Here’s more on the great global warming scam. This is about the flimsiness of evidence and the sloppiness of the scientists who are responsible for assessing it.

From the Telegraph:

The United Nations’ expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain tops on a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming.

The IPCC’s remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change.

In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.

However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

The revelations … raised fresh questions about the quality of the information contained in the report, which was published in 2007.

It comes after officials for the panel were forced earlier this month to retract inaccurate claims in the IPCC’s report about the melting of Himalayan glaciers. …

Professor Richard Tol, one of the report’s authors who is based at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, said: “These are essentially a collection of anecdotes.

“Why did they do this? It is … illustrative of how sloppy Working Group Two (the panel of experts within the IPCC responsible for drawing up this section of the report) has been… what they claim is complete nonsense.”

The IPCC report, which is published every six years, is used by government’s worldwide to inform policy decisions that affect billions of people.

The claims about disappearing mountain ice were contained within a table entitled “Selected observed effects due to changes in the cryosphere produced by warming”. It states that reductions in mountain ice have been observed from the loss of ice climbs in the Andes, Alps and in Africa between 1900 and 2000.

The report also states that the section is intended to “assess studies that have been published since the TAR (Third Assessment Report) of observed changes and their effects”.

But neither the dissertation or the magazine article cited as sources for this information were ever subject to the rigorous scientific review process that research published in scientific journals must undergo.

The magazine article, which was written by Mark Bowen, a climber and author of two books on climate change, appeared in Climbing magazine in 2002. It quoted anecdotal evidence from climbers of retreating glaciers and the loss of ice from climbs since the 1970s. …

The dissertation paper, written by professional mountain guide and climate change campaigner Dario-Andri Schworer while he was studying for a geography degree, quotes observations from interviews with around 80 mountain guides in the Bernina region of the Swiss Alps.

Experts claim that loss of ice climbs are a poor indicator of a reduction in mountain ice as climbers can knock ice down and damage ice falls with their axes and crampons…

If starving isn’t unhealthy, what does the word ‘unhealthy’ mean?

There are powerful persons who believe with fanatical conviction that (other) people should starve to death rather than eat something ‘unhealthy’.

As a result, millions are deprived of food.

Even Bill Gates protests about this state of affairs. We say ‘even Bill Gates’, because he usually goes along with the thinking of those who believe in government control of individual lives, aka socialists. (See in the quotation below a list of lefty organizations he supports.)  He doesn’t seem to realize that he is one of the greatest benefactors of mankind ever, through supplying billions of people with something they want: the products of Microsoft, which are put to trillions of productive uses throughout the world. Doing so –  as a model capitalist – has rightfully made him rich, and he has no moral obligation to redistribute his wealth in a secondary and much feebler attempt to do good. But he apparently thinks there is, perhaps out of some unwarranted feeling of guilt.

Whatever prompts him, he has undertaken to alleviate the chronic hunger of whole populations in Africa. And he has run into an impediment: the adoption, by stupid African rulers, of two Western ‘progressive’ notions: that people must be made to eat healthy food, and that genetically modified foods are unhealthy.

This article is from FrontPageMag:

The left-of-center philanthropist says starving Africans should be allowed to eat genetically modified foods.

Bill Gates took on the Famine Lobby while addressing a forum on the world food supply in Iowa. Speaking at the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines, Gates took aim at the chorus of environmental leftists and organic food advocates who believe Africans should starve rather than eat genetically modified (GM) foods. “Some voices are instantly hostile to any emphasis on productivity. They act as if there is no emergency, even though in the poorest, hungriest places on earth, population is growing faster than productivity,” he said.

The opposition is significant, because Gates is left-of-center himself. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with assets of $29 billion as of 2005, has focused on the “population” side of the “problem” in the past, sending billions of dollars in grants to such pro-abortion groups as Planned Parenthood; Population Action International, Population Services International, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, and the Population Resource Center. Gates has also financed such organizations as the [Soros supported] Tides Center, the Tides Foundation, the National Council of La Raza, and has supported a gun control initiative in Washington state.

However, Gates announced he will issue a $120 million grant to increase food productivity in sub-Saharan Africa through the planting of genetically modified seeds. In Des Moines, Gates cited a Stanford study from 2008 concluding African farmers will lose one-quarter of their productivity within 20 years if they continue to plant the same strains of corn. However, “If the seeds perform well, African farmers can expect to produce two-million more tons of maize in a year of moderate drought.” Radio Iowa reports Gates has “committed more than a billion dollars” in all.

In proposing this initiative, he is standing up to the Green Left, which has long favored environmental “purity” [over] human well-being. Greenpeace cooked up the term “Frankenfood” to demonize genetically modified foods a decade ago. …

Dire predictions aside, GM foods not only potentially increase food production but have replaced the need to spray crops with chemical pesticides, which sickened or killed Africans. Those farmers who spray can now streamline the process, saving them much time and money. The modified crops are more resistant to cold, drought, herbicides, pests, and disease. They also supplied nutritional gaps in the consumption patterns of the poor. For instance, so-called “golden rice” spliced Vitamin A into rice, which could stave off blindness among the world’s poor who eat little more than rice. …

Greenpeace has long claimed GM foods increase allergies; however, the World Health Organization – hardly a corporate, capitalist shill – concluded, “No allergic effects have been found relative to GM foods currently on the market.” Although six EU nations ban GM foods, Jaap Satter, a senior policy adviser at the Dutch Agriculture Ministry, has said, “You cannot say anymore that there is a scientific reason to be against genetic modification.” The National Research Council summed up the situation: “no conceptual distinction exists between generic modification of plants and microorganisms by classical methods or by molecular techniques that modify DNA and transfer genes.”

Some environmentalists seem concerned the foods will be too successful at feeding the poor. Al Gore has worried, “The most lasting impact of biotechnology on the food supply may come not from something going wrong, but from all going right…we’re far more likely to accidentally drown ourselves in a sea of excess grain.” Given the environmentalist movement’s hatred of population – best exemplified by Obama Science Czar John Holdren’s justification of compulsory abortion in the United States – this may be the real locus of their disdain.

So deep is the Green Left’s hatred of GM foods that even an organization Gates founded has given genetically modified food a chilly reception. “The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa was established by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” and the Rockefeller Foundation in 2006 “with the objective of improving agriculture in Africa.” However, its leader, former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, vowed in 2007: “We in the alliance will not incorporate GMOs [genetically modified organisms] in our programmes. We shall work with farmers using traditional seeds.”

The scare tactics and shunning of American and Euro-socialist leftists is theoretical and faulty – but their mania has reaped a deadly harvest among the world’s most vulnerable people.

In 2002, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa refused to accept tons of U.S. food aid for his starving nation, because the aid contained genetically modified food (maize, specifically). “Simply because my people are hungry, that is no justification to give them poison, to give them food that is intrinsically dangerous to their health,” he said. The deluded president continued, “I will not allow Zambians to be turned into guinea pigs no matter the levels of hunger in the country.”

The levels of hunger were staggering. Nearly one-third of Zambia’s 10 million people faced famine. Some 14 million Africans faced starvation region-wide. Nonetheless, the president privately upbraided officials in the UN World Food Programme for distributing GM foods, which fed 125,000 people in five camps. The WFP reported some impoverished Zambians “resorted to eating little more than twigs and ash from the fire in a brown soupy concoction.” Desperate, rural villagers broke into the palace where the stockpiles were rotting and stole 2,000 bags of maize.

In response, the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg in 2002, signed a “statement of solidarity” with Zambia. Charlie Kronick of Greenpeace went further, alleging the humanitarian aid constituted a sick capitalist ploy. “There is a constant drip of pressure from the U.S. government and biotech industry to make sure Africa is softened up for GM,” he theorized. “Europe is closed to them and they need a market for it.”

Others offered more than ideological support. Zimbabwe joined the boycott, preventing GM grain’s importation. Angola followed suit in 2004. Lesotho and Mozambique milled all such grain so it would not be planted and “infect” other crops.

Not all were limited to the EU and Africa. In 2004, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez passed “possibly…the most sweeping restrictions on transgenic crops in the western hemisphere.”

At home, the opposition has been remarkably well-heeled. National Review’s Deroy Murdock found:

In 2001, the 30 leading anti-biotech groups…spent $341.4 million, including Greenpeace USA’s expenditure of $23,748,737, Environmental Defense’s $38,794,150 and the Natural Resources Defense Council’s $41,625,882. Between 1996 and 2001, this crusade’s lavish underwriters included the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ($11,906,500), the Ford Foundation ($39,978,020) and the Pew Charitable Trusts ($130,996,900).

It also included a large portion of the organic food market. Somehow, this story of an industry trying to spike a competitor did not make MSNBC or the pages of Mother Jones.

Whatever the dangers, the prohibition of GM foods is a moral issue. As Velasio De Paolis of the Pontifical Urban University has said, it is “easy to say no to GM food if your stomach is full.” However misled he is on other issues, Bill Gates deserves credit for standing up against the Green Left on this point.

But on another, closely related, issue he has so far failed to take the right stand:

The question remains, will he do so on the issue that seems closest to his heart: the eradication of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa? In a recent speech on the topic Gates admitted, “two tools helped to bring the death rate down: One was killing the mosquitoes with DDT.” Before Rachel Carson’s crusade – based entirely on scientific theories that never panned out – DDT use had nearly eradicated malaria. Now, according to one report, “there are approximately 350 to 500 millions cases of malaria, killing close to one million people” annually. “Every day, malaria takes the lives of 2,000 children in Africa alone.” Yet instead of backing DDT use, Gates has sought to find a vaccine.

If Gates truly wants to put the well-being of Africans above political correctness, DDT is the best place to start.

From Power Line:

We’re used to Barack Obama doing it, but this time it’s Hillary Clinton–our Secretary of State!–spreading lies about America overseas:

Hillary Clinton then drew some negative attention for comparing a disputed Nigerian election with the 2000 U.S. stalemate that ended with George W. Bush winning out over Al Gore, who served as Bill Clinton’s vice president.

“Our democracy is still evolving,” Clinton said. “You know we had some problems in some of our presidential elections. As you may remember, in 2000 our presidential election came down to one state where the brother of one of the men running for president was governor of the state. So we have our problems too.”

Clinton’s clear implication was that Jeb Bush had somehow stolen the election on behalf of his brother. This is an outrageous slander, not only of Governor Bush, who had nothing to do with the outcome of the election, but against the United States. What could possibly have possessed our country’s top diplomat to think that it would serve our interests to tell the world, falsely, that we have corrupt Presidential elections?

Once again, the incompetence of the Obama administration is remarkable.

‘Incompetence’? What became of the word ‘treachery’?

What ‘possessed’ her? Why, ’smart power’ of course.

Foreign aid has kept Africa poor. Global redistribution is likely to keep the whole world poor. 

 Let’s consider this (from an article in the Wall Street Journal) –  

Dambisa Moyo, a native of Zambia and a former World Bank consultant, believes that it is time to stop proceeding as if foreign aid does the good that it is supposed to do. The problem, she says in "Dead Aid," is not that foreign money is poorly spent (though much of it is) or that development programs are badly managed (though many of them are). No, the problem is more fundamental: Aid, she writes, is "no longer part of the potential solution, it’s part of the problem – in fact, aid is the problem."

In a tightly argued brief, Ms. Moyo spells out how attempts to help Africa actually hurt it. The aid money pouring into Africa, she says, underwrites brutal and corrupt regimes; it stifles investment; and it leads to higher rates of poverty – all of which, in turn, creates a demand for yet more aid. Africa, Ms. Moyo notes, seems hopelessly trapped in this spiral, and she wants to see it break free. Over the past 30 years, she says, the most aid-dependent countries in Africa have experienced economic contraction averaging 0.2% a year.

And bear it in mind as we read these extracts from an account (by Joseph Klein, find it here) of  a proposed global redistribution of wealth by the United Nations, which will help to transform that nefarious institution into a world governing body.  

The UN Commission of Experts issued a preliminary report on March 20 outlining its views on the causes of the current global economic crisis, the impacts on all countries and recommendations to avoid its recurrence and restore global economic stability. The report contemplates a massive reordering of the world economy involving trillions of dollars of wealth transfers, global regulation, and global taxes, all under the supervision of the United Nations. 

The report blends the socialist and Islamic economic perspectives as an alternative to our present capitalistic system.  It has four basic themes.  Western-style free market capitalism is the villain.  Redistributive justice is mandatory.  New global governance authorities are required. Global taxes are also needed. 

The only institution that the UN experts believe has broad enough political legitimacy to serve as the global decision making forum and eliminate the abuses of free market capitalism is, unsurprisingly, the body that gave them the platform to air their views on a global stage in the first place – the United Nations.  Standing UN bureaucracies such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Secretariat have been pressing this same message in order to justify their own permanent existence.  They want major re-regulation of the market by governments working in unison through the global decision-making arms of the UN…   

Every polemic text has to have its target to attack.  In this case, the Commission of Experts preliminary report goes after “the previously fashionable economic doctrines” of free market economies in the “rich countries” as the cause of the global crisis. 

The rich developed countries foisted their rotten system on the poor developing countries, which are suffering much of the fall-out through no fault of their own, according to the UN experts.  Without citing a single example, the report claimed that “developing countries that have developed good regulatory frameworks, created effective monetary institutions, and succeeded in implementing sound fiscal policies” have been brought to their knees by “defects in one economic system” – i.e., Western-style capitalism…     

Of course, it goes without saying that the villain must pay.  This means even more redistribution of wealth to the developing countries than the hundreds of billions of dollars already set to be transferred from the United States and other developed countries under the UN’s Millennium Development Goals assistance program. 

The commission report calls for the rich industrialized countries to dig deeper into their pockets and take at least one percent of the stimulus packages meant to get their own economies moving again and send that money to the developing countries instead.  In effect, the UN experts want to take nearly $8 billion dollars off the top from the $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress and send it directly to the developing countries with no questions asked.  Also, any banks that receive bailout money from American taxpayers should not focus so much on making domestic loans that would help American businesses to stay alive and help Americans to stay in their homes and jobs.  Instead, the UN experts want some of that bailout money to go toward making shaky loans that are unlikely to be paid back in order to “finance additional support to developing countries.”

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is already starting to put these ideas into motion.  He sent a letter to the leaders attending the Group of 20 economic summit in London suggesting that they establish a $1 trillion global stimulus package for the poorest countries over the nexttwo years.  That would be $50 billion per donor if divided equally among the Group of 20 countries.  Since the United States is usually asked by the UN to put up at least 20% of whatever money it is raising, that would mean U.S. taxpayers would be expected to fork over $200 billion extra over the next two years. 

Would we at least be able to impose some reasonable conditions on the massive grants and loans for development and other support (or ““conditionalities” as the Commission of Experts calls them)?  The UN experts say absolutely not! 

After all, it would be politically incorrect to expect each recipient of our taxpayers’ money to actually have to demonstrate that the money won’t end up in a corrupt dictator’s Swiss bank account because, according to the UN experts’ circular reasoning, such “conditionalities” would “disadvantage developing countries relative to the developed, and undermine incentives for developing countries to seek support funding…” 

By the way, we are being asked to entrust some of our money for this support funding to the United Nations Development Programme (“UNDP”), the main UN agency in charge of spending for development projects around the world.  The current president of UNDP’s executive board is Iran’s UN representative… 

The UN experts recommend a new global economic order that must “encompass more than the G-7 or G-8 or G-20, but the representatives of the entire planet, from the G-192 (number of member states in the General Assembly).”   

The first step would be to dump the dollar as the standard international reserve currency and instrument for international payments for products traded on the global market, such as oil.  In its place would be a new Global Reserve System controlled by an international financial institution under UN oversight.  The three leading countries singing a similar refrain are Iran, China and Russia…  

The value of the dollar will crash, causing the current recession to move into a depression of the magnitude of the 1930s.  We may well find ourselves giving away dollar devalued hard assets at ridiculously low prices, in order to accumulate the new global reserve currency, to countries in the Middle East that are hostile to our democratic values.  At the same time Uncle Sam will still be expected to pay the lion’s share of global foreign aid, the UN budget and defense of the free world.   

In addition to the idea of a new Global Reserve Currency, the UN Commission of Experts says that international economic institutions, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, must be significantly altered and supplemented with new global governance bodies to make the whole process more “democratic” and accountable to the developing countries.  This would be accomplished in two ways, say the experts.  First, the internal governance structures of existing international economic institutions would be fundamentally revamped to give more power to the developing countries.  Second, they would be made accountable to a new “globally representative forum” known as the Global Economic Coordination Council, which would be created as part of the UN system at “a level equivalent with the General Assembly and the Security Council”.    

That’s not all.  The UN experts want to create still more global institutional arrangements for governing the global economy, including a new Global Financial Regulatory Authority, a new Global Competition Authority and a new International Bankruptcy Court.  They think it is just too “difficult to rely on national regulatory authorities”.   The focus of this enhanced global regulation, they say, should be on the most systematically important countries – i.e., the United States and other major industrial nations.  In the Commission of Experts’ view, our sovereignty as a self-governing people to regulate our own economy must give way to global government for the sake of “the broad interest of the international community”… 

Islamists and socialists have a common agenda – to bring down Western capitalism.  They are exploiting the perfect storm that has arisen from the current economic crisis, which they blame on the United States.  Their revenge is to position the United Nations as the only global membership institution that can ensure the legitimacy of decisions to govern a global economy and push free market economics aside.

 From the Telegraph:

Children from Crarn accused of being witches and wizards, protesting outside the Governor’s headquarters. Photo: Mags Gavan, Redrebel Films

Ostracised, vulnerable and frightened, she wandered the streets in south-eastern Nigeria, sleeping rough, struggling to stay alive.

Mary [five years old] was found by a British charity worker and today lives at a refuge in Akwa Ibom province with 150 other children who have been branded witches, blamed for all their family’s woes, and abandoned. Before being pushed out of their homes many were beaten or slashed with knives, thrown onto fires, or had acid poured over them as a punishment or in an attempt to make them "confess" to being possessed. In one horrific case, a young girl called Uma had a three-inch nail driven into her skull.

Yet Mary and the others at the shelter are the lucky ones for they, at least, are alive. Many of those branded "child-witches" are murdered – hacked to death with machetes, poisoned, drowned, or buried alive in an attempt to drive Satan out of their soul.

The devil’s children are "identified" by powerful religious leaders at extremist churches where Christianity and traditional beliefs have combined to produce a deep-rooted belief in, and fear of, witchcraft. The priests spread the message that child-witches bring destruction, disease and death to their families. And they say that, once possessed, children can cast spells and contaminate others.

The religious leaders offer help to the families whose children are named as witches, but at a price. The churches run exorcism, or "deliverance", evenings where the pastors attempt to drive out the evil spirits. Only they have the power to cleanse the child of evil spirits, they say. The exorcism costs the families up to a year’s income.

During the "deliverance" ceremonies, the children are shaken violently, dragged around the room and have potions poured into their eyes. The children look terrified. The parents look on, praying that the child will be cleansed. If the ritual fails, they know their children will have to be sent away, or killed. Many are held in churches, often on chains, and deprived of food until they "confess" to being a witch.

The ceremonies are highly lucrative for the spiritual leaders many of whom enjoy a lifestyle of large homes, expensive cars and designer clothes.

Ten years ago there were few cases of children stigmatised by witchcraft. But since then the numbers have grown at an alarming rate and have reached an estimated 15,000 in Akwa Ibom state alone.

Some Nigerians blame the increase on one of the country’s wealthiest and most influential evangelical preachers. Helen Ukpabio, a self-styled prophetess of the 150-branch Liberty Gospel Church, made a film, widely distributed, called End of the Wicked. It tells, in graphic detail, how children become possessed and shows them being inducted into covens, eating human flesh and bringing chaos and death to their families and communities.

Mrs Ukpabio, a mother of three, also wrote a popular book which tells parents how to identify a witch. For children under two years old, she says, the key signs of a servant of Satan are crying and screaming in the night, high fever and worsening health – symptoms that can be found among many children in an impoverished region with poor health care.

 The preacher says that her work is true to the Bible and is a means of spreading God’s word. "Witchcraft is a problem all over Nigeria and someone with a gift like me can never hurt anybody," she says. "Every Nigerian wants to watch my movies." She denies that her teachings and films could encourage child abuse.

 Obama speaks of a WIND OF CHANGE blowing through America.  In February 1960 the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan  made a speech in which he said that the WIND OF CHANGE was blowing through Africa. 

We are not accusing Obama – or his speech-writers –  of plagiarism. He can leave that to his veep, who notoriously plagiarized a speech by the British Labor Party leader, Neil Kinnock. 

What we want to point out is this: the Wind of Change that blew through Africa was an ill wind that brought no African country much good. Barely a single one is more prosperous than in Macmillan’s day, even among the few that became more democratic.  In sheer numbers, far more Africans are exposed now to civil war, invasion, oppressive government and profound impoverishment than in the 1960s.  Some populations have experienced, or are even at present experiencing, genocide; some, massacre on a vast scale; some, in considerable numbers, actual starvation.  

 One can only hope that Obama’s Wind of Change is not the same wind. 

 A woman’s hand and both feet are chopped off and she is burned alive. A six-year old boy is also burned to death.

Read about it here. 

Let us await the universal outcry that is bound to follow, especially in the UN.

Read here about the deplorable treatment in South Africa of refugees from Zimbabwe.