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5 Mysterious Qigong Exercise Videos

Worth watching, truly amazing.

_________________________ 

"5 Mysterious Qigong Exercise Videos
Amazing Qigong Exercise Videos

Qigong is a part of Traditional Chinese medicine involving the coordination of different breathing patterns with various physical postures and motions of the body. Taught mostly for health purposes, the manipulation of ‘Qi’ energy. This has been used in many different applications from accu-pressure, excercise, and even martial arts.
Qigong practitioners believe that the body has an energy field generated from our living selves. ‘Qi’ which refers to ‘breath’ is the medium that is manipulated through ‘gong’ or work, hence Qigong; meaning ‘breath work’.
Here are some great videos that can help you understand the mysterious power of Qigong and its many applications in alternative medicine, excercise, and overall well-being: "

http://www.mindhacks.org/2007/09/04/5-mysterious-qigong-excercise-videos/

Entry #751

"Mortgage Fraud Funding Jihad?

Found this very interesting.

"Mortgage Fraud Funding Jihad?
By Patrick Poole
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 11, 2007

A man arrested in December at the Kansas City airport with $70,000 in his bulging pockets while trying to board a Southwest Airlines flight claiming the money was actually Muslim prayer books, a San Francisco mortgage company executive who went on the run from the FBI in November, seven people arrested in September in Salt Lake City with ties to al-Qaeda, and a co-defendant in the Sami al-Arian/Palestinian Islamic Jihad trial all have one thing in common – the growing trend of terrorist associations with mortgage fraud rings in the US.

 

Financial experts say that mortgage fraud has become the fastest growing type of white-collar crime, and terrorist organizations have been quick to jump on the trend. But what concerns federal authorities is how regularly mortgage fraud is showing up in terrorism investigations.

 

In the past year, several high-profile mortgage fraud arrests have been tied to federal terrorism investigations, most notably a ring busted up in Salt Lake City that is alleged to have direct ties to the late al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Federal agents have been trying to track the hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally obtained by Sharif Omar and his associates in the mortgage fraud ring. At least $40,000 was transferred to an account in Jordan. From there, federal officials believe that money went to Sharif’s brother, Shawqi Omar, who was seized in a raid by US forces in Iraq in October 2004 and is accused of working for al-Zarqawi’s terrorist network in Baghdad. Shawqi Omar is still in US military custody.

 

The Salt Lake City case is not the first time that the FBI has seen the nexus between mortgage fraud and terrorism investigations:

 

  • Tarik Hamdi was charged last year for immigration and mortgage-loan fraud as part of an investigation into the role of an Islamic charity, the International Institute for Islamic Thought of Herndon, Virginia, that Hamdi worked for and was being investigated for ties to terrorist financing. According to an August 2005 Washington Post article, Hamdi was personally responsible for delivering a satellite phone battery to al-Qaeda operatives for Osama bin Laden’s personal device, which was used to coordinate the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Hamdi was also responsible for facilitating an interview with bin Laden for ABC News in May 1998.
  • Last year a Dearborn, MI man pled guilty to mortgage fraud in a plea deal with federal authorities to prevent being charged additionally with terrorist activities. At the time of his arrest, federal authorities found books, posters and recruitment videos for the Hezbollah terrorist organization inside the home of Nemr Ali Rahal. According to the Detroit News, a picture was also recovered of Rahal tearing up an American flag. Rahal had fraudulently obtained more than $500,000 by falsifying information on a mortgage application. Customs officials had also stopped Rahal and his son the previous year for having military-grade explosive residue on their passports as they reentered the US from Canada.
  • In another Dearborn-area case, two men, Mohammed Krayem and Mahmoud Youssef Kourani were accused in 2004 of transferring more than $200,000 obtained through real estate fraud and cigarette smuggling to Kourani’s brother, Haider Kourani, the Hezbollah chief of military security for southern Lebanon. The money was to be used for purchasing military equipment from the United Nations Protection Force for use in attacks against Israel.
  • One of the co-defendants in the Sami al-Arian terrorism trial, Sameeh Taha Hammoudeh, pled guilty to three counts of tax evasion, immigration and mortgage fraud – the only crimes that Hammoudeh was convicted of after his acquittal on terrorism charges (Al-Arian later pled guilty to several terrorism charges and admitted his role in supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad). Had prosecutors not secured Hammoudeh’s plea agreement, there would not have been any basis to deport him back to Palestine. Even though he faced up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for these crimes, a US federal judge sentenced Hammoudeh to time served, five years probation, and waived all fines except $300.
  • In June 2005, two Dearborn-area men, Ahmad and Musa Jebril, were convicted of mortgage fraud charges after defrauding six banks for $250,000 and dozens of people of up to $400,000. The Jebrils were active supporters of Hamas, and federal authorities said that Ahmad Jebril was training a cell of local men to wage jihad against the US. Both Musa and Ahmad Jebril had been thrown out of their local mosque, where Musa had been an imam, for their radical activities. A local Muslim writer has described in an article for Beliefnet the climate of fear that the two men created in the Islamic community by their jihadist preaching and activities. The indictment also noted that immediately following the November 1995 car bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which killed four Americans, the Jebrils faxed a statement in support of the attacks to CNN. Subsequent to their conviction of mortgage fraud, the Jebrils and one of their associates were additionally charged by the federal government with trying to bribe a juror during their fraud trial.

But these various rings have not limited their activities to mortgage fraud and supporting terrorism: in one case it led to murder. In yet another case out of the Detroit/Dearborn-area, Bashar Farraj and Samer Fawaz were convicted in June 2005 in the murder of one of their associates involved in their mortgage fraud scheme. The body of the victim, Raed Al-Farah, was never recovered, but his blood was found in the office used by the two men and in Farraj’s 2002 Trailblazer. He had been lured to the office under the pretense of discussing a federal investigation into their mortgage fraud scheme, at which point he was struck on the head and killed to “tie up loose ends”.

 

With the difficultly of gathering sufficient evidence to conduct a case sufficient to convict on terrorism charges, federal authorities have not hesitated to look at the illegal means by which these individuals have financed their plans for jihad against the US.

 

It is the ease by which jihadists and their supporters can raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in a short period of time that makes mortgage fraud so attractive compared to the high-risk world of drug distribution, or the low returns from other known petty crimes that have previously been used to finance Islamic terrorism, such as smuggling cigarettes or baby formula.

 

In just one case currently under investigation by the FBI and Homeland Security officials in Columbus, Ohio, the value of the transactions being looked at is more than $11 million. This case typifies the ease with which large amounts of case can be had, and serves as a textbook example of how mortgage fraud rings operate.

 

The fraud usually begins when a seller is approached by a buyer with an offer too good to be true: the purchase of the home at a price well above list price (in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars). The catch is that the money over and above the list price is to be returned to the buyer by the seller at the time of closing. The incentive for the seller is that they receive their initial asking price, and in many mortgage fraud cases, the fraud ring tries to target homes that have been on the market for more than a year and where the seller will be eager to accept the buyer’s unusual arrangements.

 

The next phase of the fraud almost always involves an insider at the mortgage company who will agree to a loan at the inflated value of the home (the list price plus whatever amount is to be returned to the buyer). In some instances, a phony construction company is established by the buyer on an associate to justify on paper the additional amount of the loan. Once the loan is approved, the deal goes to closing where the seller takes the equivalent of the list price and the buyer walks away with their share of the transaction. In a number of cases, no one ever occupies the home nor is a mortgage payment ever made.

 

The Columbus case demonstrates the flexibility and ease with which the fraudulent transactions are accomplished. According to an article in the Columbus Dispatch, one buyer, Mohamed A. Mohamed targeted homes in the inner city, where in one case a mortgage was obtained for $160,000 on a home that county officials had only appraised for $34,000. That mortgage was eventually foreclosed and Mohamed lost his mortgage brokers license, but he still maintains a real estate agent license and has been involved in other transactions in that capacity.

 

Conversely, a series of purchases made by Hany Rezk Ibrahim and his wife involve several of the highest priced residential real estate transactions made in the Columbus area in the past year, with the Ibrahims walking away with approximately $250,000 in each transaction. In one case, the pair bought a home for $1.3 million that had sold for $540,000 the year before. Just prior to going on his real estate purchasing spree, Hany Ibrahim incorporated a home improvement company, listing an address at a local condominium complex as the corporate address.

 

All of these cases give evidence to why terrorists have latched onto mortgage fraud: the ease and the high profitability, compared to other criminal activity that carries greater risk and less of a return. Committing fraud in just one transaction can raise hundreds of thousands for jihad, where it might take a cigarette smuggling ring months or even years to make as much.

 

Fortunately, the mortgage industry, which has already taken action in response to the rapid rise of mortgage fraud, is becoming more aware of the involvement of terrorist organizations in some cases. Last October, experts from the mortgage lending industry gathered together with law enforcement and banking regulatory officials at a conference sponsored by the Appraisal Foundation. One expert, Connie Wilson of Interthinx, one of the leading mortgage fraud prevention firms, briefed attendees on how Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and even the Taliban, had established mortgage fraud rings in the US.

 

On the downside, however, this trend creates yet another area that law enforcement and homeland security must monitor, as the enemies of the United States grow bolder and attempt to fund their operations against our country through organized crime and fraud, essentially forcing Americans to pay for the demise of our own society. In the final analysis, the only way to reverse this trend of mortgage fraud financing jihad is for citizens to be aware of the threat and also be willing to withstand the financial incentives and refuse involvement in the schemes. In many respects, our own safety is contingent upon our own vigilance. "



http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=27682
Entry #749

"Environmentalism Religion Rather Than Science, Says Czech Leader

Sums it up extremely well.  It's much easier to control scared people.
 

"Environmentalism Religion Rather Than Science, Says Czech Leader
By Kevin Mooney
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
March 12, 2007

"(CNSNews.com) - Centralized planners seeking to "rule from above" are operating under the guise of environmentalism and other fashionable "isms" in a bid to attack freedom and liberty, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said here.

Addressing an audience at the CATO Institute in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Klaus argued that although communism has been eradicated in Eastern Europe, there are renewed efforts in this new century to reintroduce statist schemes.

Those who have experienced the absence of freedom in their lifetimes have a "special sensitivity" to dangerous and disturbing trends at work in Europe and America, Klaus said.

He identified what he said were three main "internal challenges" to freedom.

Fashionable and trendy "isms" like environmentalism seek to "radically re-organize human society" in a way that is detrimental to the freedoms that were secured just 17 years ago when Soviet communism fell, he argued.

Proponents of the environmental ideology were attempting to sell the public on "catastrophic scenarios" that could be used to justify the restoration of statist practices, he said.

"The hypothesis of global warming, and the role of man, is the most powerful embodiment of environmental ideology," Klaus observed. Although the environmental movement invokes science as a way of advancing policy goals, the arguments in favor of catastrophe rest on "ill-founded assumptions," he said.

"Environmentalism is a religion. It does not belong in the natural sciences and is more connected with social science."

Klaus said very few politicians and journalists understand that environmentalism is a political ideology masquerading as a natural science.

Other "isms" that he argued pose threats to order include "social democratism," "human rightism," "internationalism" and "multi-culturalism." These movements all proceed from a desire to "centrally organize, mastermind, regulate and control society," he said.

Freedom is also threatened by the drive toward global governance, the Czech leader argued. He said he had misgivings about the European Union and moves towards de-nationalizing countries.

Freedom in Europe is best secured over the long term, Klaus said, through a parliamentary democracy that exists within "a clearly defined state territory."

Those who are armed with the "special sensitivity" of having lived under communism see the trend toward "supranationalism" as incompatible with freedom and individual liberty, he said.

Klaus told Cybercast News Service he was not sure that the current generation of young people can ever fully appreciate what living conditions were like not so long ago in communist regimes.

For that reason, the centralized controlling agenda he associates with such ideologies as environmentalism tends to go largely undetected, he said."

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200703/CUL20070312b.html

Entry #747

"The Madness of King George

"The Madness of King George
By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 7, 2007

If putting one’s foot in one’s mouth were a lucrative enterprise, George Soros would be worth far more than his current $8.5 billion. While bashing the Iraq war for the benefit of reporters at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Hungarian-born Soros, a Holocaust survivor, unburdened himself of the view that the Nazis were once more in charge. Only now they were running the United States. “America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany,” Soros explained. “We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process.”

 

 

Lest there be doubts that Soros was actually likening his adoptive country to the Third Reich and the Bush administration to the Nazi nomenklatura, a Soros spokesman, Michael Vachon, moved quickly to dispel them. “There is nothing unpatriotic about demanding accountability from the president,” he said of Soros’s appeal for de-Nazification. “Those responsible for taking America into this needless war should do us all a favor and retire from public office.” In other words: guilty as charged.

 

 

This is not, to be sure, the first time that Soros has revealed himself as a dispenser of Godwin's Law. In The Age of Fallibility -- a bluster-heavy rant against America, its “feel-good society,” and its economic “market fundamentalism” published last summer -- Soros posed the rhetorical question: “Is it valid to compare the Bush administration to the Nazi and communist regimes?” Soros ruled unhesitatingly in the affirmative. Sure, he allowed, the U.S. was a “functioning democracy” while “Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were totalitarian dictatorships.” But concerned citizens must look past this “glaring contrast,” he urged, “because then we can discern some surprising similarities.”

 

 

And which similarities might those be? First, there was the “unbridled pursuit of self-interest and self-indulgence” and a societal “revulsion” to both, a connective tissue that, in Soros’s judgment, made the United States the modern offspring of Nazi Germany’s forerunner in the Weimar Republic. In Weimar Germany, this revulsion manifested itself in the Nazi rule. In the US there was the comparably troubling “rise of religious fundamentalism.” Second, Soros wrote, “the Bush administration and the Nazi and Communist regimes all engaged in the politics of fear.” As if to underscore his historical illiteracy on this point, Soros explained that the “9/11 attacks had their counterpart in the Reichstag fire in Germany and the Kirov murder in the Soviet Union.” (In view of its inability to prevent even minor policy debates from leaking into the media, can it really be the case that the Bush administration declared a one-party state and purged political opponents by the thousands without arousing suspicion?)

 

 

There was more along these lines. Citing yet another supposed similarity, Soros wrote that “in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and present-day America, political life came to be dominated by a movement that originated outside the parliamentary system and seized state power.” Thus, according to Soros, the German Nazis and the Russian Communists find their logical match in the “conservative movement” within the Republican Party. Not least, there were “similarities in propaganda methods.” Here, however, Soros maintained that the United States was actually more pernicious than its Nazi and Soviet analogues. His reasoning was that “the Bush administration has been able to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and Communist propaganda machines.” (At least this would explain why the Bush purges remain unknown.)

 

 

To point out the flaws of these comparisons would be to invest them with unearned seriousness. In any case, Soros made it clear that even he thought them unlikely to convince the lay reader. Conceding that his equation of the United States with Nazism and Communism won him few supporters -- outside, that is, the left-wing blogosphere, which found his Nazi analogies entirely on point -- Soros lamented: “Why does the general public not react in the same way?”

 

 

A better question might be: Where does George Soros, of all people, summon the nerve to smear his political opponents as Nazis? If anyone ought to be wary of a critical examination of the Nazi era, it is Soros. Though one finds only vague and sporadic mention of it in his books, all written with the conceit that a worldly power-broker is speaking inconvenient truths to power, the billionaire activist has his own uncomfortable ties to the Nazi genocide.

 

 

To examine these, one has to go back to 1944. In the aftermath of the German invasion of Hungary in March of that year, Soros’s father Tivadar conceived of a plan to safeguard his Jewish family from the occupiers. All were given false names with young Soros, then 14, becoming the suitably gentile sounding Sandor Kiss and posing as the godson of an official in the Hungarian ministry of agriculture. Throughout 1944, as the Nazi Final Solution to Hungarian Jewry took its murderous course -- within months half of Hungary’s prewar Jewish population had been killed or shipped to their slaughter at Auschwitz -- Soros traversed the country in the company of repossession officials, looking on as they confiscated property whose owners had been freshly deported to the death camps. At times, Soros reportedly served notices of eviction to deportees.

 

 

On one level, it’s difficult to blame Soros for doing what he needed to survive. Yet there has always been something unseemly about the unfeeling manner with which Soros has recalled that chapter of his life. As flagged by Martin Peretz in the New Republic, when asked in a 1998 interview on “60 Minutes” whether he was traumatized by the experience of dispossessing his coreligionists, Soros gave an arresting answer: “Not, not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't ... you don't see the connection. But it was--it created no--no problem at all.” In his mania for demonizing America‘s political leadership, Soros seems to have forgotten that there is at least one prominent figure implicated in the real -- as opposed to imagined -- crimes of the Nazi era. And it’s not President Bush.

 

 

Casting further suspicion on the legitimacy of Soros’s Nazi analogies are his strained ties to the Jewish state. While addressing a fund-raising conference for Israel in 2003, Soros claimed that the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe could be partially attributed to the “policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration.” The Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman, no stranger to overreaction, nonetheless echoed the sentiments of many in the Jewish community when he pronounced Soros’s comments “absolutely obscene.”

 

 

This would be an equally fair description of Soros’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he sees as a “vicious circle of escalating violence,” a familiar bromide that posits a false moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinian rejectionists unabashedly seeking her destruction. More recently, Soros has floated plans to fund a “progressive” alternative to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, apparently on the grounds that the lobbying organization is too supportive of Israel. Details are still vague, but early reports indicate that it will be on the model of the Israel Policy Forum, the liberal advocacy organization that has never let the lack of a credible Palestinian negotiating partner temper its enthusiasm for negotiations (read: Israeli concessions). The IPF’s director, David Elcott, is among the names linked to Soros’s project.

 

 

All this may seem of parochial interest. Why should anyone concern themselves with a blowhard financier whose politics are as extreme as his wealth? One reason is that Soros has in recent years committed much of that wealth to charting the course of the Democratic Party. In the 2004 election cycle, Soros’s spent more than $23 million on a campaign to defeat President Bush. Even as that effort foundered at the polls, the political landscape is now dotted with Soros-funded political action committees like America Coming Together, MoveOn.org, and the Center for American Progress, all vying to steer the Democrats leftward. Scratch a left-wing interest group and you’ll likely find Soros cash.

 

 

With the 2008 presidential election getting into high gear, another issue has come to the fore. Last month Soros announced that he was throwing his substantial clout behind the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic star from Illinois who has cast himself as a pragmatist unwilling to play the game of political division. Yet there are few public figures more divisive than George Soros. In the interest of his moderate image, Obama should decline Soros’s support. Better still, he might ask Soros to apologize for slandering the country that has given him every opportunity to prosper. Spurn the self-styled prophet of the Democratic Party? Admittedly, it’s a lot to ask. Call it the audacity of hope."

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=26824

Entry #746

"Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide

"Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide
Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?

By Timothy Ball

Source Canadafreepress.com
Monday, February 5, 2007

"Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was the first Canadian Ph.D. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.

What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?

Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.

No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don't pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?

Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. "It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species," wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.

I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on.

Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.

No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.

I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.

In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and enlightenment?

Personal attacks are difficult and shouldn't occur in a debate in a civilized society. I can only consider them from what they imply. They usually indicate a person or group is losing the debate. In this case, they also indicate how political the entire Global Warming debate has become. Both underline the lack of or even contradictory nature of the evidence.

I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book, "State of Fear" he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined environmental crises.

Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen's. He is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to listen.

I think it may be because most people don't understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.

As Lindzen said many years ago: "the consensus was reached before the research had even begun." Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted.

Meanwhile, politicians are being listened to, even though most of them have no knowledge or understanding of science, especially the science of climate and climate change. Hence, they are in no position to question a policy on climate change when it threatens the entire planet. Moreover, using fear and creating hysteria makes it very difficult to make calm rational decisions about issues needing attention.

Until you have challenged the prevailing wisdom you have no idea how nasty people can be. Until you have re-examined any issue in an attempt to find out all the information, you cannot know how much misinformation exists in the supposed age of information.

I was greatly influenced several years ago by Aaron Wildavsky's book "Yes, but is it true?" The author taught political science at a New York University and realized how science was being influenced by and apparently misused by politics. He gave his graduate students an assignment to pursue the science behind a policy generated by a highly publicised environmental concern. To his and their surprise they found there was little scientific evidence, consensus and justification for the policy. You only realize the extent to which Wildavsky's findings occur when you ask the question he posed. Wildavsky's students did it in the safety of academia and with the excuse that it was an assignment. I have learned it is a difficult question to ask in the real world, however I firmly believe it is the most important question to ask if we are to advance in the right direction."

Dr. Tim Ball, Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (www.nrsp.com), is a Victoria-based environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. He can be reached at letters@canadafreepress.com "

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming020507.htm

Entry #745

"A deal in the desert for Sen. Reid?

A Sainted high profile Deomocrat involved in a help-your-buddy ethics-questionable land deal ......  my, my, my!!!  Thud   Thanks for all who voted for a "change" ................... you're not getting your money's worth ....... business as usual higher taxes, man the lifeboats to get through the river of BS.  Nothing has or will change except their table full of chattering teeth winding down to a dead stop now they're elected.

"A deal in the desert for Sen. Reid

A bill he wrote could have affected the friend who sold the land.

By Chuck Neubauer and Tom Hamburger, Times Staff Writers
January 28, 2007
Source LA Times
(excerpt)
BULLHEAD CITY, ARIZ. — It's hard to buy undeveloped land in booming northern Arizona for $166 an acre. But now-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid effectively did just that when a longtime friend decided to sell property owned by the employee pension fund that he controlled.

In 2002, Reid (D-Nev.) paid $10,000 to a pension fund controlled by Clair Hay , a Las Vegas lubricants distributor and his friend for 50 years. The payment gave the senator full control of a 160-acre parcel in Bullhead City that Reid and the pension fund had jointly owned. Reid's price for the equivalent of 60 acres of undeveloped desert was less than one-tenth of the value the assessor placed on it at the time.

Six months after the deal closed, Reid introduced legislation to address the plight of lubricants dealers who had their supplies disrupted by the decisions of big oil companies. It was an issue the Hay family had brought to Reid's attention in 1994, according to a source familiar with the events. ...................."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-reid28jan28,0,5893951.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Entry #743

"The Sun Moves Climate Change

Wonder how AlBore and his team of Chicken Little scaremongers will spin this? 

"The Sun Moves Climate Change




January 5, 2007
Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post

Source SteveQuayle.com

Man produces greenhouse gases and greenhouse gases cause global warming, most scientists agree, but how, exactly, do greenhouse gases cause global warming? While theories abound, as do elaborate computer models incorporating a multitude of gases and other climatic factors, none has been conclusive. And if greenhouse gases aren't responsible, what else could be? A clear, verifiable mechanism showing how a greenhouse gas or other physical entity can drive climate change has eluded science. Until now.

For more than a decade, Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center has been pursuing an explanation for why Earth cools and warms. His findings -- published in October in the Proceedings of the Royal Society -- the mathematical, physical sciences and engineering journal of the Royal Society of London -- are now in, and they don't point to us. The sun and the stars could explain most if not all of the warming this century, and he has laboratory results to demonstrate it. Dr. Svensmark's study had its origins in 1996, when he and a colleague presented findings at a scientific conference indicating that changes in the sun's magnetic field -- quite apart from greenhouse gases -- could be related to the recent rise in global temperatures. The chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change, the chief agency investigating global warming, then castigated them in the press, saying, "I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naive and irresponsible." Others accused them of denouncing the greenhouse theory, something they had not done.

Svensmark and his colleague had arrived at their theory after examining data that showed a surprisingly strong correlation between cosmic rays --highspeed atomic particles originating in exploded stars in the Milky Way -- and low-altitude clouds. Earth's cloud cover increased when the intensity of cosmic rays grew and decreased when the intensity declined.

Low-altitude clouds are significant because they especially shield the Earth from the sun to keep us cool. Low cloud cover can vary by 2% in five years, affecting the Earth's surface by as much as 1.2 watts per square metre during that same period. "That figure can be compared with about 1.4 watts per square metre estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the greenhouse effect of all the increase in carbon dioxide in the air since the Industrial Revolution," Dr. Svensmark explained.

The Danish scientists put together several well-established scientific phenomena to arrive at their novel 1996 theory. The sun's magnetic field deflects some of the cosmic rays that penetrate the Earth's atmosphere, and in so doing it also limits the immense amounts of ions and free electrons that the cosmic rays produce. But something had changed in the 20th century: The sun's magnetic field more than doubled in strength, deflecting an extraordinary number of rays. Could the diminution of cosmic rays this century have limited the formation of clouds, making the Earth warmer?

That was a plausible theory. But exactly how cosmic rays might create clouds was a mystery -- an unprovable theory, many said. Some even claimed that it was inconceivable for cosmic rays to influence cloud cover.

To discover a mechanism, a team at the Danish National Space Center assembled by Dr. Svensmark undertook an elaborate laboratory experiment in a reaction chamber the size of a small room. The team duplicated the chemistry of the lower atmosphere by injecting the gases found there in the same proportions, and adding ultraviolet rays to mimic the actions of the sun.

What they found left them agape: A vast number of floating microscopic droplets soon filled the reaction chamber. These were ultra-small clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules -- the building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei-- that had been catalyzed by the electrons released by cosmic rays.

We were amazed by the speed and efficiency with which the electrons do their work," Dr. Svensmark remarked. For the first time ever, researchers had experimentally identified a causal mechanism by which cosmic rays can facilitate the production of clouds in Earth's atmosphere. "This is a completely new result within climate science."

Dr. Svensmark has never disputed the existence of greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect. To the contrary, he believes that an understanding of the sun's role is needed to learn the full story, and thus determine man's role. Not only does no climate model today consider the effect of cosmic particles, but even clouds are too poorly understood to be incorporated into any serious climate model.

Because of the work of Dr. Svensmark, other agencies are now building on the Danish findings. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, has just started a multi-phase project that begins with a rerun of the Danish experiment, only CERN will use an accelerator rather than relying on natural cosmic rays. This multinational project will provide scientists with a permanent facility for studying effects of cosmic rays and charged particles in the Earth's atmosphere.

The clouds may be lifting on scientific inquiry into climate change. "

http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/07_Cosmic/070127.Sun-climate.chng.html

Entry #742

"The Question of Carter’s Cash

News around here has said there have been massive protest resignations at the Carter Center.  Wonder why????

This article says 'follow the money" which sounds like another Democrat selling us out to Middle East oil $$$$$$$ like Clinton did to Chinese $$$$$$$$$.  Do they consider us mushrooms to be kept in the dark and fed BS or do they consider us modern day slaves to be sold to the highest bidder?

I would also like to see the $$$$$$$$$ trail behind media financing as to who has their hand in the sock puppet moving its mouth telling the world that world opinion of the US is dropping.  FOLLOW THE $$$$$$$$$ doing brainwashing ... but this is one person not buying into the BS.

 

"The Question of Carter’s Cash
In which our reporter follows the money

CLAUDIA ROSETT
Source NationalReview.com 

"Did Jimmy Carter do it for the money? That’s the question making the rounds about Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, an anti-Israeli screed recently written by the ex-president whose Carter Center has accepted millions in Arab funding.

Even in Carter’s long history of post-presidential grandstanding, this book sets fresh standards of irresponsibility. Purporting to give a balanced view of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, Carter effectively shrugs off such highly germane matters as Palestinian terrorism. The hypocrisies are boundless, and include adoring praise of the deeply oppressive, religiously intolerant Saudi regime side by side with condemnations of democratic Israel. In one section, typical of the book’s entire approach, Carter includes a “Historical Chronology,” from Biblical times to 2006, in which he dwells on events surrounding his 1978 Camp David Accords but omits the Holocaust. Kenneth W. Stein, the founder of the Carter Center’s Middle East program, resigned last month to protest the book, describing it in a letter to Fox News as “replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments.” As this article goes to press, more protest resignations, this time from the Carter Center’s board of councilors, appear to be in the works.

If there is a silver lining to any of this, it is that Carter’s book has drawn much-overdue attention to some of the funding that pours into the Carter Center, whose intriguing donor list includes anti-Israeli tycoons and Middle East states. Founded in 1982 and appended to Carter’s presidential library, the center has served for almost a quarter century as the main base and fund-raising magnet for Carter’s self-proclaimed mission to save the world.

In recent weeks, a number of articles have noted that Carter’s anti-Israeli views coincide with those of some of the center’s prime financial backers, including the government of Saudi Arabia and the foundation of Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, whose offer of $10 million to New York City just after Sept. 11 was rejected by then-mayor Rudy Giuliani because it came wrapped in the suggestion that America rethink its support of Israel. Other big donors listed in the Carter Center’s annual reports include the Sultanate of Oman and the sultan himself; the government of the United Arab Emirates; and a brother of Osama bin Laden, Bakr BinLadin, “for the Saudi BinLadin Group.” Of lesser heft, but still large, are contributions from assorted development funds of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as well as of OPEC, whose membership includes oil-rich Arab states, Nigeria (whose government is also a big donor to the Carter Center), and Venezuela (whose anti-American strongman Hugo Chávez benefited in a 2004 election from the highly controversial monitoring efforts of the Carter Center).

A recent editorial in Investor’s Business Daily, headlined “Jimmy Carter’s Li’l Ol’ Stink Tank,” listed a number of “founders” of the Carter Center. The names were drawn from the annual reports, and included “the king of Saudi Arabia, BCCI scandal banker Agha Hasan Abedi, and Arafat pal Hasib Sabbagh.” And, writing last month in the Washington Times, terror-funding expert Rachel Ehrenfeld described links going back to the 1970s between the Carter family peanut business and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, whose Pakistani founder helped bankroll the Carter Center at least until BCCI went belly-up in 1991, busted as a global criminal enterprise. ........."
".......... All this might be less disturbing had Carter confined his post-presidential efforts to such good works as vanquishing the guinea worm. But for years he has run his own mini-presidency — complete with a series of attempts to outflank or shape the policies of sitting presidents. These have included — to name just two examples — his letter-writing campaign in 1990 to members of the United Nations Security Council, in an effort to thwart the Bush I coalition that fought the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein; and his 1994 trip to North Korea, where he proposed to the dying tyrant Kim Il Sung a deeply flawed nuclear-freeze deal that may well have helped Kim’s son consolidate power and develop ICBMs and atomic bombs. ........."


http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=NmVlNzc4OWI5YTc4MDY1MzhiMDM2OWRhNjgzYzk0ZTk=JRA
Entry #741

"Correction About Obama

"A CORRECTION ABOUT OBAMA

Dear Friend,

My abject apologies!  I was wrong in saying that Senator Barak Obama voted against a ban on spouses working for Senators on their campaign or PAC payrolls. 

Obama voted against tabling the bill, not against the bill itself. He was one of only a handful of Democrats that did so (most Republicans backed the reform). 

The attempt to bring the ban to a vote failed last week, but the Senate adopted it last night.
 
Sometimes its tough to follow the twists and turns of Senate votes and, in this case, I messed up.
 
I'll try to see that it doesn't happen again.
 
I've published a front page apology to Obama in The Hill where the column appeared in a print version.
 
Thanks for reading my columns.  I hope you like them.
 
Yours,
Dick Morris "

Entry #740

AMS Certified Weatherman Strikes Back at Weather Channel Call for Dece

A 'divine revelation' came to me past couple of days about "global warming" CAUSATION hype as to its only good point .... it creates an environment in which alternate sources of energy can be developed which won't bankroll terrorists via oil money.  Also keeps oil profits out of the pockets of greedy global elitists who seem to believe their acquisition of $$$$$ entitles them to buy the type global government to rule over everyone else.  Case in point oil for money bribes flowing into UN members and their families.

Picked this up via    http://www.drudgereport.com/

THE SUN IS IN A HOTTER BURNING CYCLE WHICH IS HEATING UP OUR ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEM .... this deliberate omission is the "Inconvenient Truth.'

"AMS CERTIFIED WEATHERMAN STRIKES BACK AT WEATHER CHANNEL CALL FOR DECERTIFICATION

Check out this blog post from James Spann http://www.jamesspann.com/blog.htm 

Source U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works :: Press Room

From his blog - his bio:

"In 2005 I upgraded the AMS seal of approval to the new "Certified Broadcast Meteorologist" designation. The CBM is the highest level of certification from the AMS, and involves academic requirements, on-air performance, a rigorous examination, and continuing education. I am CBM number 33, meaning I am the 33rd person in the nation to earn it. I wanted to be the first in Alabama, but a couple of guys in Huntsville beat me to it. Just not enough hours in the day!

Official bio here: http://www.abc3340.com/news/talent.hrb?i=188

January 18, 2007 | James Spann | Op/Ed
Well, well. Some “climate expert” on “The Weather Channel” wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent “global warming” is a natural process. So much for “tolerance”, huh?
I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. Our big job: look at a large volume of raw data and come up with a public weather forecast for the next seven days. I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them. Here are the basic facts you need to know:
*Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story. Even the lady at “The Weather Channel” probably gets paid good money for a prime time show on climate change. No man-made global warming, no show, and no salary. Nothing wrong with making money at all, but when money becomes the motivation for a scientific conclusion, then we have a problem. For many, global warming is a big cash grab.
*The climate of this planet has been changing since God put the planet here. It will always change, and the warming in the last 10 years is not much difference than the warming we saw in the 1930s and other decades. And, lets not forget we are at the end of the ice age in which ice covered most of North America and Northern Europe.
If you don’t like to listen to me, find another meteorologist with no tie to grant money for research on the subject. I would not listen to anyone that is a politician, a journalist, or someone in science who is generating revenue from this issue.
In fact, I encourage you to listen to WeatherBrains episode number 12, featuring Alabama State Climatologist John Christy, and WeatherBrains episode number 17, featuring Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University, one of the most brilliant minds in our science.
WeatherBrains, by the way, is our weekly 30 minute netcast.
I have nothing against “The Weather Channel”, but they have crossed the line into a political and cultural region where I simply won’t go."



http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=3a9bc8a4-802a-23ad-4065-7dc37ec39adf

 

Entry #739

"Back from Baghdad

Quoted directly from Powerlineblog.com.

 

"Back from Baghdad

 

Michelle Malkin is back from Iraq with an excellent account, photographs and video. Michelle's first report with photos is here,  http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006708.htm

Michelle's first video here.  http://hotair.com/archives/2007/01/17/hot-air-tv-in-baghdad/   Michelle's first report carries this great tease of coming attractions: "We'll report on our investigation of the Associated Press's media malpractice in an upcoming New York Post exclusive."

Michelle's colleague Bryan Preston accompanied her on the trip. He has posted his reflections and photos here. http://hotair.com/archives/2007/01/17/assessing-iraq/(Thanks to Tony in Boulder.) "

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/016517.php

Entry #738

'Obama's First Blunder

"OBAMA’S FIRST BLUNDER

By DICK MORRIS

"January 17, 2006 -- Presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made his first misstep a few days ago when he joined only a handful of Democrats in opposing a Senate reform banning the increasingly widespread practice of legislators hiring their family members on their campaign or PAC payrolls. Obama has not heard the last of this vote.  Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who opposes wives cashing in on their husbands’ positions, voted righteously in favor of the reform and will probably use the Illinois senator’s vote against him in the presidential primaries.

When a legislator hires his or her spouse on the campaign or PAC payroll, he is effectively converting contributions to his campaign committee into personal income that flows into the family’s checking account, blurring the line between contribution and bribe.

In the past, senators and House members routinely hired their spouses and other family members on their public payrolls. In the early 1940s, for example, Harry S. Truman hired his wife, Bess, to work on his Senate staff. She got $2,500 a year in salary at a time when senators themselves only earned $8,500. But nepotism on the public payroll is now banned. So inventive congressmen and senators have filled the void by hiring family on their campaign or PAC payrolls.

Hiring family members and paying them with campaign donations is, if anything, more pernicious than doing so with public funds. Where tax money is involved, the sin is against the taxpayer for wasting his funds. But where campaign contributions are involved, the congressman is profiting personally from the largesse of special interest donors. In plain English, that’s a payoff.

There is, of course, a certain hypocrisy in the Senate action since very few senators, in fact, hire their families on their payrolls. It is, though, widely practiced in the House of Representatives, where 30 members have their families on their payrolls. But senators are much less likely to do so. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who voted “present” on the reform, hired her son, Douglas, a lobbyist, to manage her PAC, paying him $130,000 over a four-year period. Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, then a Democrat, hired his son, Matthew, for $34,000 and his daughter, Rebecca, for $36,000 to work on his 2004 presidential campaign.

So the congressional ethics reform of 2007 boils down to this: The House banned the use of corporate jets but the Senate did not, even though senators are more likely to avail themselves of the luxury than is the average House member. The Senate banned hiring family members but the House did not, even though House members are far more likely to hire their significant others to work for them.

Obama’s inexplicable pro-nepotism vote may have been cast in sympathy with Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), whose hiring of his wife, Sandi, to work on his campaign prompted an FEC ruling allowing the practice. Jackson might be afraid that the Senate action will catalyze a similar reform in the House, which could cut way back on his disposable family income.

But whatever the reason for his vote, Obama has screwed up.  The public will not take kindly to a senator who pledged to clean up the political process voting to allow wives to be hired with special-interest campaign funds.

The FEC required, in allowing the practice, that the contract for the services of the family member contain the language customarily used between campaign committees and consultants.  The FEC also ruled that any payment to a family member in excess of the fair market value of the services would be considered to be a “personal use of campaign funds.”

But, as usual, the FEC has missed the point. Any payment from campaign money to a spouse is, in fact, an appropriation of campaign funds by the member of Congress for his own personal use, however camouflaged or disguised. The Senate was right to ban the practice and the House should follow suit. "
http://www.dickmorris.com/

Entry #737
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