The Great Dilema (part II)

Most proponents of limited government, such as myself, are fairly sympathetic towards issues of gay rights, precisely because we believe so strongly in individual liberty.

But, for the same reasons we are troubled by instances of when the state does not respect the liberty of those who have personal objections to homosexuality.

This was seen when the a group of firemen sued the city of San Diego for being forced to partake in the gay pride parade and experiencing harassment during the event.

Firefighters forced to participate in ‘Gay Pride Parade’ win heated legal battleADF-allied attorney receives favorable verdict on harassment charge against city of San Diego on behalf of firefighters

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

SAN DIEGO — An Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney representing four San Diego firefighters received a favorable jury verdict Tuesday in a lawsuit against the city. The San Diego Fire Department disregarded the firefighters’ objections to taking part in the city’s “Gay Pride Parade” celebrating homosexual behavior and retaliated against them for later complaining about the harassment they endured during the event.

“Government employees should never be forced to participate in events or acts that violate their sincerely held beliefs,” said ADF-allied attorney Charles LiMandri, the West Coast Regional Director of the Thomas More Law Center. “We are pleased with the jury’s verdict recognizing the firefighters’ right to abstain from activities that they consider morally offensive and that subject them to harassment.”

After being forced to participate--despite numerous objections--in San Diego’s 2007 “Gay Pride Parade,” four firefighters from the SDFD were sexually harassed through lewd cat calls and obscene gestures at the event, which was replete with sexual displays and graphic images. The firefighters then suffered harassment and retaliation after complaining to superiors about the parade. The city was well aware of the firefighters’ objection to participating in the parade because of its lascivious nature exhibited in past years, including unwanted sexual comments and gestures from participants and spectators.

“Many people may mistakenly think the ‘gay pride’ parade is merely a ‘fun’ event,” said ADF Senior Counsel Joe Infranco, who is co-counsel in the case. “They never would have imagined the crude sexual harassment these firefighters were forced to endure. But in truth, the goal of homosexual behavior advocates is to undermine society’s long-held values. They continue to seek this, whether by demanding participation in ‘gay pride’ parades or by trampling the democratic process to redefine marriage.”

After the lawsuit Ghiotto v. City of San Diego was filed in the Superior Court for the County of San Diego, the fire department changed its policy so employees will no longer be forced to participate against their will.

Every Man A Millionaire!

I was reading up on the Russian Revolution and came across an interesting anecdote: the Russian government had to outsource the printing of Rubles to the United States, because Russian printers refused to do so, knowing that this will debase the currency that they were being paid in. Those who have experienced inflation understand the ruination caused by illicitly increasing the money supply. Mr. Obama is not a man of change, he is Bush on steroids; in his 100 days in office he has accelerated the growth of the money supply that started under Bush. Mark my word, no good will come of this. But at least every man will be a millionaire when serious inflation kicks in!

Sometimes Diversity Limits Diversity...

Pictured above: Mahmood Hussain, Council Member

from Birmingham, England and enemy of diversity?

I came across some interesting news from England; a Council Member (which is equivalent to an alderman) stated that labour politician Elaina Cohen shouldn't run for the seat because she is too "white and Jewish to be elected." I found this quite offensive, but never the less Mr. Hussain was correct, no matter how strong a white candidate's liberal credentials are, they will never receive more than a fraction of non-white votes. In other words the majority of a "diverse electorate" cast their vote according to ethnic identity and narrow ethnic interests rather than for political ideals or for the "greater good." This means that in most casese, paradoxically the more diverse an electorate becomes, the less accomodating it becomes to diversity.

In contrast, evidence indicates that most white voters are driven by their ideals and the perceived greater good. This was demonstrated in our recent election in which 45% of whites cast their votes for Obama over McCain. And within subgroups, like educated, urban white voters, Obama won by a significant margin. This phenomena is also seen when wealthy white liberals vote against their perceived economic interests and for the perceived greater good; i.e. politicians who will raise their taxes.

What this means is that at times the "progressive" value of diversity may be incomptible with the"progressive" values of tolerance and pluralism. These values are a distinct product of western cultures. So, paradoxically, a demographic shift away from a European population of an area may actually erode tolerance and pluralism. In the case of the aforementioned district in Birmingham, this means that the Moslem majority will discriminate against non-Moslems. The great joke will be that the diversity that the left has so energetically promoted in London, California. etc. may create a cultural and demographic reality in which it will difficult if not impossible to implement gay marriage and other "progressive" policies.

The Daily Mail:

Labour Party Embroiled in Race Row After Candidate Told She Was ‘Too White and Jewish’ to be Selected. The Labour Party has become embroiled in a race row after a prospective female councillor was allegedly told she was ‘too white and Jewish’ to be selected.

Elaina Cohen claims that Labour councillor Mahmood Hussain said he would not support her application for an inner-city ward because ‘my Muslim members don’t want you because you are Jewish’.

Mrs Cohen, 50, has made an official complaint about the alleged remarks made by Mr Hussain, a Muslim and former lord mayor of Birmingham.

She said: ‘I am shocked and upset that a member of the Labour Party in this day and age could even think something like that, let alone say it.

‘People should not be allowed to make racist comments like that. If someone in the party feels I cannot represent them because of my colour or religion, that’s ridiculous.

‘I felt particularly aggrieved because I have worked across all sections of the community, particularly with the Muslim section, and have been on official visits to Pakistan.’ [emphasis added]

On CNN's Susan Roesgen

At the Chicago Tea Party I personally witnessed CNN reporter Susan Roesgen's interaction with protesters. And I have never seen so much hostility and bias from a reporter from a supposedly neutral network. I personally witnessed her deride protesters and defend Obama. So, the reason why I prefer FOX is because it is blatantly and openly biased; you know that you are getting an editorial. But, CNN and especially NPR purport to be neutral, but have an equally strong agenda. O'Reilly may be loud and obnoxious towards his guests, but he does bring on guests with very different positions than his own. On the other hand NPR almost never interview conservatives with countering opinions.

Happy Birthday Israel!!!

I am so proud of Israel.

In spite of the constant military threats that Israel has faced, it has developed one of the most dynamic, diverse democracies in the world. Israel is an island of economic and social freedom in one of the most oppressive parts of the world. Israel is an island of literacy and creativity in one of the most backwards parts of the world. Israel balances modernity and tradition in a part of the world that swings between destructive revolutions and motionless authoritarian cultures. Israel is an island of pro-American sentiment in one of the most hateful, anti-American regions in the world. And Israel is the object of the hatred of islamic fundamentalists and many backwards "progressives," so it must be doing something right! Happy 61st Birthday Dear Israel! Here are a few of Israel's many accomplishments:

1.The cell phone was developed in Israel by Israelis working in the Israeli branch of Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel.

2. Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel.

3. The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel. Both the Pentium-4 microprocessor and the Centrino processor were entirely designed, developed, and produced in Israel.

4. The Pentium microprocessor in your computer was most likely made in Israel.

5. Voice mail technology was developed in Israel.

6. Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel.

7. The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.

8. According to industry officials, Israel designed the airline industry's most impenetrable flight security. US officials now look to Israel for advice on how to handle airborne security threats.

9. Israel's $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined.

10. Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita.

11. Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world.

12. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin — 109 per 10,000 people — as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.

13. In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the second largest number of startup companies after the US (3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech).

14. With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and startups, Israel has the highest concentration hi-tech companies in the world — apart from the Silicon Valley, US.

15. Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the US.

16. After the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies.

17. Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East. The per capita income in 2000 was over $17,500, exceeding that of the UK.

18. On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotech startups.

19. Twenty-four percent of Israel's workforce hold university degrees — ranking it third in the industrialized world, after the United States and Holland — and 12% hold advanced degrees.

20. Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.

21. In 1984 and 1991, Israel airlifted a total of 22,000 Ethiopian Jews at risk in Ethiopia to safety in Israel.

22. When Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, she became the world's second elected female leader in modern times.

23. When the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, was bombed in 1998, Israeli rescue teams were on the scene within a day — and saved three victims from the rubble.

24. Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship — and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 — in the world.

25. Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom, and economic opportunity.

26. Israel was the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an international standard that certifies diamonds as "conflict free."

27. Israel has the world's second highest per capita rate of publishing new books.

28. Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees, made more remarkable because this was achieved in an area considered mainly desert.

29. Israel has more museums per capita than any other country.

30. In the field of medicine, Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.

31. An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment. Every year in US hospitals 7,000 patients die from treatmentmistakes.

32. Israel's Givun Imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so small it fits inside a pill. Used to view the small intestine from the inside, the camerahelps doctors diagnose cancer and digestive disorders.

33. Researchers in Israel developed a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood, an innovation with the potential to save lives among those with heart failure. The new device is synchronized with the heart's mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors.

34. Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the US, over 70 in Japan, and fewer than 60 in Germany. With over 25% of its work force employed in technical professions, Israel places first in this category as well.

35. A new acne treatment developed in Israel, the ClearLight device, produces a high-intensity, ultraviolet-light-free, narrow-band blue light that causes acne bacteria to self-destruct — all without damaging surroundings skin or tissue.

36. An Israeli company was the first to develop and install a large-scale solar-powered and fully functional electricity generating plant (in southern California's Mojave desert).

Kim Jong IL Kommentary Korner

We at the Chicago Freedom Forum (CFF) are proud to introduce our new guest commentator, Kim Jong IL. Who better than a committed communist to offer us insight into the new America?

CFF: Mr. Kim Jong IL, thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to address our questions.

KGI: Herro! You so berry berry welcome!

CFF: The 1st Lady Michelle Obama stated:

“For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country … not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change..."

What are your thoughts on this?

KGI: I don't brame first rady! Who could be proud of evir capitarist country?!? I was not proud of Korea until my father made great change with people's repubric!

CFF: How would you respond to those who say that her commentary is ridiculous?

KGI: Ridicurous?

CFF: Ridiculous, because the United States has offered unparalleled opportunities for millions of people and in particular for Mrs. Obama who studied at Harvard, worked at a prestigious lawfirm and earned an impressive salary at the University of Chicago.

KGI: I would rine up those dirty counterrevorutionaries and shoot them myself!

CFF: That would would violate our current bourgeoisie laws.

KGI: Ohhh, but they make me so mad, don't they know that revorutionary vanguard entitled to special priviriges?!? As guardian of the people I have right to whiskey and pornography!

CFF: Thank you for your insight. Do you have any parting words for our reader?

KGI: Don't worry, if you keep up change, you bee rike us one day!

Todd Stroger: Crooked, Incompetent Politician & Former Child Star?

Todd Stroger's people knew. Did he?


BY MARK J. KONKOL


Cook County President Todd Stroger has said that he didn't know that Tony Cole -- the steakhouse busboy he hired to a patronage job -- lied about his criminal past on a job application until earlier this month when Cole was fired.


a top county official said Thursday that the Stroger administration received an FBI background report on Cole on Nov. 20, which included two criminal convictions he didn't disclose on his application.

That report showed up the same day Donna Dunnings, Stroger's cousin who was then the county's chief financial officer, first bailed Cole out of jail after he was arrested for violating an order of protection against an ex-girlfriend.


County human resources director Joe Sova said a "human error" in his office may have delayed Cole's firing for lying on his application. Someone in his office confused Cole's two convictions in Georgia with two similar charges he faced -- and disclosed on county documents -- in Louisiana. Once the error was discovered, the matter was referred to the county inspector general, Sova said. He didn't say when the error was discovered.


On Feb. 11, Sova said he received a complete Illinois State Police background check confirming Cole's undisclosed convictions. But Cole still wasn't fired. The inspector general's report was delivered to the administration April 2. But Cole wasn't fired until a week later, after the Chicago Sun-Times inquired about Cole's troubled past.


On Jan. 23, Dunnings bailed Cole out of jail a second time, and five days later, he was promoted to a $61,000 highway department job. Stroger fired Dunnings from her $175,000 post last week saying he expected Cole to make allegations against her.


Since then, Stroger has given different reasons for firing Dunnings. He said he was trying to spare her from being dragged "through he mud" by commissioners, and later he said the Cole controversy didn't have anything to do with his asking Dunnings to quit.


After Thurseday's special county board meeting to discuss the effect Dunnings departure would have on county finances, Commissioner Tim Schneider said Stroger owed taxpayers an explanation on the question he has dodged for a week now: "What are these allegations that led to the firing of Donna Dunnings?"


"What we tried to do is get together and get questions answered in Tony Cole and Donna Dunnings situation. . . . The outcome is we have more questions that became unanswered than we had when we came here this morning," Schneider said. "I thought this would give [Stroger] an opportunity to clear the air on some of the inconsistencies he's made."

Stroger refused to be interviewed after the meeting.

The Great Dilemma

For those who slavishly adhere to a single good and completely disregard other goods, the world is a simple place with few dilemmas. But, for those who acknowledge that life involves a painful compromise between competing values, clear cut answers are few and tough dilemmas are many. For me, no other issue poses such a great dilemma as gay marriage.

I have some very wonderful gay friends who are involved in loving, long-term monogamous relationships, so I am sympathetic towards gay marriage. These sentiments are strengthened by the tremendous value I place on individual freedom.

The right of self governance is an essential good in a democratic society. In other words, even when we do not necessarily agree with the positions of a community, we should respect their right to govern themselves according to their values and visions and resolve their own internal disputes. And in a democracy having a federal government or a court system that is too quick to impose its will on local communities is not healthy. Although we may be happy when the federal government imposes our values on others, we surely will not be happy when the values of others are imposed on our community, hence the need for a government that treads cautiously when intervening in local affairs.

My well informed critics will correctly point out that the rights of self governance stop when a community usurps the constitutionally guaranteed rights of an individual. The best example being the illegitimate suppression of voting rights of African-Americans in many southern communities.

So, the question we must ask is if not allowing gay marriage is a violating of constitutional rights? I would start by making a careful distinction between individual sphere and the communal sphere. That which lies in the private, individual sphere and does not infringe on the rights of other members of the community, constitute inalienable personal rights. For example, any law that limited the rights of gays to pursue their relationship would be grossly unjust and unconstitutional. And in my opinion, it would also be unconstitutional to deny gay couples the right to have the same tax, insurance and inheritance benefits that straight couples enjoy. Although this would be abhorrent to religious communities, it would in no way infringe on their rights.

On the other hand, marriage goes beyond the private realm. When a community or state permits a certain form of marriage, it implies that it officially sanctions and supports it. It implies that the relationship is in accordance with the fundamental values and beliefs of that community. For example, I have never met anyone would consider it a crime for a man to share the same house with and engage in a polygamous relationship with 3 women. But, few if any "progressives"or conservatives would legalize polygamous marriage. Why? Because although they can permit behavior that they find pathological or immoral, they will not sanction or support that relationship by enshrining it in marriage. To do so would negate the existence of the shared values and visions that bind that community.

The most reasonably position is to allow each community decide. A federal government that prevents communities from exercising their right to accept or to decline gay marriage will surely result in greater social tension and a further erosion of civic and community involvement. If the majority of a community is not permitted to form laws and institutions that reflect their values and beliefs, that community will either become passive and withdrawn or highly defiant. Some will complain that this will divide the nation. I say that for good or for bad, we are already seeing the accelerated growth of two social spheres in America: the secular-relativist and the religious-traditionalist. Allowing for local communities to determine their policies on gay marriage is far from a perfect solution, but it is one that will ensure a peaceful co-existence between the two Americas. Rather than call on courts to impose values that go against the beliefs and values of the majority of their fellow community members, "intolerant rednecks" and "G-dless liberals" can move to communities that better reflect their values. This may sound radical, but it is already happening. I have met many secular liberals have moved from traditional regions of the south and Midwest to large, liberal cities like Chicago and LA. And equally, I have met many traditional families that have moved from large cities to suburbs or ever exurbs where their values predominate.

Closing thoughts: One important underlying element in the debate on gay marriage is that its acceptance would be a cause or perhaps more accurately, a symptom of the final divorce of western values and laws from their Judeo-Christian foundation. Regardless of your opinion of Judaism or Christianity, it is a fact that they have been a core element of western civilization for nearly 2,000 years. And more importantly, for all the flaws that they may have, I do not see any viable alternatives.

I am extremely skeptical about the chances for success of a society with no shared, transcendental values other than tolerance, relativism and radical individualism. I am skeptical of the power of reason and individual philosophy to fill the moral and spiritual vacuum that "enlightened" individuals experience when shared religion and traditions disappear. Prosperous, educated individuals and communities may be able to use reason to forge a semblance of peace in this vacuum. But, the destination for the most individuals and communities who have left St. Peter (tradition), but do not have the means or desire to find Plato (reason) is disaster.

Heirs to Fortuyn

Pim Fortuyn - everything you could ask for in
a politician: conservative, charismatic and gay!


Very interesting - one of the Netherland's most charismatic and popular conservatives was Pim Fortuyn, an openly gay parliamentarian who was assassinated by a left wing environmentalist. Dutch gays now support conservative parties by a margin of nearly two-to-one, primarily owing to their concerns that large scale moslem immigration is a threat to the Netherlands's rich tradition of freedom and tolerance. In addition a growing number of Europeans are seeking to curb their bloated welfare state and the power of the EU bureaucratic elite.

Heirs to Fortuyn?
Muslim immigration and sclerotic welfare states push Europe right (sort of).
By Bruce Bawer

When the New Left emerged in the 1960s, something else was born that would mark American elites for decades thereafter: the notion that social-democratic Western Europe was far superior to the capitalist United States. Pity the poor American professor whose every junket to a European academic conference was marred by his continental colleagues’ sneering over cocktails about his nation’s shame du jour—Vietnam, Watergate, Iraq—or about American racism, capital punishment, or health care. For much of the American Left, Western Europe was nothing less than an abstract symbol of progressive utopia.

This rosy view was never accurate, of course. Europe’s socialized health care was blighted by outrageous (and sometimes deadly) waiting lists and rationing, to name just one example. To name another: Timbro, a Swedish think tank, found in 2004 that Sweden was poorer than all but five U.S. states and Denmark poorer than all but nine. But in recent years, something has happened to complicate the Left’s fanciful picture even further: Western European voters’ widespread reaction against social democracy.

The shift has two principal, and related, causes. The more significant one is that over the last three decades, social-democratic Europe’s political, cultural, academic, and media elites have presided over, and vigorously defended, a vast wave of immigration from the Muslim world—the largest such influx in human history. According to Foreign Affairs, Muslims in Western Europe numbered between 15 and 20 million in 2005. One source estimates that Britain’s Muslim population rose from about 82,000 in 1961 to 553,000 in 1981 to 2 million in 2000—a demographic change roughly representative of Western Europe as a whole during that period. According to the London Times, the number of Muslims in the U.K. climbed by half a million between 2004 and 2008 alone—a rate of growth ten times that of the rest of that country’s population.

Yet instead of encouraging these immigrants to integrate and become part of their new societies, Western Europe’s governments have allowed them to form self-segregating parallel societies run more or less according to sharia. Many of the residents of these patriarchal enclaves subsist on government benefits, speak the language of their adopted country poorly or not at all, despise pluralistic democracy, look forward to Europe’s incorporation into the House of Islam, and support—at least in spirit—terrorism against the West. A 2006 Sunday Telegraph poll, for example, showed that 40 percent of British Muslims wanted sharia in Britain, 14 percent approved of attacks on Danish embassies in retribution for the famous Mohammed cartoons, 13 percent supported violence against those who insulted Islam, and 20 percent sympathized with the July 2005 London bombers.

Too often, such attitudes find their way into practice. Ubiquitous youth gangs, contemptuous of infidels, have made European cities increasingly dangerous for non-Muslims—especially women, Jews, and gays. In 2001, 65 percent of rapes in Norway were committed by what the country’s police call “non-Western” men—a category consisting overwhelmingly of Muslims, who make up just 2 percent of that country’s population. In 2005, 82 percent of crimes in Copenhagen were committed by members of immigrant groups, the majority of them Muslims.

Non-Muslims aren’t the only targets of Muslim violence. A mountain of evidence suggests that the rates of domestic abuse in these enclaves are astronomical. In Germany, reports Der Spiegel, “a disproportionately high percentage of women who flee to women’s shelters are Muslim”; in 2006, 56 percent of the women at Norwegian shelters were of foreign origin; Deborah Scroggins wrote in The Nation in 2005 that “Muslims make up only 5.5 percent of the Dutch population, but they account for more than half the women in battered women’s shelters.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch advocate for democracy and women’s rights, would no doubt say far more than half: when she was working with women in Dutch shelters, she writes, “there were hardly any white women” in them, “only women from Morocco, from Turkey, from Afghanistan—Muslim countries—alongside some Hindu women from Surinam.” When she and filmmaker Theo van Gogh tried to highlight the mistreatment of women under Islam in the 2004 film Submission: Part I, he was killed by a young Muslim extremist.

More and more Western Europeans, recognizing the threat to their safety and way of life, have turned their backs on the establishment, which has done little or nothing to address these problems, and begun voting for parties—some relatively new, and all considered right-wing—that have dared to speak up about them. One measure of the dimensions of this shift: owing to the rise in gay-bashings by Muslim youths, Dutch gays—who ten years ago constituted a reliable left-wing voting bloc—now support conservative parties by a nearly two-to-one margin.

Government revenues in Western Europe go largely to support the unemployed, thus discouraging work. Over the last decade or so, the overall unemployment rate in the EU 15—that is, Western Europe—has hovered at about 2.5 to 3 points higher than in the United States. In France and Germany, it has ascended into the double digits (and that was before the global financial crisis that began in 2008). Western Europe’s rate of long-term unemployment has consistently been several times higher than America’s, denoting the presence of a sizable minority either permanently jobless or working off the books, often for family businesses, while collecting unemployment benefits.

These two factors—immigration and the economy—are intimately connected. For while some immigrant groups in Europe, such as Hindus and East Asians, enjoy relatively low unemployment rates and healthy incomes, the largest immigrant group, Muslims, has become such a burden that governments have made extensive cutbacks in public services in order to keep up with welfare payments—closing clinics and emergency rooms, reducing staff in hospitals, cutting police and military spending, eliminating course offerings at public universities, and so on. According to a report issued last year by the think tank Contribuables Associés, immigration reduces France’s economic growth by two-thirds. In 2002, economist Lars Jansson estimated that immigration cost Swedish taxpayers about $27 billion annually and that fully 74 percent of immigrant-group members in Sweden lived off the taxpayers. And in 2006, the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise warned that Norway’s petroleum fund—which contains the massive profits from North Sea oil that have made the nation rich—could wind up drained to cover outlays to immigrants. (This in a country whose roads, as a report last year indicated, are in worse shape than Albania’s.)

The last few decades in Europe have made three things crystal-clear. First, social-democratic welfare systems work best, to the extent they do work, in ethnically and culturally homogeneous (and preferably small) nations whose citizens, viewing one another as members of an extended family, are loath to exploit government provisions for the needy. Second, the best way to destroy such welfare systems is to take in large numbers of immigrants from poor, oppressive, and corruption-ridden societies, whose rule of the road is to grab everything you can get your hands on. And third, the system will be wiped out even faster if many of those immigrants are fundamentalist Muslims who view bankrupting the West as a contribution to jihad. Add to all this the growing power of an unelected European Union bureaucracy that has encouraged Muslim immigration and taken steps to punish criticism of it—criminalizing “incitement of racism, xenophobia, or hatred against a racial, ethnic, or religious group” in 2007, for example—and you can start to understand why Western Europeans who prize their freedoms are resisting the so-called leadership of their see-no-evil elites.

The November 2001 general election in Denmark is the most decisive—and successful—rejection so far of a Western European left-wing establishment. Alarmed by a widely publicized study showing that their country would have a Muslim majority within 60 years if immigration rates didn’t change, Danish voters sent the Social Democrats down to defeat for the first time since 1924. The new Liberal-Conservative governing coalition, which voters returned to power in 2005, has introduced the continent’s most sweeping immigration and integration reforms, including rules designed to thwart the near-universal practice in Europe’s Muslim communities of marrying one’s children off to cousins abroad so that they, too, may immigrate to the West. As a result, the flow of new Muslim arrivals has decreased significantly, allowing the government to focus resources on the immense challenge of trying to integrate Muslims already living in Denmark. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen also defended free speech strongly during the 2006 Mohammed cartoon crisis, standing firm while Muslims around the world raged against Denmark and Western leaders begged him to back down.

The rightward shifts in Europe most widely reported in the U.S. have been those in Germany, where Angela Merkel became chancellor in 2005, and in France, where Nicolas Sarkozy took over the presidency in 2007. Those developments, as well as the third term that Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi won in 2008, were grounded largely in public recognition of the need for economic liberalization. By French standards, Sarkozy’s campaign rhetoric was nothing less than stunning: arguing that “the revolution of 1968”—a sacred event for the left-wing French establishment—had not liberated France but “brought us into moral decline,” Sarkozy insisted that if the French wanted growth, they needed to spend less time in cafés and more on the job.

In brave little Denmark’s backyard, two more countries have moved to the right. In Norway, the Progress Party—which the political and media establishment has smeared for a generation as racist and fiscally unserious—now rivals the Labor Party, architect of the country’s welfare state, thanks to voter concerns about immigration and public services. Though the financial crisis had caused support for the Progress Party to slip a bit, recent Muslim riots and debates about hijab have sent poll numbers skyward again, and the party seems a good bet to come out on top in next September’s parliamentary elections—though it will be in trouble if, as appears likely, other right-of-center parties refuse to join a Progress Party–led coalition. And in Sweden, perhaps the ultimate symbol of social democracy, voters motivated largely by concerns over unemployment and other economic issues unseated the long-powerful Social Democratic Party in 2006. In its place they installed a center-right coalition led by Fredrik Reinfeldt’s Moderates, who promised to help businesses and lower taxes.

But demonstrating a distinctively European species of schizophrenia, many on both the right and the left, while acknowledging the need for welfare-state reorganization, have ultimately resisted it—as if the philosophical leap required were simply too great. In Western Europe, after all, even the mainstream Right tends to be statist. “The concept of the cradle-to-grave welfare state is so deeply embedded in the Danish psyche that even the conservatives don’t dare touch it,” noted NPR correspondent Sylvia Poggioli in 2006. Ivo H. Daalder made the same point in a 2007 Brookings Institution report, writing that “when one talks about the right in Europe, you are talking about a very state interventionist political class that still believes that the government has a fundamental role in guiding how the economy is supposed to be run.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Europe’s new leaders have made relatively modest economic changes. True, Sarkozy has raised state employees’ retirement age (precipitating a transport strike) and ended France’s 35-hour workweek. But from the start, Social Democrats in Germany, whom Merkel’s slim margin of victory forced her to accept as coalition partners, have limited her ability to implement serious economic reforms. In April 2008, Judy Dempsey noted in the International Herald Tribune not only that the coalition had “run its course” but that Merkel herself had been “forced to move leftward,” hiking pensions and “rolling back radical labor reforms, ironically introduced by her Social Democratic predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, which were designed to bring older people back to work by reducing social welfare payments.” And with the onset of the economic crisis, notes German author Henryk Broder, “there is even an ongoing discussion about Enteignung [expropriation] and Verstaatlichung [nationalization], which was unthinkable a year ago.”

As for Sweden, shortly after the 2006 victory, BusinessWeek writers Stanley Reed and Ariane Sains paraphrased Reinfeldt as saying that his “idea isn’t to dismantle the cherished Swedish welfare state. . . . That would be too controversial.” Reinfeldt’s one major innovation has been a “partially successful” effort “to force people off the welfare rolls and into the labor market,” University of Lund social thinker Jonathan Friedman tells me. Reinfeldt’s economic plan has also involved increased privatization, somewhat lower taxes, and encouragement of entrepreneurship—all policies, as Friedman notes, “that were started by the previous government.”

Meanwhile, with the notable exception of Denmark, the new nonsocialist governments have left their predecessors’ disastrous immigration and integration policies almost entirely intact. Sarkozy’s defiant campaign rhetoric about Muslim rioters in the suburbs raised hopes for major change. But though he announced last July that illegal immigration would be a major focus during France’s EU presidency, he has done little even about legal immigration, most of which, in Western Europe, involves the importation of new spouses in arranged, usually forced, marriages. Sarkozy seems to believe that job creation and other economic measures will resolve France’s colossal integration challenges.

Merkel, meanwhile, shone briefly when she insisted that the Deutsche Oper proceed with a 2006 production of Mozart’s Idomeneo that Muslim leaders condemned as offensive. But the heavily hyped “national integration plan” that she introduced the following year rested on such half-measures as an increase in the number of government-sponsored German classes, an effort to encourage immigrants to play sports, and (incredibly) a program that addressed wife-beating—permitted by the Koran and extremely common in Muslim communities—by offering advice on the Internet. Merkel actually described these pathetic gestures as a “milestone”; Broder, more accurately, calls them “make-believe action,” another way to avoid conflicts in her coalition.

In Sweden, says Friedman, Reinfeldt has pursued “a variant of politics as usual” on immigration and integration. Lars Hedegaard, president of the International Free Press Society, insists that Swedish efforts to encourage employment “will undoubtedly prove ineffective over the long haul” because “the fundamental problem is demographics. Sweden remains Europe’s main importer of Muslim immigrants who are unwilling to assimilate and whose imams order them to detest Swedish culture. So long as the current government is unwilling to tackle this basic problem, everything else will be for naught.”

Sarkozy has undertaken one high-profile initiative, which seems disastrously ill-conceived in a uniquely Gallic way: developing closer, more formal ties between France and the Arab countries from which it receives most of its immigrants. At one point, he even spoke of a “Mediterranean Union.” Haaretz writer Michalis Firillas summed up Sarkozy’s plan tidily in January 2008: “For some, his Mediterranean Union is a containment policy. For others it is neocolonial. But there is also a sense that Sarkozy is betting on French grandeur, that aura of greatness, to bridge the disparate Mediterranean with a new and serious political body. Unfortunately, he may find that there are others with similar visions of grandeur, from Ankara to Cairo, from Jerusalem to Tangiers, who have their own Mediterranean visions.” Indeed, Sarkozy’s scheme appears to be a continuation of his left-wing predecessors’ efforts to bring the Arab world under French influence—efforts that ended up subsidizing the colonization of French suburbs by Arabs who now consider them part of the House of Islam.

Not only has Europe’s move to the right not always had concrete results; it also hasn’t been an across-the-board phenomenon. In Britain, the Tories seem poised to resume power after Labour’s long, slow decline. Yet the ideological gap between the parties has narrowed so much in recent years, and the leadership vacuum is so pronounced, that it’s difficult to imagine a Tory takeover’s having an impact remotely comparable with that of Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election. On the contrary, conservative columnist Peter Hitchens recently charged that nowadays “you cannot become the government unless you bow to the views of the ‘Centre-Left’ media elite, especially the broadcast media elite.” That elite, alas—as vividly demonstrated last year by the archbishop of Canterbury’s speech contemplating the legitimacy of sharia in parts of Britain—is bent on appeasing fundamentalist Islam.

And Spain, in a move widely seen as capitulating to Islamists, responded to the March 2004 terrorist attacks in Madrid by voting for José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s Socialist Party, which had vowed to withdraw troops from Iraq immediately. Zapatero narrowly won reelection last year. As libertarian columnist Antonio Golmar explains, the centrist consensus established after King Juan Carlos’s introduction of democracy in the seventies has been shattered by Zapatero’s hard-left initiatives. These include the Historical Memory Law—which portrays leftist mass murderers during the Spanish civil war as heroic freedom fighters, while stigmatizing many of their innocent victims as fascists—and the introduction in all schools of “citizenship” classes that teach scorn for capitalism and representative democracy.

In response, some Spaniards have lurched rightward toward the national-Catholic, proto-fascist ideology of Franco’s time and become increasingly vocal within the conservative Partido Popular. Consequently, says Golmar, “moderates in Spain are trapped between a far-left administration and their cronies and the revival of the extreme right disguised in conservative and even libertarian clothing.” While America struggles to move beyond the antagonisms of the 1960s, then, Spain has entered an ideological battlefield reminiscent of the years preceding its civil war of the late thirties. There seems little room for those who loathe both the neo-Marxists and the neoreactionaries.

The situation in Spain is a reminder that not all “right turns” are created equal. If the Danes have affirmed individual liberty, human rights, sexual equality, the rule of law, and freedom of speech and religion, some Western Europeans have reacted to the mindless multiculturalism of their socialist leaders by embracing alternatives that seem uncomfortably close to fascism. Consider Austria’s recently deceased Jörg Haider, who belittled the Holocaust, honored Waffen-SS veterans, and found things to praise about Nazism. In 2000, his Freedom Party became part of a coalition government, leading the rest of the EU to isolate Austria diplomatically for a time, and last September, his new party, the Alliance for the Future of Austria, won 11 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections. Or take Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has called the Holocaust “a detail in the history of World War II” and advocated the forced quarantining of people who test HIV-positive—and whose far-right National Front came out on top in the first round of voting for the French presidency in 2002. The British National Party (BNP), which has a whites-only membership policy and has flatly denied the Holocaust, won more than 5 percent of the vote in London’s last mayoral election. Then there’s Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), formerly Vlaams Bloc, whose leaders have a regrettable tendency to be caught on film singing Nazi songs and buying Nazi books. In 2007, it won five out of 40 seats in the Belgian Senate.

For establishment politicians, journalists, and academics, these parties serve an exceedingly useful purpose: their existence makes it easy to tar any nonsocialist party with the fascist brush—labeling it racist and xenophobic, equating its leaders with the likes of Le Pen and Haider, and stigmatizing its supporters. No party in Europe has been subjected to more unfair attacks than Norway’s Progress Party, whose extraordinary electoral successes have outraged that country’s socialist elite. Like other parties on what we may call Europe’s respectable right, the Progress Party has expressly distanced itself from parties like the National Front and Vlaams Belang. Yet despite these disavowals, American media have routinely echoed the leftist establishment’s unjust calumnies.

A seminal example was a March 2002 New York Times article by Marlise Simons about Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch politician who, according to the article’s headline, was proudly gay, and marching the dutch to the right. Though Simons acknowledged that Fortuyn criticized Islam because it offered “no equality for men and women and because . . . the imams here preach in offensive terms about gays,” she nonetheless echoed the Dutch establishment’s characterization of him as a menace to Dutch values, making sure to mention that he had been widely compared with Mussolini and Haider. A few weeks later, Fortuyn was murdered by an environmental fanatic taken in by similar claptrap.

The same kind of incendiary rhetoric that Dutch journalists used against Fortuyn can now be seen in American left-wing coverage of any nonsocialist European party or politician. Typical was Gary Younge’s 2007 piece in The Nation: in europe, it’s the old right that’s full of hate. According to Younge, “the primary threat to democracy in Europe is not ‘Islamofascism’ . . . but plain old fascism. The kind whereby mostly white Europeans take to the streets to terrorize minorities.” This was nonsense on a breathtaking scale: though the rise of parties like the BNP is indeed distressing, the truth remains that for every act of anti-Muslim violence in Europe, there are—to make an exceedingly conservative guess—100 acts of Muslim-on-infidel violence.

Who will win the war for the soul of Western Europe? The Islamofascists and their multiculturalist appeasers, many of whom seem to believe that their job is not to defend democracy but to help make the transition to sharia as smooth as possible? The nativist cryptofascists? Or Pim Fortuyn’s freedom-loving heirs? Interestingly, while Western Europeans have been heading in one direction, Americans have chosen to go the other way, replacing a president more loathed by the European elite than any in history with a man whom the same elite has celebrated to an unprecedented degree, often depicting his election as a mystical act of atonement for all of America’s past sins, real or imagined.

The final question, then, is whether the Western European Left’s condescension toward America, and the American Left’s habit of holding Western Europe up as a socialist paradise, can survive the combination of Europe’s right turn and the elevation of Barack Obama. Stir in the international financial crisis, which will almost certainly cause a socioeconomic upheaval of untold dimensions in both hemispheres, and it seems reasonable to expect that the old pattern may be broken for good. Meaning that American professors will have a far less stressful time of it at European cocktail parties—at least until sharia comes along and forbids cocktails entirely.

Obama's Dream

A community of collectivist, colored, sexually ambiguous vegetarians who live in bio-degradable homes and slavishly follow the edicts of a fatherly dictator.

I wish I Came Up With This Myself...

Knights of the Old Republic

The republic has become an empire. Who will save us?

E.Coli Outbreak Traced to Hillary Clinton

The CDC traced a recent E.Coli to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The head of the CDC research team, Dr. Greenberg stated:

"We believe that all of the bullshit that Secretary of State Clinton spouted that 90% of illicit guns in Mexico originated from the United States contaminated the Potomac River, infecting several thousand residents of Washington, DC."

When questioned about how the bullshit of one person could lease to such widespread contamination, Dr. Greenberg responded:

"Our research team believed that Secretary of State Clinton's bullshit was especially noxious because it will almost certainly be used as a pretext by the Obama Administration to curtail the 2nd amendment rights of American Citizens."

The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.

While 90 percent of the guns traced to the U.S. actually originated in the United States, the percent traced to the U.S. is only about 17 percent of the total number of guns reaching Mexico.

By William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott
FOXNews.com

EXCLUSIVE: You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.

-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.

-- CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.

-- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the United States."

-- William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that "there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States."

There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:

It's just not true.

In fact, it's not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.

What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.

"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.

A Look at the Numbers

In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S.

But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.

In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:

-- The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.

-- Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.

- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.

-- Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.

-- The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.

-- Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America's cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.

'These Don't Come From El Paso'

Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered "assault rifles" that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S.

"These kinds of guns -- the auto versions of these guns -- they are not coming from El Paso," he said. "They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don't get these guns from the U.S."

Some guns, he said, "are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way -- the fully auto versions -- they are not smuggled in across the river."

Many of the fully automatic weapons that have been seized in Mexico cannot be found in the U.S., but they are not uncommon in the Third World.

The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years -- but those grenades and the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are unavailable in U.S. gun shops. The ones used in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey in October and a TV station in January were made in South Korea. Almost 70 similar grenades were seized in February in the bottom of a truck entering Mexico from Guatemala.

Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semi-automatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California," according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

Boatloads of Weapons

So why would the Mexican drug cartels, which last year grossed between $17 billion and $38 billion, bother buying single-shot rifles, and force thousands of unknown "straw" buyers in the U.S. through a government background check, when they can buy boatloads of fully automatic M-16s and assault rifles from China, Israel or South Africa?

Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government, says the drug cartels are using the Guatemalan border to move black market weapons. Some are left over from the Central American wars the United States helped fight; others, like the grenades and launchers, are South Korean, Israeli and Spanish. Some were legally supplied to the Mexican government; others were sold by corrupt military officers or officials.

The exaggeration of United States "responsibility" for the lawlessness in Mexico extends even beyond the "90-percent" falsehood -- and some Second Amendment activists believe it's designed to promote more restrictive gun-control laws in the U.S.

In a remarkable claim, Auturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., said Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States -- 730,000 a year. That's a far cry from the official statistic from the Mexican attorney general's office, which says Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008.

Chris Cox, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, blames the media and anti-gun politicians in the U.S. for misrepresenting where Mexican weapons come from.

"Reporter after politician after news anchor just disregards the truth on this," Cox said. "The numbers are intentionally used to weaken the Second Amendment."

"The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South America. You also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns. It's estimated that over 100,000 soldiers deserted the army to work for the drug cartels, and that ignores all the police. How many of them took their weapons with them?"

But Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, called the "90 percent" issue a red herring and said that it should not detract from the effort to stop gun trafficking into Mexico.

"Let's do what we can with what we know," he said. "We know that one hell of a lot of firearms come from the United States because our gun market is wide open."

The Reverend Al Gore Won't Debate!

Recently the Reverend Al Gore, leader of the Sacred Church of Global Warming refused to debate Lord Christopher Monckton, a former scientific advisor to Margaret Thatcher and author of ""35 Inconvenient Truths: The Errors In Al Gore's Movie."

This is another sign of how for some of its followers, anthropogenic global warming has moved from a theory to an orthodox religion that is beyond the reach of debate and scrutiny. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html

Lord Monckton was invited by Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas) to debate head-to-head withGore at a high profile global warming hearing on April 24, 2009. Monckton claimed that the House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President al Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on April 24, 2009. According to Lord Monckton, "The House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face" and “The Democrats have a lot to learn about the right of free speech under the US Constitution. Congress Henry Waxman's (D-CA) refusal to expose Al Gore's sci-fi comedy-horror testimony to proper, independent scrutiny by the House minority reeks of naked fear,”

Some of the Racist Protesters

Underlying Agendas

Evil Conservatives And The Corporate

Overlords Who Support Them.

A few years back I had a discussion with a "progressive" friend of mine about the Economist Magazine. I had told her how in-depth and analytical most of the articles were. She responded with two questions that "progressives" commonly pose when presented with positions that are contrary to their own: "what is the author's agenda?" and "what is the agenda of those who fund them?" Whether these individuals have read the works of Foucault and Derrida or not, this approach clearly reflects the deconstructionist search for power, rather than truth within texts.

These good questions become illegitimate when they are used to avoid addressing the merit or lack of merit of a belief or explanation. In the case of the Economist, the bias that their corporate sponsorship may have does not automatically negate the strength of their positions.

"Progressives" are correct to approach the work of corporate supported economists and scientists with extra skepticism, but are wrong to discredit their research without even having read them. Let their research stand or fall according to its merit and not its "agenda."

Another even larger problem is that "progressives" rarely display this same healthy skepticism towards left wing politicians. They fail to ask questions such as, "what is the possible agenda of politicians who are so quick to exclusively blame our economic debacle on the "free market"?" And they fail to explore the possible underlying agenda of politicians, like Barack Obama and Al Gore who stifle all opposing opinions on the source or severity of global warming.

Regardless of how strongly one believes that "an unfettered free market caused the economic crash" or "global warming is an epic disaster with purely anthropogenic causes," they must acknowledge that these explanations conveniently supports the left's agenda to have the federal government and international governing bodies exert increasing control over economic and social life. Such control implies an expansion of the power, prestige and resources of national and international regulatory agencies and the politicians who command them. Even if this expansion is necessary, we should never abandonment of skepticism and scrutiny that are so essential in a democracy.

The larger a crisis is perceived to be, the less scrutiny the government's response will provoke. And of course, the more the public believes that it needs the government's protection, the quicker it will acquiesce to an increase in government power and a decrease in their economic and social freedom. This was true with GW Bush's "war on terror," just as it is now true with Obama's sweeping crusade to "save us from corporate greed and environmental collapse."

From Science to Religion

Pictured Above: the Reverend Al Gore

Global Warming is an important area of research and debate and a legitimate area of concern. But, when we believe that any concept or explanation is beyond debate and demonize those who do not share it, it ceases being a science and starts becoming a religion.

Update: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

Outpouring of Skeptical Scientists Continues as 59 Scientists Added to Senate Report

Link to Introduction of Report

Link to Full Printable 255-Page PDF Report

Washington, DC: Fifty-nine additional scientists from around the world have been added to the U.S. Senate Minority Report of dissenting scientists, pushing the total to over 700 skeptical international scientists – a dramatic increase from the original 650 scientists featured in the initial December 11, 2008 release. The 59 additional scientists added to the 255-page Senate Minority report since the initial release 13 ½ weeks ago represents an average of over four skeptical scientists a week. This updated report – which includes yet another former UN IPCC scientist – represents an additional 300 (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the initial report’s release in December 2007.

The over 700 dissenting scientists are now more than 13 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers. The 59 additional scientists hail from all over the world, including Japan, Italy, UK, Czech Republic, Canada, Netherlands, the U.S. and many are affiliated with prestigious institutions including, NASA, U.S. Navy, U.S. Defense Department, Energy Department, U.S. Air Force, the Philosophical Society of Washington (the oldest scientific society in Washington), Princeton University, Tulane University, American University, Oregon State University, U.S. Naval Academy and EPA.

The explosion of skeptical scientific voices is accelerating unabated in 2009. A March 14, 2009 article in the Australian revealed that Japanese scientists are now at the forefront of rejecting man-made climate fears prompted by the UN IPCC.

Prominent Japanese Geologist Dr. Shigenori Maruyama, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences who has authored more than 125 scientific publications, said in March 2009 that “there was widespread skepticism among his colleagues about the IPCC's fourth and latest assessment report that most of the observed global temperature increase since the mid-20th century ‘is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” Maruyama noted that when this question was raised at a Japan Geoscience Union symposium last year, ‘the result showed 90 per cent of the participants do not believe the IPCC report.” [Also See: The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists' equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. [ See: Skeptical scientists overwhelm conference: '2/3 of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC' & see full reports here & here –More analyses of recent developments see report’s introduction here. ]

“I do not find the supposed scientific consensus among my colleagues,” noted Earth Scientist Dr. Javier Cuadros on March 3, 2009. Cuadros, of the UK Natural History Museum, specializes in Clay Mineralogy and has published more than 30 scientific papers.

Award-Winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Robert H. Austin, who has published 170 scientific papers and was elected a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, lamented the current fears over global warming.

“Unfortunately, Climate Science has become Political Science…It is tragic that some perhaps well-meaning but politically motivated scientists who should know better have whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomena which is statistically questionable at best,” Austin told the minority staff on the Environment and Public Works Committee on March 2, 2009.

‘Could turn the climate change world upside down’

The rise in skeptical scientists are responding not only to an increase in dire “predictions” of climate change, but also a steady stream of peer-reviewed studies, analyses, real world data, and inconvenient developments have further cast doubts on the claims of man-made global warming fear activists. The latest peer-reviewed study in Geophysical Research Letters is being touted as a development that “could turn the climate change world upside down.” The study finds that the “Earth is undergoing natural climate shift.” The March 15, 2009 article in WISN.com details the research of Dr. Anastasios Tsonis of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “We realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural," Tsonis said. “I don't think we can say much about what the humans are doing,” he added.

Tsonis further added: “The temperature has flattened and is actually going down. We are seeing a new shift towards cooler temperatures that will last for probably about three decades.” [ See also: Peer-Reviewed Study Finds Global Warming could stop 'for up to 30 years! Warming 'On Hold?...'Could go into hiding for decades' study finds – Discovery.com – March 2, 2009 ]

Climate ‘primarily being driven by natural forcing mechanisms’

Climatologist and Paloeclimate researcher Dr. Diane Douglas, who has authored or edited over 200 technical reports, also declared natural factors are dominating climate, not CO2. “The recent ‘panic’ to control GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions and billions of dollars being dedicated for the task has me deeply concerned that US, and other countries are spending precious global funds to stop global warming, when it is primarily being driven by natural forcing mechanisms,” Douglas, who is releasing a major new paper she authored that will be presented at a UNESCO conference in Ghent, Belgium on March 20, 2009, told the minority staff on the Environment and Public Works Committee on March 10, 2009.

Retired Award Winning NASA Atmospheric Scientist Dr. William W. Vaughan, recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, a former Division Chief of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and author of more than 100 refereed journal articles, monographs, and papers, also now points to natural causes of recent climate changes. “The cause of these global changes is fundamentally due to the Sun and its effect on the Earth as it moves about in its orbit. Not from man-made activities,” Vaughan told the minority staff on the Environment and Public Works Committee on February 6, 2009.

Geology Professor Uberto Crescenti of the University G.d'Annunzio in Italy, the past president of the Society of Italian Geologists also agrees that nature, not mankind is ruling the climate. “I think that climatic changes have natural causes according to geological data…I am very glad to sign the U.S. Senate’s report of scientists against the theory of man-made global warming,” Crescenti told the minority staff on the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009.

UN IPCC Scientist Dr. Steven M. Japar, a PhD atmospheric chemist who was part of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Second (1995) and Third (2001) Assessment Reports, and has authored 83 peer-reviewed publications and in the areas of climate change, atmospheric chemistry, air pollutions and vehicle emissions, challenged the IPCC’s climate claims.

“Temperature measurements show that the [climate model-predicted mid-troposphere] hot zone is non-existent. This is more than sufficient to invalidate global climate models and projections made with them!” Japar told the minority staff on the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 7, 2009.

Mathematical Physicist Dr. Frank Tipler, professor at Tulane University who has authored 58 peer-reviewed publications and five books, ridiculed man-made climate claims. “Whether the ice caps melt, or expand --- whatever happens --- the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) theorists claim it confirms their theory. A perfect example of a pseudo-science like astrology," Tipler wrote on December 22, 2008.

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University, and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, says the international promotion of man-made global warming fears are nearing their end. (Note: Bellamy was in the original 2007 U.S. Senate report.] “The ­science has, quite simply, gone awry. In fact, it’s not even science any more, it’s anti-science,” Bellamy, who used to believe in man-made warming, declared on November 5, 2008.

‘Journalistic malpractice’

Chemist Dr. Mark L. Campbell, a professor of chemistry at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, who has published numerous studies in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on topics such as methane, squarely blames the media for promoting unfounded climate fears. “The sky is not burning, and to claim that it is amounts to journalistic malpractice…the press only promotes the global warming alarmists and ignores or minimizes those of us who are skeptical,” Chapman wrote on January 13, 2009.

“Scientists across the globe are catching on -- global warming is not real science. There is a sucker born every minute who believes in it, and Al Gore is playing the role of P.T. Barnum,” Chemist Max S. Strozier declared on December 22, 2009 in an email to the minority staff of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Strozier spent 26 years specializing in chemical laboratory analysis, served as a U.S. Department of Defense aerospace chemist and is a former lecturer at San Jose State University and the University of Texas.

Highlights of the Updated 2009 Senate Minority Report of 700 plus scientists featuring the 59 additional scientists:

Full Text of the 59 additional scientists’ remarks begins on page 70 of report:

The new scientific report “directly challenges the conclusions of the IPCC Summary that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing dangerous and unprecedented warming.” - Quantitative Economist Kenneth A. Haapala, the past president of the prestigious Philosophical Society of Washington, the oldest scientific society in Washington (founded 1871), has reviewed hundreds of reports based on quantitative techniques. Haapala co-authored the report “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate”

“I think that climatic changes have a natural causes according many geological data…I am very glad to sign the U.S. Senate’s report of scientists against the theory of man-made global warming.” - Geology Professor Uberto Crescenti of the University G.d'Annunzio in Italy is the past president of the Society of Italian Geologists.

“I am appalled at the state of discord in the field of climate science…There is no observational evidence that the addition of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have caused any temperature perturbations in the atmosphere.” - Award-winning atmospheric scientist Dr. George T. Wolff, former member of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, served on a committee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and authored more than 90 peer-reviewed studies.

“The sky is not burning, and to claim that it is amounts to journalistic malpractice…the press only promotes the global warming alarmists and ignores or minimizes those of us who are skeptical.” - Chemist Dr. Mark L. Campbell, a professor of chemistry at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, who has published numerous studies in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on topics such as methane.

“Once again we have misleading climate change pronouncements being based on data errors, data errors detected by non-UN, non-IPCC, non-peer-reviewed external observers…This is exactly what happens when you base your arguments on ‘consensus science’ and not scientific fact.” - Professor Dr. Doug L. Hoffman, a mathematician, computer programmer, and engineer, who worked on environmental models and conducted research in molecular dynamics simulations. Hoffman co-authored the 2009 book, The Resilient Earth, described as “bringing a dose of skeptical reality to climate science and the global warming debate.”

“The questions are scientific, but the UN answers are political. The global warming debate is hardly about science.” - Computer Modeler and Engineer Allen Simmons, who worked 12 years with NASA's top climate scientists and wrote computer systems software for the world's first weather satellites and aided in the development of computer systems for polar orbiting satellites. Simmons co-authored the new skeptical book The Resilient Earth.

Belief in climate models compared to “ancient astrology”… "I believe the anthropogenic (man-made) effect for climate change is still only one of the hypotheses to explain the variability of climate.” - Award-winning Japanese Physicist Dr. Kanya Kusano, program director of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology who’s research “focuses on the immaturity of simulation work cited in support of the theory of anthropogenic climate change.” compared climate models to “ancient astrology.”

“The recent ‘panic’ to control GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions and billions of dollars being dedicated for the task has me deeply concerned that US, and other countries are spending precious global funds to stop global warming, when it is primarily being driven by natural forcing mechanisms.” - Climatologist and Paloeclimate researcher Dr. Diane Douglas, who has authored or edited over 200 technical reports, specialized in the reconstruction of a variety of proxy data and has worked for the Department of Energy and conducted research for the Arizona State Office of Climatology to investigate the Little Ice Age.

"Temperature measurements show that the [climate model-predicted mid-troposphere] hot zone is non-existent. This is more than sufficient to invalidate global climate models and projections made with them!”- UN IPCC Scientist Dr. Steven M. Japar, a PhD atmospheric chemist who was part of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Second (1995) and Third (2001) Assessment Reports, and has authored 83 peer-reviewed publications and in the areas of climate change, atmospheric chemistry, air pollutions and vehicle emissions.

“The cause of these global changes is fundamentally due to the Sun and its effect on the Earth as it moves about in its orbit. Not from man-made activities.” - Retired Award Winning NASA Atmospheric Scientist Dr. William W. Vaughan, recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, a former Division Chief of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and author more than 100 refereed journal articles, monographs, and papers.

“Unfortunately, Climate Science has become Political Science…It is tragic that some perhaps well-meaning but politically motivated scientists who should know better have whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomena which is statistically questionable at best.” - Award-Winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Robert H. Austin, who has published 170 scientific papers, was elected a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and is the current Chair of the U.S. Liaison Committee of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. Austin, who won the 2005 Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society

“If global cooling will come soon -- scientists will lose trust .” - Award-winning Japanese Geologist Dr. Shigenori Maruyama, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences who has authored more than 125 scientific publications, was decorated with the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon for a major contribution in the field of geology, specializes in the geological evidence of prehistoric climate change.

“Observe which side resorts to the most vociferous name-calling and you are likely to have identified the side with the weaker argument and they know it.” - Materials and Research Physicist Dr. Charles R. Anderson, a former Department of Navy research physicist who has published more than 25 scientific papers specializes in spectroscopy, microscopy, thermal analysis, mass spectroscopy, and surface chemistry.

“The data which is used to date for making the conclusions and predictions on global warming are so rough and primitive, compared to what’s needed, and so unreliable that they are not even worth mentioning by respectful scientists.” - Award-winning Aerospace and Mechanical Engineer Dr. Gregory W. Moore, who has authored or co-authored more than 75 publications, book chapters, and reports, and authored the 2001 Version of the NASA Space Science Technology Plan which included a comprehensive approach to studying the Sun-Earth connection aspect of space-based research.

“I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man-made…Hansen embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming.” - Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist Dr. John S. Theon, a former supervisor of NASA’s James Hansen, and the former Chief of the Climate Processes Research Program at NASA Headquarters and former Chief of the Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch.

“I am pleased to be considered a ‘denier’ in this cause if this puts me in the class with those who defied prevailing ‘scientific consensus’ that the earth was flat and that the earth was the not the center of the universe.” – Retired U.S. Air Force (USAF) Meteorologist William “Bill” Lyons, of the USAF’s Global Weather Central at Strategic Air Command.

“I do not find the supposed scientific consensus among my colleagues… Curiously, it is a feature of man-made global warming that every fact confirms it: rising temperatures or decreasing temperatures. No matter what the weather, some model of global warming offers a watertight explanation.” - Earth Scientist Dr. Javier Cuadros of the UK Natural History Museum, who specializes in Clay Mineralogy and has published more than 30 scientific papers

“It is amazing to me, as a professional geologist, how many otherwise intelligent people have, as some may say, ‘drunk the Al Gore Kool-Aid’ concerning global climate change.” - Professional Geologist Earl F. Titcomb Jr. has co-authored analyses of geological and seismological hazards.

“Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus [which] is the business of politics. . . . What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.’” - Atmospheric Scientist Timothy R. Minnich, who has more than 30 years experience in the design and management of a wide range of air quality investigations for industry and government, is a past member of the American Meteorological Society and specializes in issues like acid rain and ozone, and has authored or co-authored numerous technical publications and reports.

“Based on the laws of physics, the effect on temperature of man’s contribution to atmospheric CO2 levels is minuscule and indiscernible from the natural variability caused in large part by changes in solar energy output.” - Atmospheric Scientist Robert L. Scotto, who has more than 30 years air quality consulting experience, served as a manager for an EPA Superfund contract and is co-founder of Minnich and Scotto, Inc., a full-service air quality consulting firm. He also is a past member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). Scotto, a meteorologist who has authored or co-authored numerous technical publications and reports.

“Whether the ice caps melt, or expand --- whatever happens --- the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) theorists claim it confirms their theory. A perfect example of a pseudo-science like astrology.” - Mathematical Physicist Dr. Frank Tipler, professor at Tulane University has authored 58 peer-reviewed publications and five books.

“My dear colleague [NASA’s James] Hansen, I believe, has finally gone off the deep end... The global warming ‘time bomb,’ ‘disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity's control.’ These are the words of an apocalyptic prophet, not a rational scientist.” - Chemist Dr. Nicholas Drapela of the faculty of Oregon State University Chemistry Department

“There is no credible evidence of the current exceptional global warming trumpeted by the IPCC…The IPCC is no longer behaving as an investigative scientific organization or pretending to be one…Their leaders betrayed the trust of the world community.” - Chemist Dr. Grant Miles, author of numerous scientific publications who was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Institute of Chemistry, was a member of UK Atomic Energy Authority Chemical Separation Plant Committee.

Other scientists added to the U.S. Senate Minority Report since its initial December 11, 2009 release include the following:
Full Text of the 59 additional scienists’ remarks begins on page 70 of report:

Geologist Dr. Lloyd C. Furer, a past Associate Scientist and Visiting Professor at Indiana University who served as a meteorologist for the U.S. Air Force and has authored more than 35 publications; Physicist and environmental activist John Droz, Jr., who holds a graduate degree in physics from Syracuse University; Geologist Dr. A. Neil Hutton, former District Geologist for Northwest Territories and the Arctic Islands and former Assistant Chief Geologist for the Western Canadian Basin; Professional Geologist Gary Walker, a member of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists; Ohio’s NBC 4 chief meteorologist Jym Ganahl who was the youngest person to be granted the American Metrological (AMS) Seal of Approval; Dr. Jim Buckee, who holds a PhD in Astrophysics from Oxford University, lectured about climate change at the University of Aberdeen; Geologist Allan Shepard, former Chief Geologist for Amoco International and member of the Association of Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta; Physicist Gary M. Hoover, a consultant with research and operational experience in atmospheric energy absorption, nuclear reactor operations and exploration geophysics; Meteorologist Scott Sumner of North Carolina; Professor Dr. Caleb Stewart Rossiter, an adjunct professor at the School of International Service at American University and a former teacher of quantitative research methods; Chemical Process Control Engineer Dr. Pierre R Latour, who holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering and has published more than 70 publications and managed NASA’s Apollo Docking Simulator development; Terry Jackson of the Institute of Physics in London, the founder of the Energy Group, and a physics teacher at Belfast Institute Further and Higher Education for 30 years; Certified consulting meteorologist Anthony J. Sadar, co-author of Environmental Risk Communication: Principles and Practices for Industry; Physicist Dr. Paul Drallos, who worked as a Post Doc at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque and at the University of Toledo, formed Plasma Dynamics Corporation, a small research company that specializes in plasma display technology and computer simulation; Surface Chemist Dr. Mark Rose Head of Environmental Quality at Qatar Petroleum who has generated two patents and developed the largest Purified Wet Acid Plant in the world; Geologist Dr. Seymour Merrin, a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and a research scientist; Environmental Chemist Jim Nibeck, who also worked in the biomedical research industry, wrote a 2008 paper on climate titled “Doubt About Anthropogenic Global Warming”; Physicist Jerome Hudson who studies focused on aperture synthesis and optics; Certified Consulting Meteorologist Mike Smith, the CEO of WeatherData Services of Wichita Kansas; Environmental Engineer James A. Haigh, PE, a Certified Plant Engineer and Licensed Professional Engineer of 36 years who has assisted in the design of Class III Nuclear Valves for Nuclear Power Plants; Meteorologist Tony Pann of WUSA 9 in Washington DC, holds the American Meteorological Seal of Approval; Biologist and Biochemist Dr. John Reinhard, a member of the American Chemical Society who has published 76 papers and currently a scientist in the pharmaceutical industry; Engineer Alan Cheetham has 30 years experience including extensive scientific training, data analysis, modeling and statistics and runs the skeptical website “Global Warming Science”; Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Dr. W. M. Schaffer, Ph. D., of the University of Arizona; CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers, an meteorologist for 22 years, certified by the American Meteorological Society; Engineer and Physicist J.K. “Jim” August, formerly of the U.S. Navy nuclear power program; Biologist and Neuropharmacologist Dr. Doug Pettibone, who has authored 120 scientific publications and holds ten patents and is a past member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Meteorologist Tom Wysmuller, former weather forecaster at Amsterdam’s Royal Dutch Weather Bureau; MIT Scientist Dr. Robert Rose, a professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT with approximately 50 years of experience teaching various scientific; Climate researcher Dr. Craig Loehle, formerly of the Department of Energy Laboratories and currently with the National Council for Air and Stream Improvements, who has published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers; German Meteorologist Dr. Gerd-Rainer Weber, a Consulting Meteorologist; Professor Luigi Mariani of the Agrometeorological Research Group, Dept. of Crop Science at the University of Milan, has authored or co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed studies and other scientific reports; Miroslav Kutilek, Emeritus Professor of Soil Science and Soil Physics at Czech Technical University in Prague who specialized in paleoclimatology of soil; Coastal Engineer Cyril Galvin, member of the American Geophysical Union; Nuclear Chemist Gary L. Troyer has worked as an analytical chemist and was a Fellow Scientist at the Westinghouse Hanford Company; and Award Winning Physicist Dr. Will Happer, Professor at the Department of Physics at Princeton University and Former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy, who has published over 200 scientific papers.





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