Quick Links
Whilst I am still stupid busy, there are a bunch of links which are well worth reading.

Eugene Volkh highlights how a recent decision by the supreme court of New Jersey shows that the slippery slope argument about homosexual marriage is correct.

America (and Australia) continue to lose ground in education and literacy. This is despite the fact that Intelligent design or creation science are taught in class. One of the worst hit, Yale.

Speaking of lack of education, the Climate Change, End of the world type people continue to lose ground. A few choice items. We have more known stores of oil now than before. Inconvienient weather patterns continue to cast doubt on global warming, let alone our ability to predict weather patterns. Some people are starting to realise that people are producers and innovators, not just drains on the planet, and because of this, our contibution to polution is lessening.

Apparently, oral contraceptives increase the risk of breast cancer by 44%. Who would think that continuously taking doses of hormones would have a harmful effect?

The New York Times ombudsman admits to treason. Well, what else can you call it when he admits that the newspaper was wrong to release details of a secret, but legal program designed to track terrorists. I seem to recall the lame plame case where impeachment and trials were called for.

The BBC also have admitted its left leaning, anti-christian bias.

Lessons from history also show that the left is willing to commit treason (albeit unchallenged) in order to try and gain control of the country.

Apparently, a committed pacifist, peace activist who assaults a young man and cause grevious bodily harm is 'a serious, intelligent, hard-working and utterly decent young man of talent and ability'. Well according to this judge anyway. Travesty.

Chuck Norris is now a columnist for World Net Daily. Chuck gives credit to his wife (who he married in 1998) for bringing him back the God and Christianity and saving him.

The battle against abortion continues to rage, with a combined catholic and evangelical statement against it coming out. A doctor at the Corner, highlights how many abortion supporters argue against the clear scientific truth that life begins at conception. U.S. Supreme court justice Scalia has stated that the U.S. constitution does not contain a right to abortion. Outrage has started over a hospital burning aborted babies in their rubbish incinerator.

In Creation/Evolution news, scientists continue to undermine old age and evolutionary beliefs with new findings. Just a few from creation safaris.
* A key reference rock, used as a time reference for many other locations, formed 5 times faster than previously thought. Whoops. Time to redo the text books. But it was a fact!.
* Oxygen continues to be a problem for origin of life scenarios.
* Early embryo shows a lot of complexity, even though simple life was meant to be first.
*It seems gold can form really quickly, adding it to the many other things that were meant to take a lot of time to form, like fossils, rocks, oil, coal, diamonds.
* Also, a supernova has been redated to 1/5 of it's previously 'factual' age.
* Finally, evolution can be fast or slow, shining light on just how useless it is for explaining things or predicting anything.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Thursday, October 26, 2006 0 comments

 
More Democrat Slime
I am appalled that the Democrats, after refusing to release the results of their survey when they did not like those results, have continued with their anti-religious campaign. Their latest discussion paper is one long slimey piece of rhetoric. I'll deal with it in a coming post when I have finished my latest philosophy paper. For now, read it over, and ask yourself why the democrats want proportional representation of religious beliefs when this really means they will have to give up seats? Or, from current trends, maybe be forced to keep one?
- posted by Alan Grey @ Tuesday, October 24, 2006 0 comments

 
Global Warming Doomsdayers need to Chill Out
I put global warming into the same category as the hysterical people who falsely claim that our population is too big to sustain. Why? Because there is the simple question I almost always ask, which is 'How the heck would they know?'.

Even if the globe is getting warmer, there are literally countless, uncheckable explanations for the warming. The simple fact is, scientists cannot reproduce the earth to run tests in order to rule out these explanations.

There has been some interesting news showing that this skepticism is well founded.

One of the most decorated French geophysicists has converted from a believer in manmade catastrophic global warming to a climate skeptic. This latest defector from the global warming camp caps a year in which numerous scientific studies have bolstered the claims of climate skeptics. Scientific studies that debunk the dire predictions of human-caused global warming have continued to accumulate and many believe the new science is shattering the media-promoted scientific “consensus” on climate alarmism.

Claude Allegre, a former government official and an active member of France’s Socialist Party, wrote an editorial on September 21, 2006 in the French newspaper L'Express titled “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (For English Translation, click here: http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264835 ) detailing his newfound skepticism about manmade global warming. See: http://www.lexpress.fr/idees/tribunes/dossier/allegre/dossier.asp?ida=451670 Allegre wrote that the “cause of climate change remains unknown” and pointed out that Kilimanjaro is not losing snow due to global warming, but to local land use and precipitation changes. Allegre also pointed out that studies show that Antarctic snowfall rate has been stable over the past 30 years and the continent is actually gaining ice.

Whilst the global warming people try to claim there is a consensus and silence any critics, it is clear that the evidence isn't going their way...the article continues

Global Cooling on the Horizon?

In August, Khabibullo Abdusamatov, a scientist who heads the space research sector for the Russian Academy of Sciences, predicted long-term global cooling may be on the horizon due to a projected decrease in the sun’s output. See: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060825/53143686.html

Sun’s Contribution to Warming

There have also been recent findings in peer-reviewed literature over the last few years showing that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing and a new 2006 study in Geophysical Research Letters found that the sun was responsible for up to 50% of 20th-century warming. See: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL027142.shtml

“Global Warming” Stopped in 1998

Paleoclimate scientist Bob Carter has noted that there is indeed a problem with global warming – it stopped in 1998. “According to official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK, the global average temperature did not increase between 1998-2005. “…this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” noted paleoclimate researcher and geologist Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia in an April 2006 article titled “There is a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998.” See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html

“Global”? Warming Misnamed - Southern Hemisphere Not Warming

In addition, new NASA satellite tropospheric temperature data reveals that the Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years contrary to “global warming theory” and modeling. This new Southern Hemisphere data raises the specter that the use of the word “global” in “global warming” may not be accurate. A more apt moniker for the past 25 years may be “Northern Hemisphere” warming. See: http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/09/southern-hemisphere-ignores-global.html

Alaska Cooling

According to data released on July 14, 2006 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the January through June Alaska statewide average temperature was “0.55F (0.30C) cooler than the 1971-2000 average.” See: http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/releases2006/jul06/noaa06-065.html

Oceans Cooling

Another bombshell to hit the global warming alarmists and their speculative climate modeling came in a September article in the Geophysical Research Letters which found that over 20% of the heat gained in the oceans since the mid-1950s was lost in just two years. The former climatologist for the state of Colorado, Roger Pielke, Sr., noted that the sudden cooling of the oceans “certainly indicates that the multi-decadal global climate models have serious issues with their ability to accurately simulate the response of the climate system to human- and natural-climate forcings.“ See: http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/09/

Light Hurricane Season & Early Winter

Despite predictions that 2006 would bring numerous tropical storms, 2006’s surprisingly light hurricane season and the record early start of this year’s winter in many parts of the U.S. have further put a damper on the constant doomsaying of the global warming alarmists and their media allies.

Droughts Less Frequent

Other new studies have debunked many of the dubious claims made by the global warming alarmists. For example, the claim that droughts would be more frequent, severe and wide ranging during global warming, has now being exposed as fallacious. A new paper in Geophysical Research Letters authored by Konstantinos Andreadis and Dennis Lettenmaier finds droughts in the U.S. becoming “shorter, less frequent and cover a small portion of the country over the last century.” http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/10/13/where-are-the-droughts

Global Warming Will Not Lead to Next Ice Age

Furthermore, recent research has shown that fears that global warming could lead to the next ice age, as promoted in the 2004 Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow” are also unsupportable. A 2005 media hyped study “claimed to have found a 30 percent slowdown in the thermohaline circulation, the results are published in the very prestigious Nature magazine, and the story was carried breathlessly by the media in outlets around the world…Less than a year later, two different research teams present convincing evidence [ in Geophysical Research Letters ] that no slowdown is occurring whatsoever,” according to Virginia State Climatologist Patrick Michaels, editor of the website World Climate Report. See: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/10/13/overturning-ocean-hype

‘Hockey Stick’ Broken in 2006

The “Hockey Stick” temperature graph’s claim that the 1990’s was the hottest decade of the last 1000 years was found to be unsupportable by the National Academy of Sciences and many independent experts in 2006. See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257697

Study Shows Greenland’s Ice Growing

A 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showed that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass. See: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N44/C1.jsp that Also, according to the International Arctic Research Institute, despite all of the media hype, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930’s than today.

Polar Bears Not Going Extinct

Despite Time Magazine and the rest of the media’s unfounded hype, polar bears are not facing a crisis, according to biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut. “Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present,” Taylor wrote on May 1, 2006. See: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1146433819696&call_pageid=970599119419

Yep...ignore or challenge the hysterical cries of the chicken little global warming nutters. Sure we should take care of our environment, but there is no need to panic and throw out the baby with the bathwater.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Friday, October 20, 2006 0 comments

 
Latest News - Mass Media are Spineless Bullies
Yep. You heard it here first. This just in. The main stream media (msm) continue to show they are spineless bullies. Willing to slander people who they know won't fight back, but they continue to run and hide at the mere thought of drawing attention to violent middle eastern/muslim people.

So much for the 'brave journalist' crap we continue to get fed. Their responses fit completely within the general way that bullies act in kindegarten.

Contrast their responses to George W Bush, who simply said "Bring it on".
- posted by Alan Grey @ Thursday, October 19, 2006 0 comments

 
America is Losing the Arms Race
Tim Blair has pointed out that America has only just got (Warning LOTS of photos) to somewhere around 600 million arms. This puts them well behind China, which is somewhere over 2 billion!

Tim notes how gloomy at the leftist, anti-western journalists and academics are about it all. They always seem to whine about disarmament, and this is no exception.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Wednesday, October 18, 2006 0 comments

 
Lancet Tries to Influence US election - Again
The British medical journal, Lancet, has once again, timed a release of a report on iraq casualties in order to influence the US elections in November.

Last time, it was the ridiculous claim of 98,000 excess deaths, plus or minus 90,000 (great error margin eh?). This time, it was the claim that since the war began, there have been around 650,000 more deaths than if no one had invaded Iraq. Of course, in their actual investigating they identified a mere 547 deaths and then extrapolated this to 650,000. Doesn't it just fill you with confidence?

Other people have been doing a great job to show just how pathetically useless this study really is (and just how much a political effort it is).

Magic Statistics has a fairly long report on the problems with the study, including the fact that it only took urban locations as viable for surveying, even though 26% of the population live in rural areas, as well as other methodological issues and concludes

There are many other problems with the Lancet study that could be discussed. What I’ve presented here, however, is more than sufficient to demonstrate that the survey behind the estimate of “excess” deaths was statistically unsound because biased by non-random selection of interview respondents. Moreover, the article’s description of survey field operations is, in the absence of further supporting documentation, highly problematic.

In my judgment, the estimate of 655,000 deaths lacks solid foundation and therefore should not be relied upon.

Another great bit of work was done by the boys at the Iraq Body Count (an anti-war group). A lot of detail is available, but their summary highlights the issues nicely

The Iraqi mortality estimates published in the Lancet in October 2006 imply, among other things, that:

1. On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms;
2. Some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment;
3. Over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq;
4. Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued;
5. The Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive "Shock and Awe" invasion and the major assaults on Falluja.

If these assertions are true, they further imply:

* incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began;
* bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis;
* the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas;
* an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.

In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy.

A commentator at Committee's of correspondence points out an interesting fact as well.

But in the comments section, one commenter brings up some very revealing statistics. Their claim can be verified in the Lancet site itself.

Soldier's Dad : states this,

I'll shoot a hole in the Lancet Study.

The mortality rate in the EU is 10.10/1000.

The Mortality rate in the US is 8.5/1000.

The mortality rate in Hungary is 13/1000

The world average mortality rate is 8.5/1000 per year.

The Lancet study uses a "baseline" mortality rate of 5.5. Half the mortality rate of Europe.

To be fair to Lancet, the mortality rate is the accepted value by the CIA, so they aren't just making it up. The issue remains though that under a dictatorship this mortality rate is unknowable with any certainty. Even if their methods were valid, they would need to have done the same thing before the war to appropriately fix this baseline rate. They didn't, and couldn't, and so this study is essentially mixing apples with oranges and should be disgarded for the crap that it is.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Tuesday, October 17, 2006 0 comments

 
Secular Humanist Europe Approaches Totalitarianism
The European Human Rights Court has upheld a German ban on home schooling. The court has essentially agreed that parents have no right to determine what their children learn.

This is just another in the long line of steps the EU has been taking toward a totalitarian government controlling their citizens thoughts and beliefs. "All for the good of the people of course". It has been pointed out the home schooling ban was earlier instituted by the Nazi's, another totalitarian government.

Check out the justification of the court

Although the EU Court admitted that “it cannot be formally said that the applicant parents are seeking to impose their religious convictions against their children’s will,” the Court upheld the German court findings that “the applicant children were unable to foresee the consequences of their parents’ decision for home education because of their young age.”

Obviously the "government knows best" mentality will continue until the government controls TV, University, Mass media and the like. The journey towards totalitarianism continues.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Sunday, October 15, 2006 0 comments

 
Carbon Dating Reliability
Creation Safari's has an interesting report about an article in nature on dating.

In the Sept 14 issue, there was a give & take between critics of a carbon-14-dated study and the author. The critics pointed out, “We appreciate that Mellars’ review was restricted to radiocarbon dating, principally of bone, but it is recommended practice that multiple methods and materials should be investigated to avoid any possible pitfalls that might be associated with a single technique or sample type.” They decried the need for “much-needed rigour to radiocarbon chronologies.”

Only using radiocarbon dating to date something could have 'pitfalls'. I guess it isn't as reliable and bullet proof as some try to claim.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Friday, October 13, 2006 0 comments

 
Communism and Naive Journalists/Unionists
Repeat after me. There is no freedom of the press in communist countries. No freedom of information. No non-governmental think tanks. No independent evaluators.

So when A south australian teachers union journal tells you that Cuba's education is first class and there is a 100% literacy rate (yeah...perfection in any society..sure), it is pretty darn clear that they are naive, ideologs who have little clue of reality.

Putting it simply (for any communist cheering unionists who may read this).... There is no way to tell what the quality of education is like in Cuba. There is no hope of getting any unbiased information from the government or the controlled population.

The one thing we do know is that tens of thousands of people risk death to escape to America every year. Their stories of how bad it really is, and why they risked death to leave are a clear indication that all is not rosy in Cuba, and that some unionists are so clueless that you have to worry about the state of education in THIS country.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Tuesday, October 10, 2006 0 comments

 
North Korea - Rhetoric or Madness
With the recent 'nuclear tests', which many people are wondering whether they succeeded or not, it is important to look at what those wacky North Korean leaders are saying. And what are they saying? That the next war will be fought on 'the continental US, with major cities transformed into towering infernos'. Rhetoric or madness... you decide.

Just remember, it was humanitarian aid that helped North Korea get the bomb.

But an aid policy initiated by the Clinton administration in the mid-1990s to finance two light water nuclear reactors in North Korea puts the isolated communist country on the fast track in the manufacture of nuclear weapons, William R. Graham and Victor Gilinsky told members of the House Policy Committee.

North Korea's missile proliferation has accelerated dramatically since the Clinton-Gore administration began giving aid to the regime in 1994.

Yep...Give nukes to the communists...well done lefties!
- posted by Alan Grey @ Tuesday, October 10, 2006 0 comments

 
Christian Theocracy
I get tired of leftist secular humanists crying 'theocracy' anytime any Christian has influence. It takes far too long to explain that they are being idiots. Thankfully, First Things does a great job of this. It's a great resource for highlighting the stupidity of the claim. Some excerpts...

This reality poses no particular problem if you simply disagree with religious conservatives about abortion or gay marriage or prayer in public schools. But if you’re committed to the notion that religious conservatives represent an existential threat to democratic government, you need a broader definition of theocracy to convey your sense of impending doom. Which is why the anti-theocrats often suggest that it doesn’t take mullahs, an established church, or a Reconstructionist ban on adultery to make a theocracy. All you need are politicians who invoke religion and apply Christian principles to public policy.

Yep...redefining terms to scare people into fearing those you speak against. Propaganda 101.

So the rise of the Religious Right, and the growing “religion gap” that Phillips describes but fails to understand, aren’t new things in American history but a reaction to a new thing: to an old political party newly dependent on a bloc of voters who reject the role that religion has traditionally played in American political life. The hysteria over theocracy, in turn, represents an attempt to rewrite the history of the United States to suit these voters’ prejudices, by setting a year zero somewhere around 1970 and casting everything that’s happened since as a battle between progress and atavism, reason and fundamentalism, the Enlightenment and the medieval dark.

Historical revisionism to make everything against your position a atavism (throwback). Propaganda 102.

These people aren't interested in rational discourse, just in misleading and scaring people into getting their own way.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Tuesday, October 10, 2006 0 comments

 
On Bono and Poverty
I attended the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit last weekend, and one of the sessions was an interview between Bill Hybels and Bono. Whilst I don't doubt Bono is a Christian, I am certainly not going to overly praise him. Some of the things he said actually made me a little unhappy.

There are 2003 verses in scripture about the poor, second only to personal salvation.

Jesus speaks of judgment only once and that is the passage in Matthew where we are asked: ‘who clothed the naked?’ and ‘who fed the poor?’ and ‘who visited those in prison?’ That defines whether you are a part of the Kingdom or not.”

“The reason the church has been slow to respond is that the church has historically always been behind the curve: civil rights, apartheid…the church is afraid of politics.

The second reason the church has been so slow is less palatable..the church has been very judgmental about the AIDS virus…it believes that it is about people living irresponsibly.

Only 6% of evangelicals felt like they were to act in response to the AIDS epidemic. But the Christ will not let the church walk away from the AIDS emergency…it is like a car crash, we have to act. AIDS is the leprosy of our age.

But then something tragic happened…the church woke up and began to act…and they ruined it for me…I couldn’t hate the church anymore.

Bono has a huge heart for the poor, and that is a great thing. The problem is, he bills it as the biggest social justice issue there is. That's wrong. Abortion kills more people every day than poverty. The figures don't lie. Poverty is a huge issue to be sure, and one we should deal with, but it isn't the biggest. Overstating your case doesn't help.

Which brings me to my next point. Bono talks of 2003 verses in the bible talking about the poor, and that Jesus only talks about judgement once. I think this is also an overstatement. Jesus talks about judgement and hell a fair bit, and I am betting those 2003 verses do not ALL talk about helping the poor, but also verses that just mention them. Overstating your case doesn't help.

The final thing I noted was that Bono, with his big heart for the poor, condemns those who don't share his heart. His last comment that 'he couldn't hate the church anymore' once they came on board with HIS passion shows this clearly. But people have different hearts for different things. Just because someone doesn't necessarily share his heart, does not make it a good reason to judge and condemn them.

One last note is that dealing with poverty is very important, but we should do it intelligently. Over a trillion dollars of aid to Africa has resulted in the conditions worsening. This is because the aid is done in such a way as to reinforce the conditions (Corrupt goverment, badly structured economy, stupid trade legislation), rather than fix it. We need to address the real problems, the governments, not just the lack of food.

Making governments force their population give aid is not a moral choice. You can't force charity.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Monday, October 09, 2006 3 comments

 
Media Continues to Obfiscate Muslim Problems
Tim Blair has another post about the media's pathetic practice of not identifying criminals.

Sydney’s devious men of no appearance miraculously re-appear:

A gang of robbers has held up two men at gunpoint before stealing their car in Sydney’s west ...

Police say the robbers were all aged in their mid 20s.

The armed man was described as thin with broad shoulders and a goatee beard, wearing a blue baseball cap, a white long-sleeve hooded jumper and grey tracksuit trousers with a yellow stripe down each side.

The descriptions issued by police offer more information:

The first is described as being of Middle Eastern appearance, aged about 25 or 26, dark complexion, 178cm to 183cm, thin build with broad shoulders and a goatee. He was wearing a blue baseball cap with white writing on the front, a white long sleeve jumper with a hood and grey tracksuit pants with a yellow stripe down each side. He was last seen in possession of a black firearm.

The second male is described as being of Middle Eastern appearance, aged 24 or 25, short dark brown spikey hair, skinny build and a had a goatee. He was seen wearing dark clothing and a thick gold chain around his neck.

The third man is described as being of Middle Eastern appearance, aged 24 or 25, obese and a few day’s facial hair growth. The fourth and fifth males are described as being of Middle Eastern appearance, aged in their mid 20s and wearing dark clothing.

Via reader Frank A., who emailed the Sydney Morning Herald about its no-appearance policy (the piece was orginally sourced from AAP, whose copy mentioned “Middle Eastern appearance” when published by other outlets). He received this reply:

Thank you for your comments about the article, “Gunpoint carjacking at traffic lights”.

In a city such as Sydney, the Herald’s view is that ethnic descriptions are only of much use in helping potential witnesses identify suspects if they are part of a full description, which includes clothing, build, hair colour, distinguishing features and so on.

The SMH had all that. Clothing: “Blue baseball cap, a white long-sleeve hooded jumper and grey tracksuit trousers with a yellow stripe down each side.” Build: “Thin with broad shoulders.” Distinguishing features: “Goatee beard.” So why delete ethnic details? The email continues:

With such a large population in Sydney, a description such as, “the suspects are 175cm tall, clean shaven and of Middle Eastern/Mediterranean appearance”, hardly narrows it down and serves no purpose. In some cases the Herald does publish descriptions of alleged suspects’ ethnicity if police feel that their investigation would be aided by such a report. This is an exception, however, rather than the rule.

Here’s an SMH exception:

Police are searching for a man described as being of white/European appearance, aged 25 to 30, with a large build and wearing a dark tracksuit and blue baseball cap.

Really “narrowing it down”, guys.

The media is part of the problem. In much the same way as the only religion you are allowed to bag is Christianity, the only people you are allowed to identify are white's. It sounds a lot like our campuses doesn't it. Multiculturalism rules, and yet western civilization is denigrated. The only negative religious courses are about Christianity. It isn't suprising that the media spins the same line, as journalists all go to uni.

The communists understood this with China, where they captured the student/academic realm to let them capture the whole of China. Just remember this next time someone preaches about only having schools run by the government.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Monday, October 09, 2006 0 comments

 
YouTube Censors Anti-Terrorist Video
Michelle Malkin has had a video that shows tame pictures of people killed by Islamic Terrorists posted on YouTube. The problem is, YouTube has censored it for being 'inappropriate'. Michelle comments

Will any criticism of jihad qualify as "hate" under its terms of use guidelines? Why did the banning of anti-jihad videos only start now--in the wake of YouTube's embarrassment over jihad propaganda videos exploding on its site as reported by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin earlier this month?

This is either a case of
1) YouTube has terrorist sympathisers running it.
2) YouTube is falling for the media's method of 'neutral' where they treat both sides of a conflict the same. of course, this essentially points the terrorists on a morally equivalent footing with those it attacks.

Remember, there is no such thing as a morally neutral position.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Thursday, October 05, 2006 0 comments

 
Anti-Life Experts Ignore Evidence
When 'experts' tell you that your evidence is not required, you have to question their value as an objective authority.

Donald Peebles, of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at University College London.... “But there was also a temptation to associate these movements — sucking a thumb, gasping as if talking — with adult movements, to think it is sucking its thumb because it is happy. It’s that feeling which I think is extraordinarily dangerous.”

Why is it dangerous? because it would tend people to go against this 'experts' pro-abortion, anti-life beliefs. It gets more pathetic however...

Though the foetus clearly looks human by 12 weeks, proper sensory development takes place much later, he said. There was a risk that the pictures would make people assume that foetuses have more advanced brains than is the case.

“The neurons in the brain might be in their final positions by about halfway through the pregnancy, but that in no way means they function in an adult way. These images don’t tell me anything I haven’t known for 30 years with ultrasound scans. We know what it looks like, and that it moves continuously. I don’t think in a scientific sense this sheds any new light on the debate.”

Yep. He knows the brain is fully formed by 18 weeks, but he doesn't care. The unborn may have a functioning brain, but as long as you can't 'prove' it, he wants to go on killing defenseless babies.

Onto another 'expert'

Huseyin Mehmet, Reader in Developmental Neurobiology at Imperial College London, said: “Personification of the foetus at that age is dangerous. Scans that look at the structure of the foetal brain at 23 to 24 weeks show that the human brain is extremely immature. It is the period between 24 and 40 weeks that is largely responsible for brain development. I was worried when I saw those images. To suggest that an early foetus in utero has those kind of human qualities of being able to suck its thumb and move, that it meets the biological definition of being really viable outside the uterus, is very difficult indeed.”

An immature brain doesn't mean it isn't functioning. our brains continue to develop. That an 'early foetus' has human qualities of moving and sucking it's thumb is now beyond question, yet this 'expert' tells us it doesn't mean they meet the 'Huseyin Mehmet, Reader in Developmental Neurobiology at Imperial College London, said: “Personification of the foetus at that age is dangerous. Scans that look at the structure of the foetal brain at 23 to 24 weeks show that the human brain is extremely immature. It is the period between 24 and 40 weeks that is largely responsible for brain development. I was worried when I saw those images. To suggest that an early foetus in utero has those kind of human qualities of being able to suck its thumb and move, that it meets the biological definition of being really viable outside the uterus, is very difficult indeed.”' is a red herring. Viability has been reduced to 20 weeks (not 23 as the article tells us - could it be the articles authors want to skew opinion for keeping the 24 week line in the UK? Note also the facts at the end of the article are cut down to focus on the lack of development) by medical advances. Our 'expert' doesn't want to deal with that, and so tries to create a straw man to attack. Anything that makes an unborn more personified is obviously upsetting to the dear doctor. I guess he doesn't like it getting in the way of his pro-abortion ideology.

But is worse than all that.

“I had two reactions when I saw those photographs,” said Donald Peebles, of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at University College London. “One was that this was a fantastic piece of technology that showed very clearly what we knew already about the foetus in a way that was comprehensible to the public.

"what we knew already". Yep. They don't care how human they act, because "We will never know at what point foetal consciousness and awareness start." But if they don't know when, why do they want to kill the feotus when it might just be conscious?

That they have 'known' these things for years , and merely decry when the public gains empathy for the unborn because it is 'dangerous' shows these 'experts' are callous, ideologically driven 'progressives'.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Wednesday, October 04, 2006 2 comments

 
Anglican Church Apostasy - Bible Wrong About God
The slide continues. This latest comment laments that

The document highlights "misguided" or distorted versions of Christian belief which have contributed to the problem of domestic abuse in contrast to "life-giving" theology which could help the Church counter abuse.

These harmful beliefs include a conception of God derived from the Bible and the Christian tradition portraying divine power in "unhealthy and oppressive" ways, the report said.

There are particular problems in the attribution of violent actions and attitudes to God, chiefly but not solely in the Old Testament, which require "careful" interpretation, it said.

A view of our relationship with God in terms of domination and submission, along with uncritical use of masculine imagery to characterise God, can validate "overbearing and ultimately violent patterns of behaviour" in intimate relationships, it said.

Yep. The decline in accepting the bible as God's word continues. maybe they think of the bible as a 'living document'.

Although many people fail to see the connection between accepting old earth beliefs and apostasy, the logic remains. If you start picking and choosing which bits of the bible are true or reinterpret the bible based on man's fallible ideas, sooner or later you do it to another passage, another idea. It continues until 'God' is no longer relevant.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Tuesday, October 03, 2006 2 comments

 
Media Continues Iraq Beatup - Ignores Iran
The Lowy Institute has released survey results which the media is trumpeting as a big negative for the Howard government. Posting a paraphrased statement by an opposition leader as the title of the article, News.com highlights three of the questions about Iraq and notes how

The poll, released by the Lowy Institute today, found 84 per cent of respondents believe the war has done nothing to lower the threat of terrorism.

Two-thirds of respondents disagreed the war would lead to the spread of democracy in the Middle East, and 85 per cent think the experience should make us cautious about using military force to deal with rogue regimes.

The Sydney Morning Herald also chimes in on Iraq and puts in the added digs at Australian foreign policy being too greatly influenced by Washington.

What they don't tell you is that 82% of the thousand or so people surveyed are somewhat or very much concerned about Iran having nuclear weapons. They also don't mention that 70% of Australians view the alliance with the US as fairly or very important to our security. Neither article mentioned that although the threat of terrorism has apparently not been decreased, 86% of those surveyed felt safe or very safe.

Ah the cherry picking for their own agenda. The media doesn't need to print falsehoods to influence opinions, just decide what is 'news'.

The survey (available in pdf here)has a wealth of more inconvenient results. Like that although many (79%) feel the U.S. should be less of a 'world policeman' to "fight violations of international law and aggression wherever they occur", 64% (very) and 32% (somewhat) of those surveyed think it is an important foreign policy goal for Australia to protect "weaker nations against foreign aggression".
- posted by Alan Grey @ Monday, October 02, 2006 1 comments