying to score partisan political points. The message from both sides is that vaccines are completely safe. But that message is absolutely and demonstrably false.

As I noted in a recent column, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program exists to compensate victims of vaccines. The latest Statistics Report shows nearly 4,000 claims were awarded financial damages.

Why do both sides of this “debate” pretend that vaccine-related injuries do not occur? Why not just report the facts? It doesn’t take a lot of work to dig them out.

Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) tells me that she has given more than 100 interviews in the last two weeks on the subject of the measles outbreak, but that the media simply will NOT report on the existence of this federal program and the implications for the subject of vaccine safety.

“Vaccines are the only pharmaceutical products that government mandates and completely indemnifies,” she notes. She is referring to federal legislation that takes legal responsibility for their actions away from the companies making the vaccines.

“I’ve been talking about it in every interview I do and I have been bringing it up. But whenever I talk about liability protection for the companies—that this is the only pharmaceutical product that is mandated by government and indemnified by government—they [the media] don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

Observers believe the glaring omission reflects the power of pharmaceutical companies or their advertising agencies in the major media. It is in the interest of these companies to make pariahs out of those favoring vaccine choice by playing down—or even suppressing—questions about vaccine safety.

Simply put, the evidence and history show that the vaccine makers have been given total liability protection for injuries and deaths caused by government-mandated vaccines. Vaccine safety is not “settled science,” as we have been hearing repeatedly in the media. To the contrary, for purposes of the law, vaccines are considered sometimes unsafe, even deadly.

The “Vaccine injury table” associated with the legislation includes a list of the injuries, disabilities, illnesses, conditions, and deaths resulting from the administration of such vaccines.

But why is it so difficult for the media to report on the existence of these health problems?

The vaccines that are covered include:

  • diptheria and tetanus vaccines
  • pertussis vaccines
  • measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines
  • polio vaccines
  • hepatitis A vaccines
  • hepatitis B vaccines
  • Haemophilus influenza type b polysaccharide conjugate vaccines
  • varicella vaccines
  • rotavirus vaccines
  • pneumococcal conjugate vaccines
  • seasonal influenza vaccines
  • human papillomavirus vaccines
  • meningococcal vaccines

As I reported in my column, the one exception to this drumbeat of misleading and inaccurate coverage about “vaccine safety” is on the local level, where correspondent Michael Chen of ABC 10 News in San Diego, California noted a case of a boy who suffered serious injuries, including fever, seizures, nervous tics and autism, as a result of two vaccines. The mother, almost in tears as she described what happened to her son, was paid $55,000 in damages through the federal program. But the damage award didn’t cover the autism diagnosis. She said she wished she had more thoroughly researched the safety of vaccines.

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program grew out of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. Fisher explains what happened: “The companies threatened Congress that they were going to leave the people without any childhood vaccines if they did not get liability protection. The companies wanted this liability protection and it was mainly for losses at that time for DPT and oral polio vaccine. MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) vaccine at that point was a relatively new combination vaccine.”

The DPT vaccine had been associated with brain inflammation and brain damage, while polio paralysis can be caused by the vaccine.

Fisher explains what the federal protection means for the companies: “Nobody who makes or profits from the sale of the vaccine, nobody who regulates the vaccine, who promotes the vaccine, who votes to mandate the vaccine—nobody is accountable or liable in a civil court of law in front of a jury of our peers when we get hurt because we’ve been told we have to take it, or when the vaccine fails to work.”

The compensation program, with total liability protection for injuries and deaths caused by government-mandated vaccines, was upheld by the Supreme Court in a 2011 case in which vaccines were acknowledged to be “unavoidably unsafe.”

My column actually underestimated the total financial damages paid through the program. The figure is actually $2.8 billion to the victims or the families of victims themselves.

Liberal and conservative media are trying to make political points over who’s right and wrong about vaccine safety. But Fisher says people who support her group and vaccine choice come from across the political spectrum and include Democrats, Republicans, libertarians, and independents. In the media, however, each side is trying to smear the other side, as if there is a partisan divide.

The coverage has led to cases of strange bedfellows, such as the George Soros-funded blog Think Progress running a story praising Megyn Kelly of Fox News under the headline, “Megyn Kelly Speaks Up For Mandatory Vaccination On Fox: ‘Some Things Do Require Big Brother.’”

Indeed, Kelly defended mandatory vaccines, saying, “…some things do require some involvement of Big Brother.”

What she and many others in the media have consistently ignored is the role of Big Brother in shielding the companies making the vaccines from the side effects of their products.

As I asked in my column: If there are no problems associated with vaccines, then why did Congress pass the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which created a national Vaccine Injury Compensation Program?

The media on the left and right have no answer to this question. So they pretend there is no debate or dispute over the safety of vaccines. They simply point fingers about one side or the other being guilty of ignoring what they pretend is settled science.

The only thing “settled” about the science is that while vaccines work for a large majority of people, they can also cause serious health problems, even death, for some.

The commentators who ignore the truth are either lying or so utterly ignorant that they should not be in a position of offering “news” on a national basis. Whatever the case, the public is being denied the facts about decisions affecting the lives of their children. Fortunately, the public can go to sites like www.aim.org and the National Vaccine Information Center for information that is being denied to them.

A troubling aspect of the current debate is how people in the media act like experts on subjects that they know so little about. They seem to think that by huffing and puffing and sounding authoritative, they will be taken seriously. They have large staffs which seem incapable of making phone calls or doing elementary research.

If news organizations on the left and right can’t even dig out the facts in life-and-death matters involving children, then what can they be trusted to report accurately on?

02/4/15

Media Bias Rears Ugly Head in Vaccine Controversy

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The media think they have discovered another issue to beat Republicans over the heads with—vaccines. But the media have no credibility on this, or any other major health issue. They do have, and often demonstrate, a partisan political bias on such controversial matters.

“Vaccination debate flares in GOP presidential race, alarming medical experts,” states The Washington Post in horror.

It’s yet another attempt to portray Republicans as “anti-science.” This follows the “climate change denier” mantra used against conservatives and Republicans for supporting pro-growth economic policies.

In the measles case, NBC news is attacking Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky for “giving credence” to an idea—“disputed by the majority of the scientific community”—that “vaccination can lead to mental disabilities.”

That’s interesting. As we reported back in 2006, NBC was aggressively covering the mercury-autism link involving vaccines. That was because Bob Wright, Vice Chairman and Executive Officer of GE and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NBC Universal, had a grandson who was autistic.

Going further back in time, consider a program on the link between vaccines and mental problems which was aired by NBC in 1994 and featured Katie Couric as a co-host.

If there are no problems associated with vaccines, then why did Congress pass the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which created a national Vaccine Injury Compensation Program?

Michael Chen of ABC 10 News in San Diego reports on one mother whose son suffered a very serious vaccine reaction and was diagnosed with autism, and later Tourette syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder and mitochondrial dysfunction. She was awarded $55,000 in damages.  Chen reported that since 1988, 15,684 injury and death claims related to vaccines have been submitted to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and that among those, nearly 4,000 cases received compensation from a federal fund.

Nearly $2 billion dollars has been paid out to vaccine victims for their injuries.

But in response to New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie supporting parental choice in vaccines, CNN ran a story saying he had sidestepped “vaccine science.”

The Washington Post reported in 2008 that candidate Barack Obama had said, “We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it.”

The phrase “This person included” was apparently a reference to someone in the audience.

Now Obama acts as if all the science is settled. It is total hypocrisy.

But the science is not settled. In regard to the measles outbreak, Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center points out that “there were 644 cases of measles reported in America in 2014, even though 95% of children entering kindergarten have gotten two doses of MMR vaccine, which is also true for 92% of school children ages 13 to 17 years.” She also notes that “less than one percent of children under age three are completely unvaccinated and 92% of them have gotten one or more MMR shots. In some states, the MMR vaccination rate is approaching 100 percent.”

“From January 1 to January 30, 2015, 102 people from 14 states were reported to have measles,” the CDC reports.

Fisher notes that the “measles virus has not been eradicated from the U.S., just like measles has not been eradicated from any other country and emerging scientific evidence suggests it never will be—no matter how many doses of MMR vaccine are mandated for every man, woman and child in the world.”

Could it be possible that the shots aren’t working? What about the fact that millions of Americans took flu shots that don’t work? Did you miss this ABC News story: “Flu vaccine may not be effective for this year’s strains, CDC says.”

Dr. Anne Schuchat, assistant surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, was quoted by CNN as saying, “this is not a problem with the measles vaccine not working. This is a problem of the measles vaccine not being used.”

So why are vaccinated people getting measles? The CDC admits that 12 percent of those with measles associated with Disneyland were vaccinated. What’s more, some of the measles cases may be vaccine reactions. The fact is that the CDC just doesn’t know why or what is happening.

CNN, which is now trying to act “scientific” on the subject of vaccine safety, ran a January 15 column, “The climate is ruined. So can civilization even survive?” It was another effort to scare people over so-called global warming, or climate change.

Here, too, Republicans have been portrayed as “anti-science” for opposing scare mongering over the climate, based on junk science.

In this case, the editor’s note said the author, David Ray Griffin, “is emeritus professor of philosophy of religion at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University. His most recent book is Unprecedented: Can Civilization Survive the CO2 Crisis? The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.”

That sounds impressive.

Yet, his previous book was, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11. It argues that Flight 77, a Boeing 757 which was seen by dozens of people crashing into the Pentagon, was actually a missile or small aircraft.

He has no explanation for passenger Barbara Olson’s call to her  husband, Ted Olson, in the Justice Department, alerting him to the fact that the flight had been hijacked, other than to suggest that they were both part of a secret plan to conceal the truth and that it is not clear “what became of Barbara Olson.”

Griffin is an advocate of global government that he calls “global democracy” as the solution to the world’s problems.

According to the acknowledgements section of his new book, the “seed” for the book was a series of lectures he gave at the invitation of Zhihe Wang and Meijun Fan of the Communist Chinese Institute for Postmodern Development. Their specialty is “ecological Marxism.”

Not surprisingly, the book, Organic Marxism: An Alternative to Capitalism and Ecological Catastrophe, receives Griffin’s endorsement.

In a hastily added postscript to his own book, Griffin seems ecstatic that President Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping recently made an “executive agreement” about limiting carbon emissions. He says this “undercuts what had become the Republicans’ main argument for doing nothing about climate change…”

Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is not impressed by the deal. He calls it “a non-binding charade” that benefits China.

Griffin calls the GOP “the party of denial”—a charge the media will increasingly use as the presidential campaign moves forward.

The Republicans ought to be getting used to this charge by now.

But using a 9/11 truther to attack Republicans? Don’t the media have any decency?

Will Republicans stand up to the media attack? Or will they wilt in the face of dubious “science” promoted by reporters with no credibility?