Neda: The Voice of the Iranian People

By now the videos of Neda’s death have spread far and wide across the world making her the symbol of the voice of the Iranian People.

Today is Father’s Day. No father should have to live to witness the death of a beloved child.

While glued to Twitter early yesterday afternoon I made the mistake of clicking on the link to the close-up, gruesome, and very graphic YouTube video of Neda’s death. The image of her beautiful eyes in the last moment of her life seared itself into my soul. I could not shake her dying image from my mind and just prayed all day for her family.

By nighttime the new Twitter hashtag: #Neda was burning up the internet with Tweets and RT’s.

RT Woman killed in front of her father "ندا (#Neda) which means voice or call in Farsi. She's the voice of the people a call to freedom"

4 Neda, girl murdered in Iran on film: Eternal rest grant unto her O Lord & let perpetual light shine uponher. #neda

Read the moving account from the doctor who tried to save her from BreakForNews with graphic still shots taken from the video.

Technorati Tags: hashtags,hashtag,Twitter,Neda,Iran,Iranelection,Tehran

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Subpoena Threatens liberty & Privacy of Comment Posters

I have added extra emphasis to a critical clause in the last sentence of the following quotation. Please concentrate on that and the other parts I have emphasized.

http://www.newmediajournal.us/the_fifth_column.htm#0616a

Newspaper Resists Subpoena for Names of Readers Who Posted Views
Joan Whitely, The Las Vegas Review-Journal
The Las Vegas Review-Journal readers who posted online their views about a federal criminal tax trial are the target of a sweeping federal grand jury subpoena asking for information so that authorities may identify who they are and where they live. The Review-Journal plans to file later this week a motion to quash the subpoena, and the American Civil Liberties Union has posted its own online solicitation asking those who posted whether they would like the ACLU to legally represent them...This past week the grand jury subpoena, which is separate from the ongoing trial but was signed by one of the prosecutors involved in the tax trial, was the topic of discussion between the trial judge and attorneys, revealing for the first time a possible motive for the subpoena. The newspaper's subpoena does not explain why the US attorney's office wants to know who commented on the case, but prosecutors told federal Judge David Ezra that they issued it out of concern for jurors' safety, because some comments hinted at acts of violence. Las Vegas business owner Robert Kahre and others face federal tax fraud charges for paying contractors with gold and silver US coins based on the precious metal value of the coins but using the much lower face value of the coins for tax purposes. As of 9pm Monday, 173 comments were listed below the May 26 Review-Journal article about the trial. Many comments deal with the trial and its principal players. Others were posted after the subpoena arrived...Mitchell said the paper is resisting the sweeping nature of the subpoena, noting that anonymous speech is "a fundamental and historic part of this country," citing the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers that argued for passage and against passage of the nation's Constitution as an example. All were written under pseudonyms. He said the paper would consider cooperating if specific crimes or real threats were presented...Many used the newspaper Web site to say the US government has turned socialist, the nation's monetary system encourages deficit spending and guarantees inflation, or the Internal Revenue Service has to be reformed or abolished. In addition to requesting the names of people who posted, the subpoena also tells the newspaper to supply the writers' gender, birth date, physical address, telephone number, Internet service provider, IP address, credit card numbers and more.

Assuming that one or more comentators made expressed or implied threats, does that justify casting a broad net for all commentators on the subject? What is the relevance of credit card numbers, and why would the newspaper have them? Perhaps those who posted comments are subscribers and paid by credit card, but I can tell you without reservation that I will not supply that number to sign up to post comments.

In my opinion, seeking identifying information for anyone who did not make threats of violence is overstepping the bounds of justice and casts a negative reflection on the prosecutor involved. Persecutor may be a better title for that officer of the court. This case is an early wake up call alerting us to be watchful lest our liberties be lost.

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EPA comment period closes Tues

EPA's CO₂ comment period closes Tuesday, June 23, 2007. If you have not yet told them where to go with their egregious power and money grab, now is the time to do so. If CO₂ regulation is not nipped in the bud, we will be penalized for everything we do; for every breath we take.

The proposed regulation is related to the Waxman-Markey bill, which will bankrupt us jointly & severally. This is a case of fabricating and exploiting an artificial crisis for political & economic exploitation.

Consider this information from Green Watch America.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.''

31,478 scientists have signed the statement you just read. 9,029 of those scientists have PhD degrees. 3,803 of them have expertise in atmospheric, earth, and environmental science. Sound like a consensus to you?

http://errortheory.blogspot.com/2009/06/epa-comment-period-closes-tues-tell-em.html

EPA comment period closes Tues: tell ‘em no state-establishment of CO2-phobic religion

Only a couple more days to let the EPA know what you think of its proposed war against CO2. Just click on the little yellow “add comments” balloon. The following is a comment (ending at "sincerely") that you can copy and paste. (If you choose to roll your own, feel free to leave it here too.)

Dear EPA: There is overwhelming statistical evidence that the primary driver of natural temperature change is solar-magnetic activity, yet the solar flux is completely omitted as an influence on climate in all four IPCC assessments and in the Obama administration's new "Climate Change Impacts in the United Sates" report. This omission is rationalized on grounds that the existing theories of how solar activity affects climate are still formative. The scientific method rejects this rationalization. Observational evidence is supposed to trump theory, not vice versa, but the IPCC is using theory (its distrust of existing theories of the mechanism by which solar-magnetic activity drives global temperature), as an excuse for ignoring the overwhelming evidence that solar-magnetic DOES drive global temperature. Not all religions are anti-scientific, but the demonstrably anti-scientific nature of CO2 alarmism proves that it IS religion, not science. EPA regulations are supposed to be science based. Imposing restrictions based on an anti-scientific religious doctrine would not just violate the EPA's mandate, but would violate the constitutional prohibition on state establishment of religion. Solar-magnetic warming: theory and evidence The sunspot-temperature theory is actually looking pretty solid. It is known that a strong solar-magnetic flux shields the earth from high energy cosmic rays which otherwise, according to the theory of Henrik Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, would ionize the atmosphere, seeding cloud formation. Thus the solar wind in effect blows the clouds away, giving the earth a sunburn. Whatever the precise mechanism, researchers have found that solar-magnetic activity “explains” statistically about 60-80 percent of global temperature change on all time scales going back hundreds of millions of years. On the decadal time scale, see the seminal 1991 paper by Christensen and Lassen (“Length of the Solar Cycle: An Indicator of Solar Activity Closely Associated with Climate”) and the 2003 isotope study by Usoskin et al (“Solar activity over the last 1150 yrs: does it correlate with climate?”), which found: “a correlation coefficient of about .7 - .8 at a 94% - 98% confidence level.” For longer time scales, see the 2003 paper by Shaviv and Veiser (“Celestial driver of Phranerozoic climate?”), which found that found that the cosmic ray flux explains statistically about 75% of global temperature variation over the last 550 million years. Omitted variable fraud Solar activity was at “grand maximum” levels from 1940 and 2000 which, given the historical correlation between solar activity and temperature, could easily explain most or all late 20th century warming. When the IPCC and others omit the solar-magnetic variable from their models, any warming effect of solar activity gets misattributed to whatever correlated variables ARE included in their models. By sheer coincidence, CO2 reached its own “grand maximum” levels (at least compared to the rest of the Holocene) in the second half of the 20th century. Thus in the alarmist models, whatever warming effect the omitted solar-magnetic variable is responsible for gets misattributed to CO2. You can find rationalizations for this omitted-variable fraud in every IPCC report. For instance, section 6.11.2.2 of the Third Assessment Report does not question the correlation between solar activity and climate, but dismisses the cosmic-ray cloud THEORY as too speculative to include in their climate models:

At present there is insufficient evidence to confirm that cloud cover responds to solar variability.

But they don't just leave solar-magnetic activity out of their models. Because their forecasts are based entirely on their climate models, they also leave solar magnetic effects completely out of their climate forecasts, despite knowing that there is SOME mechanism (even if the cosmic-ray/cloud theory turns out to be wrong) by which solar-magnetic activity is the primary driver of global temperature. The only solar variable they do include is solar output or Total Solar Insolation (from long to short-wave radiation), which does not include the solar-magnetic flux. The Fourth Assessment Report does the same thing, looking only at TSI, as do all of the analyses that follow from these reports. For instance, if you look at he “Natural Influences” subsection of the Obama administration’s new report, you will see on page 16 that the only natural influence listed is “solar output’ (or TSI), which is why it is shown graphically to be so tiny. Solar output is close to constant over the solar cycle (less than 0.1% variation), which is why it is called “the solar constant." Because TSI is nearly constant, it cannot account for the many thousands of years of close correlation between solar activity and temperature. That must be coming from the one solar variable that DOES vary with solar activity: the solar magnetic flux. Every IPCC climate scientist knows this, yet they still omit the solar-magnetic variable. Proof of omission: page 16 graphic from the June 2009 report by U.S. Global Change Research Program (in effect, the NOAA). The only natural warming effect listed is total solar output, which does not include the solar-magnetic flux. Similar graphics can be found in each of the IPCC's assessment reports, where this analysis originates. Religion, not science When the alarmists omit solar-magnetic effects on the grounds that they are not satisfied with with existing theories of HOW these effects work, they are not just committing statistical fraud, but they are contradicting the very definition of science. Observation (the overwhelming correlation between solar activity and global temperature) is supposed to trump theory, not vice versa. Consider an analogy. Until Einstein developed his theory of general relativity there was no good theory of gravity. Newton had a description of the gravitational force (that it diminishes by the inverse of the square of the distance) but nobody had any sensible account for the mechanism by which massive objects were drawn to each other. Applying the standards of the IPCC, a pre-Einsteinian or pre-Newtonian scientist should have forecast that when a stone is released in the air, it would waft away on the breeze. After all, we understand the force that the breeze imparts on the stone, but we don't understand this thing called gravity, so we should not include it, even though we observe that heavy objects fall. That is not science, and neither is CO2 alarmism. Data is supposed to trump Theory. By using theory (the proclaimed insufficiency of solar-magnetic theory) as an excuse to ignore the evidence (where solar activity is known to somehow warm the climate), warming alarmism perverts the scientific method. That makes it religion in the constitutionally barred sense. Not only is this belief system embraced by millions of people WITHOUT EVIDENCE, but it is embraced in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. Alarmism about CO2 is not just a religion, it is a demonstrably irrational religion, equivilant to believing that rocks will waft away on the breeze. EPA is supposed to make science-based rulings. If you regulate CO2 based on demonstrably anti-scientific ideology, it will be an unconstitutional state establishment of religion. The current cooling trend fits the solar-magnetic theory, not the CO2 theory All of the major temperature records show that the earth's average temperature has been falling for ten years now (with the 21 year smoothed temperature falling for five). In this period, CO2 has continued to increase, while the sun has descended into a prolonged solar minimum. This turn in the sun (breaking the coincidental correlation between solar activity and CO2 that existed for the previous 70 years), is rapidly unmasking the hoax of anthropogenic global warming. It should not take a rare astrological event to unmask an obvious statistical and scientific fraud. Will the EPA now destroy its reputation by codifying the "green" religion at the very moment when the heavens themselves are exposing its dishonesty? If you choose this course, you will be destroying the nation's economy and the lives of your countrymen in the service of your own anti-scientific religious beliefs, in violation of your oath of office.

Sincerely,

On the subject of state established religion This is also the subject of our blogbursts, trying to stop the Flight 93 Memorial Project from stamping a giant Mecca-oriented crescent on the graves our murdered heroes: A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a mihrab, and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. (Some mihrabs are pointed arch shape, but the archetypical mihrab is crescent shaped.) The Crescent of Embrace memorial is actually a terrorist memorial mosque, replete with a full complement of typical mosque features, like the minaret-like Tower of Voices that has an Islamic shaped crescent on top and turns out to be a year-round accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial. Outcry over the apparent Islamic symbolism forced the Park Service to make changes. They promised that they would remove the Islamic symbol shapes, but they never did. They call it a broken circle now, but the circle is broken in the exact same places as before. The unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is still a giant Islamic-shaped crescent, still pointing to Mecca. To join our blogbursts, just send your blog's url.

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False AP report: Obama did NOT say that Iran must

http://www.errortheory.blogspot.com/
Obama's comments were mushy, yes, but at least he said the most important thing, according to AP:

He said it's up to Iran to determine its own leaders but that the country must respect voters' choice.

Why then have reputable people continued to pass harsh judgment? And why would AP paraphrase what would have been Obama’s key statement? Turns out Obama said no such thing. What he actually said is that the VOICES of the Iranian people should be heard and respected, not their votes:

And particularly to the youth of Iran, I want them to know that we in the United States do not want to make any decisions for the Iranians, but we do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected.

This is consistent with the rest of Obama's remarks. He never said a word about respecting votes. Obama did mention "the democratic process," but far from saying anything about this process having to meet any standards of integrity, he instead implied strongly that he will accept whatever result the "process" followed by the Mullahs produces:

I want to start off by being very clear that it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be; that we respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran, which sometimes the United States can be a handy political football...

Democracy means that Iranian sovereignty lies with the Iranian people and that a regime that rigs an election is NOT sovereign. Yet Obama is explicit that he will continue to treat the mullahs as the Iranian sovereign no matter how they judge the election. He even goes so far as to suggest that the only reason he is bothering to comment on the competing claim to sovereignty at all is because it would be unseemly for him not to:

We will continue to pursue a tough, direct dialogue between our two countries, and we’ll see where it takes us. But even as we do so, I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we’ve seen on the television over the last few days.

The only operative concerns that he mentions are for: "free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent." When he talks about the "democratic process" going forward, all he urges is that the process be peaceful and that dissent be allowed. He says nothing about the process being honest:

...there appears to be a sense on the part of people who were so hopeful and so engaged and so committed to democracy who now feel betrayed. And I think it’s important that, moving forward, whatever investigations take place are done in a way that is not resulting in bloodshed and is not resulting in people being stifled in expressing their views.

It is no accident that Obama ended with the statement that AP paraphrased so egregiously (equating his call for bloodless suppression with a demand for legitimate elections). This was his theme throughout. He views the honesty of Iran's democratic process as something to be judged by the mullahs, who he clearly accepts to be the sovereign power, regardless of the merits of competing claims. AP covers its tracks, just like they did with the Flight 93 memorial AP's fraudulent report about Obama demanding respect for voters' choice was the primary print report on Obama's comments. Now that it has already misled millions of people, AP has covered its tracks by filing an update that overwrites the errant statement. This is what AP does when it gets caught putting out misinformation. To avoid issuing a correction, they flush the misleading story down the memory hole by using the same url for a completely different story. (Google only finds AP's original article still posted at Fox News.) AP did the same thing last year after it was taken to task for failing to check the most basic facts in a story about the controversy over possible Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial. Ramesh Santanam reported a number of conflicting factual assertions, like the 44 blocks:

Opponents also claim there is a plan to have 44 glass blocks, for the 40 victims and four hijackers, in the design. "That's an absolute, unequivocal fabrication that is being portrayed as fact," said Edward Felt's brother, Gordon Felt, president of Families of Flight 93. "It's misleading and helps drive the conspiracy theory."

When it was pointed out that Santanam could have found the four extra blocks just by opening up the design drawings and counting, AP quickly filed a completely different story (about fundraising for the memorial), under the same url. It's not that there is anything inherently wrong with AP using subject feeds that automatically update with their latest offering. It is that AP is systematically using this system to dodge corrections. This is actually their official policy:

For corrections on live, online stories, we overwrite the previous version. We send separate corrective stories online as warranted.

Except AP virtually never issue corrective stories, for the simple reason that AP has no established correction procedure. They just do the overwrite thing and say "too bad." Well this time the overwrite thing is not good enough. Demand a corrective story about AP's false paraphrase of Obama's words Associated Press obviously understands the importance of Obama saying that Iran must respect voters' choice or they wouldn't have bothered to pretend that he said it when he didn't. They don't just fail to mention Obama's glaring omission on this crucial point, but actually tell the public via false paraphrase that he did say what he glaringly omitted. This cannot stand. Faced with our new president's key statement on a historic crisis, AP reports a photo negative of what Obama actually said. There may be no established procedure for AP corrections, but anyone can still send a pre-written email to AP CEO Tom Curley, Chairman Burl Osborne, Editor Kathleen Carroll, the reporters who worked on the story (the egregious Jennifer Loven, along with Anne Gearan and Robert Burns), plus a smattering of other AP editors and bureaucrats. Who knows. There may even be a limit to how disingenuous some of these people are willing to be. To join our blogbursts, just send your blog's url.

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In Memory of Stephen Tyrone Johns

By Findalis

Hat tip to Simply Jews


A week ago a warm, loving, gentle man was gunned down by a sick nut case who could not bear the fact that all people as equal.

Stephen Tyrone Johns never held public office, never gave away a fortune to charity, and never won American Idol.

He was just an average Joe, trying to earn a living. A family man with small children.

Stewphen Johns has been described as one of the nicest men who worked there. He even held the door open for the killer when he saw the 88 year old man trying to enter and held the door open for him.

That was the type of man Stephen Johns was. Caring more about others than himself.

The Washington Branch of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) has set up a Memorial Fund for the Johns Family:

The American Jewish Committee's Washington, D.C. chapter has set up a memorial fund to benefit the family of Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns, who was killed Wednesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The organization said it will soon have a place on its Web site where one can contribute, but those who want to donate immediately should send checks made out to the American Jewish Committee, with "Holocaust Museum Memorial Fund" in the memo line, to:

American Jewish Committee, Washington Chapter

C/O Melanie Maron

1156 15th Street, NW, Suite 1201

Washington DC 20005

One hundred percent of the contribution will go to the Johns family.

A Facebook page has also been set up.

Flowers wilt and die, the Memorial Fund will last for years to help his family cope with his loss.

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