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Dec 13, 2009

Major TV Networks Continue to Host Retired Generals As Military Analysts Without Alerting Viewers To Generals' Extensive Ties To Defense Contractors & Pentagon

 

Mccaffrey
 
(above): Retired General Barry McCaffrey
 
Major television networks continue
to
host retired generals as military
analysts without alerting viewers to
their extensive ties to defense
contractors and the Pentagon.
 
TV NETS STILL HOSTING

MILITARY ANALYSTS WITHOUT

IDENTIFYING CONFLICTS OF INTEREST -

http://www.boingboing.net/images/x_2008/analysts08.jpg

Laura Bassett reports:

"Military strategy is a frequent topic on TV in the wake of President Obama's announcement that he will send more troops to Afghanistan now -- and start bringing them out by mid-2011. But few television viewers have any idea that some of what they're hearing originates from men who are literally profiting from the war.

"One of these men in particular -- NBC News military analyst and retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey -- has appeared on MSNBC at least 10 times in the past month to criticize Obama's proposed troop-withdrawal deadline, to lavish praise upon Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, and to underscore the importance of training Afghan security forces.

http://solari.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/dyncorp.jpg

"But neither McCaffrey nor the MSNBC anchors ever mentioned the fact that McCaffrey sits on the board of directors of DynCorp International, a company with a lucrative government contract to train the Afghan National Security Forces. Nor did they mention that McCaffrey recently completed a report about Afghanistan that was commissioned by Petraeus and funded by the Pentagon.

"On December 4, McCaffrey appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews, where he was introduced only as 'retired General Barry McCaffrey.' Upon being asked whether we are creating our own enemy in Afghanistan, McCaffrey said: 'The key is, can we create an Afghan security force that in a couple or three years will replace us? That is the real question on the table.'

"He added, 'I think there's some belief, strong belief on the part of General [Stanley] McChrystal and others, to include me, that yes, you can create an Afghan security force. I don't believe it's possible in a year. I see this as a 3- to 10-year effort, at the front end of which we're going to take casualties and spend a lot of money.'

"According to Forbes magazine, this 3- to 10-year effort in Afghanistan will generate about 53% of DynCorp's $3.1 billion in annual revenue, a fact that McCaffrey failed to mention.

"...Not surprisingly, these 'military analysts' on the boards of defense contractors with large potential for financial gain have consistently used their media appearances to make the case for escalation."

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/images/military/jan-june08/0424_generals_bhead.jpg

TV networks still hosting military analysts without identifying conflicts of interest - what are your comments?

McCaffrey continues to be presented as an objective expert despite widespread, public evidence to the contrary. In late 2008, as part of a Pulitzer-Prize winning series about the relationship between retired generals, the Pentagon, and defense contractors, New York Times reporter David Barstow wrote an article that exposed McCaffrey for "consistently advocat[ing] wartime policies and spending priorities that are in line with his corporate interests."

According to Barstow's article, McCaffrey used his close relationship with Gen. Petraeus and his contacts at the Pentagon to secure lucrative contracts for corporations such as Defense Solutions and
Veritas Capital. Armed with extensive ties to both the government and the private sector, McCaffrey exercises a third sphere of influence through his media exposure. He did not respond to repeated messages from the Huffington Post, requesting an interview.

McCaffrey is only one of several on-air military analysts with extensive, interconnected Pentagon and corporate relationships. Retired Gen. Richard Myers, who appeared on NBC's Meet the Press on October 11 to discuss Afghanistan strategy, sits on the board of directors of Northrop Grumman, the third largest arms manufacturer in the world. But David Gregory simply introduced him as the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gregory asked Myers whether it was necessary to escalate the Afghanistan war, Myers replied: "I think you probably do [have to escalate]," and later added that he thinks U.S. allies "should pony up as well."

Retired Gen. Robert H. Scales, Jr., an analyst for both Fox News and National Public Radio, is the president of Colgen, Inc., a consulting company specializing in issues relating to land power, war gaming and strategic leadership. Colgen's clients include the U.S. Military, the CIA and Special Operations Command. On December 1, Scales appeared on Fox News with host Bret Baier and disparaged Obama's plan to start troop withdrawals in 2010.

"Well, there's an old saying in the Army, Bret, that an operation must conform to the actions of the enemy and not to the clock or the calendar," Scales said. "My concern is we need to focus on the enemy, defeat the enemy in this region before we start talking about a timeline."

Last year, the Society of Professional Journalists called on NBC to sever ties with military analysts that could personally profit from the shaping of public opinion.

"By failing to be forthright and transparent, these networks -- which are owned by General Electric, a leading defense contractor -- are giving the public powerful reasons to be skeptical about their neutrality and credibility," said Andy Schotz, the chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists' Ethics Committee.

NBC has ignored the SPJ's call. A spokesperson from NBC said that McCaffrey's biography on the MSNBC website details his involvement with DynCorp and other corporations, but she declined to comment about why anchors do not identify McCaffrey as a Pentagon contractor or defense contracting consultant when he appears on their shows.

"The media are not legally obligated to disclose their connections," said Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "It's obviously a little misleading, though."

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Astronaut Gordon Cooper also saw UFOs

 




--
NOW AN AMAZON KINDLE BOOK ON YOUR PC, iPHONE OR KINDLE DEVICE

Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides By Thomas Dalton

In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist" views on the "The Holocaust."

On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers," who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.

The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.

This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy," and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust" narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.

The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.

This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=debating+the+holocaust&sprefix=DEBATING

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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Giuseppe Furioso on Holocaust survivor ''Yitzhak Ganon''

 

From: giuseppefurioso@aol.com

To: letters@nytimes.com
Sent: Sun, Dec 13, 2009 9:16 am
Subject: '' Yitzhak Ganon ''

To The Editor,
                     Let me see if I understand the article that appeared in today's Times about  Holocaust survivor Yitzhak Ganon's aversion to doctors. ( ''Heart Treated, Old Wound Opened'' :  NY Times , Dec. 13, 2009 ). According to the article Yitzhak was so traumatized by having his kidney removed by the infamous Dr. Mengele without anesthesia some 65 years ago while an inmate at Auschwitz that he refused to ever visit a doctor again. '' Mr. Ganon was tied down on a table, and without anesthesia was cut open by Dr. Mengele, who then removed a kidney. '' I saw the kidney pulsating in his hand and cried like a crazy man '' Mr. Ganon said.'' 
      
Although expected when dealing with claims of Holocaust survivors, it is still astonishing that, that the America's so-called ''newspaper of record ''   would put aside accepted practices and procedures of journalism and not challenge such an outrageous assertion. For one thing , a '' removed kidney would not pulsate '' but more importantly a kidney removal without anesthesia would have most certainly killed him. To it's credit the Times story omitted another claim reported by some of the wire service versions of the story that he was sent back to work within days of the operation. Neither did the Times include the claim that the reason he survived was  that he was # 201 on the line for the gas chamber whose capacity was 200. (  Shouldn't he then have been the first to go with the next batch of 200? )
 
giuseppe furioso


--
NOW AN AMAZON KINDLE BOOK ON YOUR PC, iPHONE OR KINDLE DEVICE

Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides By Thomas Dalton

In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist" views on the "The Holocaust."

On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers," who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.

The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.

This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy," and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust" narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.

The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.

This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=debating+the+holocaust&sprefix=DEBATING

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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Climate, an intelligent voice from Auzzie...

 




--
NOW AN AMAZON KINDLE BOOK ON YOUR PC, iPHONE OR KINDLE DEVICE

Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides By Thomas Dalton

In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist" views on the "The Holocaust."

On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers," who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.

The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.

This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy," and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust" narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.

The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.

This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=debating+the+holocaust&sprefix=DEBATING

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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Tom Sunic reply to Mr J. Stern TOO blog, Dec 12, 2009 ( "Semitism vs. anti-Semitism")

 

From: Tom. Sunic <tom.sunic@hotmail.com>

Date: Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 3:09 AM

http://theoccidentalobserver.net/tooblog/

Tom Sunic: Reply to Stern

December 12th, 2009

 

Editorial note: Frequent TOO contributor Tom Sunic replies to Joel Stern's letter to several writers associated with TOO and TOQ. (For Stern's letter, see Alex Kurtagic's "Narcissism" blog which also comments on Stern.)


Dear Mr. Stern:

Thank you for your comments. I appreciate  your concern for the future of  the Jewish people, and I'd also like to extend  my condolences  regarding the loss of your family . 

Of course, I speak in my own name, not on behalf of my TOO colleagues, all of them being outstanding intellectuals and tolerant people. I hope you have read Prof. MacDonald's work — in which you won't find any Jew baiting, but rather serious analyses of this most important issue of our times. 

Any lumping together of Christian identitarians and National Alliance hotheads with TOO is groundless.  

I respect your concerns for the real or hypothetical attacks on your victimhood. But I also expect from you some respect for my own, including respect for the historical memory of my people and my race —  wherever they may reside. It would be commendable on your part to extend sympathies to many of my relatives who perished anonymously in communist terror after 1945. While many Jews in America take for granted that non-Jews will constantly reminisce about Jewish victimology and hypothetical threats to the Jewry, few Jews seem to be concerned with the plight of non-Jews under communism in East Europe. 

The fact that Jewish intellectuals played a formidable role on the eve and during the Bolshevik seizure of power — however good or bad their intentions may have been — remains a topic that needs to be addressed in detail. This might help us avoid future mass killings and pogroms and secure, more or less, some semblance of cohabitation.

Yet, something tells me that neither myself nor yourself seriously believe in this static scenario.

One of the reasons anti-Semitism occurs is due to the lack of open debate about mutual perceptions and self-perceptions of Jews vs. non-Jews.  Hatred of Jews is prevalent among  those who mimic Semitism, people who subconsciously try to be more Jewish than Jews themselves. This is part and parcel of 'genealogical proximity', between Christians and Jews, and which has historically resulted in mutual hatred. This is a neurotic dilemma of a person wishing to replace his Sameness by someone else's, i.e. Jewish/Christian Otherness. The classic example of this neurotic mindset are Christian Zionists. 

Your concerns reflect standard self-induced fears and self-fulfilling prophecies about anti-Semitic demons — who, as a rule, must sooner or later materialize.  The demon architects are not those you suspect of anti-Semitism, but those who claim to be your friends now. 

Sincerely,

Dr. Tom Sunic

www.tomsunic.info

Croatia

Tags: Tom Sunic
Posted in Tom Sunic | No Comments »

 


Subject: question
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:15:09 -0500

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I'm an American Jew whose aunt and cousins in Czechoslovakia and Hungary were exterminated in WW II (presumably in Auschwitiz, although I have no actual confirmation of their fate).

For the past several months I've been reading the articles in TQO and TOO. The common thread between them is the genetically and culturally alien nature of and countless misfortunes inflicted by Jews in their host countries.

Leaving aside the validity or flimsiness of your arguments, what do you personally envisage as the solution to the "Judenfrage"? Mass expulsion from the West? Segregation in ghettos? A quota system in education and other drastic steps to protect the vulnerable gentile population? Conversion to Christianity and eventual assimilation through intermarriage? Massacres by Einsatzgruppen? (I have no doubt that enough volunteers for this task could be found among sundry Christian Identity and National Alliance types.) Nuclear annihilation of Israel?

I have yet to see even one serious, comprehensive proposal put forward by the TQO and TOO writers with respect to this matter.

 



--
NOW AN AMAZON KINDLE BOOK ON YOUR PC, iPHONE OR KINDLE DEVICE

Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides By Thomas Dalton

In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist" views on the "The Holocaust."

On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers," who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.

The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.

This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy," and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust" narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.

The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.

This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=debating+the+holocaust&sprefix=DEBATING

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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What climategate really tells us

 

Updated: Sat., Dec. 12, 2009, 8:40 AM

What climategate really tells us

Last Updated: 8:40 AM, December 12, 2009

Posted: 3:06 AM, December 12, 2009


http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/what_climategate_really_tells_us_pHSBh1uNXagcp4ygKUsXSJ

AL Gore and the rest of the die-hard climate campaigners are huffing and puffing that nothing in the e-mails and documents that were hacked or leaked from the Climate Research Unit in England have any bearing on what we know about climate change or the political response we should make to deal with it. The entire matter is settled science, don't you know

— nothing to see here, move along. That's rich, coming from the same people who told us for more than a decade that findings derived from the CRU's work constituted the "smoking gun" of human-caused climate change. Gore relied heavily on this work in his climatehorror film "An Inconvenient Truth."

And the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change featured the so-called "hockey stick" — the temperature estimate of the last 1,000 years purporting to prove that the modest warming of recent decades was unprecedented and dangerous. The hockey stick was one of the pillars of the mantra that there is a rocksolid consensus of leading scientists — even though numerous critics, ultimately including the US National Academy of Sciences, noted serious deficiencies in the hockey stick.

One of the several scandalous revelations of the Climategate e-mails is that this claim of consensus is a lie. Never mind the skeptics: It turns out many of the scientists in the CRU inner circle had doubts and disagreements about their data, methodology and conclusions, and often bickered with one another about defects in their project.

One main issue of the whole "hockey stick" exercise is something called the "medieval warm period" and "little ice age" (MWP and LIA in climate-lingo). It has long been thought that the earth could have been as warm or warmer than it is now about 1,000 years ago. That's when Greenland got its name, for example; there was a lot less ice then than there has been in recent centuries.

Both the MWP and LIA are crucial to the debate: If the earth warmed and then cooled naturally over the last millennium, then recent warming may not be unnatural or predominantly caused by man at all.

There have been rumors for years that climate campaigners wanted to make the MWP "go away," and 10 years ago three CRU affiliated scientists (Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes) obliged with the release of the hockeystick graph, which claimed without doubt that the 1990s was the hottest decade in the last 1,000 years. The MWP vanished completely in their temperature reconstruction, which was based on the ingenious use of "proxies" (since there were no thermometers 1,000 years ago) such as tree rings, ice-core samples, coral reefs and lake-bed sediments.

Critics and the National Academy of Sciences ripped apart the hockey stick — but the e-mails now show us disagreements among the very scientists who produced it in the first place. Edward Cook of Columbia University, some of whose raw data Mann, Bradley and Hughes used in the hockey stick, wrote a CRU colleague: "Of course he [Bradley] and other members of the MBH [Mann, Bradley, Hughes] camp have a fundamental dislike for the very concept of the MWP, so I tend to view their evaluations as starting out from a somewhat biased perspective." In a separate note, Cook wrote: "Can I just say that I am not in the MBH camp — if that be characterized by an unshakable 'belief' one way or the other, regarding the absolute magnitude of the global MWP."

Even Bradley, one of the hockey-stick co-authors, admitted his reservations: "All of our attempts, so far, to estimate hemisphere-scale temperatures for the period around 1,000 years ago are based on far fewer data than any of us would like. None of the data sets used so far has anything like the geographical distribution that experience with recent centuries indicates we need, and no one has yet found a convincing way of validating the lower-frequency components of them against independent data . . . Therefore, I accept that everything we are doing is preliminary, and should be treated with considerable caution."

Michael Mann, who might be called the captain of the hockey team, didn't take these criticisms well — and lashed out at his colleagues in several heated e-mails.

There are lots more remarkable revelations in the CRU e-mail cache like this — all pointing to the disturbing politicization of the scientific community today. Maybe the most egregious e-mail of the whole packet is not CRU Director Phil Jones's "hide the decline" post, but one where he declares: "As you know, I'm not political. If anything, I would like to see the climate change happen, so the science could be proved right, regardless of the consequences. This isn't being political; it is being selfish."

This may not be political, but it's certainly unscientific. And it casts an undeserved shadow over unbiased scientists who are trying honestly to get at the truth.

Steven F. Hayward is F.K. Weyerhaeuser fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.


--
NOW AN AMAZON KINDLE BOOK ON YOUR PC, iPHONE OR KINDLE DEVICE

Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides By Thomas Dalton

In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist" views on the "The Holocaust."

On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves, and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers," who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden chapter of history.

The author establishes that the arguments and findings of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration. He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.

This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy," and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust" narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.

The author of this book, who writes under the pen name of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral degree from a major US university.

This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_0_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=debating+the+holocaust&sprefix=DEBATING

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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The wages of climategate By J.R. Dunn

 

December 13, 2009

The wages of climategate

By J.R. Dunn

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/the_wages_of_climategate.html

Climategate is the worst blow the left has received in quite some time. The only comparable episode in recent years is Rathergate, involving the bogus documents "proving" George W. Bush's malfeasance as regards his service in the Texas Air National Guard. Climategate promises to be of even greater consequence. Rathergate shook the U.S. legacy media to its foundations, proclaimed the coming of age of Net-based media, and put a period to the network careers of Dan Rather and his producer. 
But as the CRU uproar plays itself out, it may well fracture the left-scientific partnership that has distorted scientific research for decades, along with providing a much-needed whipping for environmentalism, the most influential offshoot of contemporary leftism. 

Climategate is all the worse because it was unexpected. The warmists really did think they had it wrapped up, that they had pulled off the AGW fraud and needed only to formalize it at the international level to guarantee themselves a free ride. This was never quite the case -- polls showed that public skepticism was increasing as various warming horrors failed to materialize and the weather on a day-to-day basis grew cooler. But the warmists had corralled the bureaucrats and politicians, and that, they thought, was all they needed.

The impact of the CRU e-mail release has been no less than extraordinary, particularly since the story was limited almost exclusively to the Net for the first two weeks. The legacy media, in a process that we have become inured to, almost without exception sat on the story, evidently in the hope that it would go away. (This started even before the story proper did. A month prior to the e-mail release BBC reporter Paul Hudson  was offered the files but refused to acknowledge them. We're getting close to the point where the dictionary definition of "journalist" will have to be altered to read, "A media personality who attempts to stifle news stories out of cowardice, ideology, or for pay.") But as we've also come to expect, the story instead traveled from server to server and screen to screen, bypassing newspapers, broadcast and cable news -- with the exception of Fox -- and all other conventional "news" sources. If the Net had been available as a mature instrument as far back as the 60s, recent history would have unfolded very differently.

Climategate's progress has left plenty of wreckage in its path, including ruined careers, damaged institutions, and a deeply chastened scientific establishment.

Phil Jones, director of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit and an author of a large fraction of the offending messages, has stepped aside "temporarily" to await the results of an investigation by the university. While this seems rather less than the required minimum -- such an investigation should be carried out on a much wider scale by disinterested parties -- it is remarkable in and of itself. Memory fails to bring up any similar action by a director of a scientific institute. Nor is that the extent of Jones' troubles. He has also been thrown over the side by his dependable colleague Michael Mann, who directs a similar unit at Penn State. "I can't put myself in the mind of the person who wrote that email and sent it," Mann has told the media. "I in no way endorse what was in that email." Better late then never.

Mann, whose artistic talents led to the creation of the legendary "hockey stick" chart of second-millennium temperatures, has his own problems. He too is under investigation by his university, though he has not seen fit to step aside. He insists that there is "absolutely no evidence" that he has manipulated data, though interestingly enough, he is still reluctant to reveal exactly what is in his files.

It may well be that both directors will be whitewashed by their respective institutions. But discredited as they are, it really doesn't matter. Neither can ever again pose as the disinterested, incorruptible scientist, and their programs will remain irrevocably tainted. Science as a discipline has its own way of dealing with these types. Papers will be returned with a thank-you note. Grant proposals will become tied up. Grad students will be advised to look elsewhere for doctoral material. Phil and Mike are now and forever climatology's used-car salesmen, and may as well get used to the plaid jacket two sizes too large and the white patent-leather shoes. Though I wouldn't put it past the Swedes to throw them a Nobel next time around.

(One of the most encouraging reactions to this mess has been that of the working scientists. Out of the half-dozen or so who responded to my last piece on the topic, all but one were supportive, and that one was unhappy about the -- wholly accurate -- treatment of embryonic stem-cell research. It will be working scientists, the boiler-room gang who diligently and faithfully handle the basic work upon which the great reputations are built, who will strike the killing blow in Climategate. How would you like it if ten years of your work had to be trashed because somebody fed you bogus numbers?)

The governmental impact has been almost as serious. In Australia, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's attempt to push through a cap  n' trade bill appeared to be close to fruition after Liberal (read center-right) Party chief Malcolm Turnbull threw in his support. But on December 3rd, no less than half a dozen Liberal MPs walked out over the deal, leading to the ouster of Turnbull and his replacement by Tony Abbot, who views cap n' trade as an enormous "Slush fund... run by a giant bureaucracy".

While perhaps not front-page news in the U.S., this would ordinarily be a story of considerable political interest to be covered in detail. But along with every other aspect of Climategate, our dishonest media have given it the preemptive Winston Smith treatment. Again, this doesn't matter. The consequences are already reverberating through international political life.

In the UK, the Conservative Party has braced up its "Wet" (the Brit equivalent of "RINO") leader, David Cameron, to oppose the warming agenda or be shown the door. Developments on this side of the big water have not been as dramatic, though at least one GOP contingent has been emboldened to travel to Copenhagen to wreck the Green's party. We can expect more fireworks when cap n' trade comes up for a vote early next year.

A major shift is also apparent in public attitudes. The Greens labored mightily to convert global warming to received wisdom, something "everybody knew", much the same way they know "abortion is beneficial" and "we lost in Iraq". For a time, it appeared that they had succeeded. But polls taken earlier in the year by Gallup and Pew revealed a distinct softening in public belief in AGW. The first post-e-mail poll was released by Rasmussen on December 3rd with 59% convinced that scientists had cooked their data, while 52% thought that the warming question was still unsettled. Although a plurality still insist that warming is occurring, there's little doubt as to which way public opinion is going to break.

It could be argued that government never shifts at all. Carol M. Browner, Obama's environmental "czar" (or should it be "czarina" here?) stated that she would continue to rely on the "consensus" as expressed in the IPCC reports, evidently unaware that much of the data in the reports originated from the East Anglia CRU. Or perhaps she's very much aware -- Browner is widely known to have ordered the destruction of "second-hand smoke" data in the 90s, and more recently assured that no record of alternate-fuel negotiations between her office and the auto companies would be put in writing. Browner could probably teach both Jones and Mann a thing or two.

Browner's response set the pattern. On Pearl Harbor Day the EPA announced its decision to treat CO2 as a deadly poison on the same level as DDT and Alar. If Congress refuses to pass cap n' trade, the EPA will have no choice but to track down and apprehend any individual emitting carbon dioxide within U.S. borders. As Kimberley Strassel pointed out in the WSJ, this lets Congress off the hook by making CO2 "pollution" an Executive responsibility. Which means that the ruling will never go into effect. What sane politician would allow such a series of economy-wrecking regulations to be put in place A) during a serious recession, and B) in an election year?

At last we arrive at Copenhagen... only to discover that there's not much to address there at all. The grand climate summit, which was supposed to herald the advent of some sort of "global government", was in trouble even before Climategate, with the preliminary negotiations, intended to provide a fait accompli for the official proceedings, petering out to nothing even before the first delegates boarded the UN's solar-powered blimps for the long trip to Denmark. Negotiators attempted to solve the warming problem by recomplicating it with the question of how much lesser-developed countries should be paid for not polluting in the first place. Discussions naturally stalled on this point, effectively bringing the process to an end. 

The opening days of the conference were overshadowed by a failed Russian ICBM test a few hundred miles north, which created a spectacular light show visible across northern Scandinavia. (With superb timing, the Russians launched the missile only hours before Obama received his Nobel. Who says that Slavs have no sense of humor?)

Reports from Copenhagen since then have been muddled, confused, and deeply uninteresting. Copenhagen was supposed to be high real-world drama, with the world's leaders frantically working to stave off the Big Heat in much the same fashion as they might a menacing comet or asteroid, while the world looked on in frightened awe. The CRU e-mails, though unmentioned by anyone apart from the Saudis, have transformed it all into a cartoon, with our noble, tireless statesmen become so many Wile E. Coyotes heading off the cliff with rockets strapped to their skates.

(Another casualty is the great Al Gore, who had originally scheduled an event in which $1,200 would purchase a signed copy of his latest book, a handshake, and a personal blessing from Mother Gaia. Gore was unfortunately forced to cancel. He has to watch out for process servers now.)

All this marks considerable payoff for a few thousand e-mails. The question now is how to keep the pot boiling.

The first order of business should be calls for the release of e-mails, data, and related files from the other institutions involved in Climategate. NASA/GISS has been the source of several pieces of questionable "evidence", particularly the Y2K glitch that universally raised recent temperatures by more than degree Fahrenheit. No explanation of this "glitch" has ever been offered. I, for one, would like to hear it. The institute is also the playground of James Hansen, the most florid Green of them all, a man who would have skeptics thrown into camps without trial if he could. Hansen was part of the CRU round-robin. His own professional communications would, at the very least, make entertaining reading.

(The Competitive Enterprise Institute has announced a lawsuit to pry the files out of GISS.)

Mann's department also needs to open up, so that we can better admire the creative thinking that went into the "hockey stick". (Or "sticks" -- there are actually quite a number of these floating around, each subtly different, but each the work of the same hand.) In fact, we need to hear from everyone who was on the CRU e-mail list. All are under suspicion, and will remain so until a full public investigation takes place.

As for the question of lawsuits, it's safe to say that most of these boys will be spending large amounts of their remaining years in one courtroom or another. There's the matter of violating Freedom of Information statutes, the careers sidetracked or ruined, the worthless data knowingly distributed to individuals, institutions, and governments. This may even stretch to wrongful death lawsuits -- many of us recall the northern town and county governments who ceased maintaining snow removal equipment and buying road salt in the late 80s and 90s because "it wasn't gonna snow no more", along with the ensuing accidents and deaths. This could become far more convoluted than anyone can now foresee.

Of course, the big target is Al. There are thousands of lawyers burning office lights until all hours figuring out how to take down Al Gore. Thousands more are being decanted from the lawyers' replication vats for the sole purpose of pleading "Gore v. Whoever". The legal aspects of the new industry of carbon-offsets remain in large part unexplored. I'm sure that Al will relish his role as a pioneer in establishing necessary legal benchmarks as he has in so much else.

Above all, we need to keep pounding. Far from being accepted wisdom, global warming has always been viewed warily by the average American, as yet another excuse for governmental interference and pocket-picking. It won't take much in the way of reiteration to turn this into a raging conviction, with considerable ancillary damage to the progressive program as a whole.

It's too soon to say that warming is dead -- these ideas return from the grave even more often than Jason and his axe. (The other day, I came across a piece dealing the terrors of overpopulation in the same tone that I first heard in the late 60s, and with a similar solution -- adapting the Chinese "one-child" policy. The writer overlooked the fact that the Chinese, through a cultural preference for boy children, have arranged for themselves a nationwide population crash that will halve the Chinese population, throw the country into perhaps permanent recession, and, not the least, end any worldwide "population explosion".)

But warming is politically dead. It would require a brave politician to inconvenience voters, steal their money, and ruin their jobs based on premises that may be fraudulent. That "may" is the crucial term -- fraud doesn't have to be proven. Doubt is all that's required. When fraud enters the picture, everything else -- certainty, veracity, trust -- gets up and leaves. Fakery distorts everything that it touches. To claim that, even though the last batch of data was tainted, the next batch just might be okay, is the same as saying that the last e-mail offer you got from the Nigerian President's Office may have cleaned out your bank account, but this one you just opened has got to be for real.

Which is the exactly position of contemporary climatology. In their eagerness to put over their thesis, the CRU crew ran roughshod over the rules of their discipline. They piled one lie on top of the other until the whole thing came down on them, bringing their field down with it. It will be a long time before anybody accepts a check from a climatologist.

It would be nice to learn what actual effects the increase in CO2 might be. (It has always been unlikely that a shift of 40-50 parts per million, which is the amount we're talking about, would have any dramatic atmospheric effects.) But we're not going to learn that from this crew. It would also be nice to have a society that pays serious attention to the environment and our impact on it, above and beyond all the little clichés about recycling and carbon footprints, in which serious thought is given to what kind of balance between a modern society and nature is possible and how far we want to go in achieving it. But we we're not going to get that from environmentalism, which has proven itself to be fanatical, dishonest, and dangerous. Eventually, we're going to require a revival of the old concept of conservation, adapted to the needs of a new millennium.

But don't hold your breath waiting for it.

J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker.
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