Qohel

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Day: March 28, 2011

If Libya, Why Not … ?

March 28, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Bill O’Reilly says that despite lack of clarity about process (eg, no congressional approval, no clear and present danger to the US), America’s involvement in Libya is a good thing:

On the left … Ralph Nader is calling for impeachment. Michael Moore has suggested that Obama give back the Nobel Peace Prize. Congressman Dennis Kucinich wants to cut off funding for any military action against Libya.

On the right, Pat Buchanan banged the isolationist drum: “Why is the United States, all the way across the ocean, got to go in and stop Arabs from killing Arabs? … Why are we in there?”

To prevent a massacre? I believe that’s the reason, Mr. Buchanan.

Congressman Ron Paul was equally blunt: “What are we doing? We are in this crisis, and they decide to spend all this money. It makes no sense at all.”

Here’s my question for Paul: Would you be comfortable, congressman, watching thousands of human beings being slaughtered by a terrorist dictator when you know that your country had the power to prevent it?

In fact, the no-fly zone was up and running in hours, and Gadhafi’s forces have been seriously damaged. Now the rebels have a chance to eventually overthrow the dictator, and mass murder has been avoided at least for the time being.

This is not a complicated issue. If America is indeed a noble country, it should act to save lives when it can. That doesn’t mean getting bogged down in quagmires like Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. But when quick, decisive action can defeat evil, it should be taken.

I believe in the basic nobility of America. I also believe few other nations have the motivation and power to confront evil that this country does. If it’s all about us, if all we think about is our own sacrifice, then American exceptionalism disappears.

All of that is true. The strong have a responsibility to protect the weak. No one would ever want another Rwanda.

But once you begin to take on the job of the world’s policeman, where do you stop?

If we should intervene in Libya, why not Syria, where the situation seems to be just as bad. And if Syria, why not Burma? And if Burma, why not Zimbabwe?

If we have a responsibility to protect those who cannot defend themselves, why has there been no intervention in Sudan, where there has been much greater loss of life, along with uncounted rapes and mutilations, over a much longer period of time? Why no intervention to protect Christians in Iraq, or Nigeria, or Egypt?

I am not sure O’Reilly is right about Libya. A no fly zone, so rebels are protected against air attack while they fight their own battles might be justifiable.

Fighting those battles for them, so that one brutal government can be replaced by another, is not.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything. It does mean we need to think very seriously about what we want to achieve, the cost of achieving it in human life and in relationships with other nations, and the likelihood that our goals can be reached, before we act.

It is not just intentions that count, but outcomes.

Michael Mann’s Last Gasp

March 28, 2011 / / 0 Comments

After the name calling, the next step of desperate malingerers is to take people who disagree with them to court.

So it should come as no surprise that having been caught fiddling with the facts yet again, Michael Mann is taking legal action against those who have pointed out that his deliberate manipulation of data to gain scentific notice and financial reward amounts to fraud:

Dr. Tim Ball received the second of two libel lawsuits from North Vancouver law firm of  Roger D. McConchie on Friday (March 25, 2011). Global warming doomsaying professor Michael Mann files the latest writ.

Mann, the infamous creator of the now discredited ‘hockey stick’ graph was once the darling of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a tax hungry government funded organization that blames mankind for raising global temperatures by 0.7 degrees during the 20th Century. Now he is desperate to hit back at his critics with the help of Big Green’s immense financial resources. Below we examine the shady background of Professor Mann and explain what Ball must do to defeat this latest legal challenge.

The IPCC plucked Mann from total obscurity after his problematic and “rushed” Ph.D was granted. His viva voce examination was in 1996 and he was required to make corrections. Such a two year delay suggests substantial errors and which would normally require a second viva, but this was strangely not recorded. Then, despite having no reputation as a researcher Mann was bizarrely appointed not only as an expert by the IPCC but as Lead Author for the 2001 Third Report.

Several fellow academics, including Dr. Judith Curry smelt something rotten among mendacious Mikey’s tree rings and their fears were confirmed when Canadian statistical experts, Steve McIntyre and Professor Ross McKitrick found a string of ‘errors’ in Mann’s work. All the errors warped the wooden data in favor of the man-made global warming hype.

It transpired Mann and his secretive clique of climatologists who ‘pal reviewed’ his junk science benefited to the tune of millions of dollars in government research grants.

Dr Tim Ball is a retired scientist, well respected, but with little in the way of financial resources. He is an easy target.

If you are not sure what was done in the ‘Hockey Stick’ data that was so wrong, watch this short video from Berkeley Professor Richard A Muller:

When is a Baby a Baby?

March 28, 2011 / / 1 Comment

An unborn baby died yesterday after the car the mother was driving struck a guard rail and went into the Barwon River near Geelong:

The woman, who was about 30 weeks’ pregnant, managed to free herself from the car as it sank into the river on Friday evening …

Police are adding the unborn baby’s death to the road toll which now stands at 67, one fewer than for the same time last year.

I am glad that in this instance the child is being recognised as a person.

Similarly in this accident a few days ago in Texas:

A 17-year-old woman and her unborn baby were killed in a pedestrian crash Wednesday night in Horizon City.

Emergency crews took Nelly Pizarro, who was five months pregnant at the time of the crash, to Del Sol Medical Center. The baby died shortly after arriving at the hospital. Nelly Pizarro died Thursday morning.

What I don’t understand is what makes those babies ‘babies,’ and thousands who are aborted ‘foetal tissue.’

There is no difference in the babies. Surely we are not judging whether people are people on the basis of whether they are wanted or not?

And if that is what we are doing, how are we different from the Hutus when they decided the Tutsis were not human? Or Saddam Hussein and the Kurds? Or Hitler and the Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals?

A person’s a person, no matter how small.

A Little More on the Pretentious Stupidity of Earth Hour

March 28, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Earth Hour is a waning fad. A couple of years ago, when I left security lights on in my shop, people wanted to know why I was not interested in saving the planet.

This year, when I put a note in the window explaining why we would not be keeping Earth Hour, people said they had no idea it was happening.

Some more thoughts on this from Ira Levant:

What’s remarkable about this month’s Japanese calamities is how few people were actually killed. Ten thousand are dead and 17,000 are missing — a tragic loss. But compare that to another earthquake in Japan in 1923 that killed more than 100,000 people.

This month’s quake was more than 10 times as powerful, but a combination of better construction methods and better emergency response saved lives.

Japan’s earthquake was the fifth largest ever recorded, a startling 9.0 on the Richter scale — where each number is 10 times more powerful than the previous number. A 10.0 earthquake has never been recorded.

This is very encouraging — and it’s a testament to human achievement.

Saturday was so-called Earth Hour, a publicity stunt created by the World Wildlife Fund where enthusiasts were supposed to stop using electricity for an hour. Only a rich, luxuriant society would fetishize poverty and want. Japan is still rebuilding; there are still parts of that country where electricity is not back on. They are in a permanent state of Earth Hour deprivation — not as some fashion statement but because of a tragedy. How is that state of despair a morally commendable situation?

It was human development, industry, capitalism, electricity — and in Japan’s case, safe nuclear power — that has made the difference between their more modest death toll and the 230,000 who died in Indonesia’s earthquake and tsunami in 2004, or the 220,000 who died last year in Haiti. Haiti’s earthquake was less than 1% as powerful; it was their lack of industrial development that made it so deadly.

Is that really the state of affairs we want to be worshipped on Earth Day? For centuries, guilty, rich, white liberals have professed their admiration for the “noble savage” — an unspoiled man, typically in a pre-industrial civilization, not yet spoiled by our modern ways or troubles.

It’s a fantasy, it’s condescending, it’s political psychotherapy for the idle rich who feel guilty about how easy their own lives are, and who are clearly looking for some spiritual meaning they themselves lack. But in a world where there are enough natural threats to man’s happiness and longevity, fetishizing primitive economies is a suicidal fetish.

Japan will rise again — over the objections of those who would sentence it to a nuclear-free, industry-free, permanent Earth Day.

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