Biased Media
Breitbart Responds to Piers Morgan Interview, plus, Occupy Wall Street Commentary
Girl Scouts Pointed to Left-Wing Liberal Media
Gas Prices Under Obama ~ Media Silent
BREAKING NEWS: Intimidating the Anti-AGW Bloggers
From What’s Up With That
The first blogger to break the Climategate2 story has had a visit from the police and has had his computers seized. Tallbloke’s Talkshop first reported on CG2 due to the timing of the release being overnight in the USA. Today he was raided by six UK police (Norfolk Constabulary and Metropolitan police) and several of his computers were seized as evidence.
From the Guardian:
Police officers investigating the theft of thousands of private emails between climate scientists from a University of East Anglia server in 2009 have seized computer equipment belonging to a web content editor based at the University of Leeds.
On Wednesday, detectives from Norfolk Constabulary entered the home of Roger Tattersall, who writes a climate sceptic blog under the pseudonym TallBloke, and took away two laptops and a broadband router. A police spokeswoman confirmed on Thursday that Norfolk Constabulary had “executed a search warrant in West Yorkshire and seized computers”. She added: “No one was arrested. Investigations into the [UEA] data breach and publication [online of emails] continues. This is one line of enquiry in a Norfolk constabulary investigation which started in 2009.”
Tattersall posted his own account of the police search on his blog: “An Englishman’s home is his castle they say. Not when six detectives from the Metropolitan police, the Norfolk constabulary and the computer crime division arrive on your doorstep with a warrant to search it though … They ended up settling for two laptops and an ADSL broadband router … I got the feeling something was on the go last night when WordPress [the internet host for his blog] forwarded a notice from the US Department of Justice.”
[….]
Last month, Tattersall’s blog, as well as at least four other blogs popular with climate sceptics, received a comment from a user called “FOIA” providing a link to a Russian server hosting a compressed folder containing more than 5,000 emails exchanged between climate scientists, along with a short message setting out the perpetrator’s motives. The folder also contained an encrypted subfolder containing a further 220,000 emails. It was the second time such a release had occurred.
In November 2009, thousands of emails were released in a similar manner on the eve the Copenhagen climate summit. The episode prompted a series of inquiries into the working practices of climate scientists. Although these were critical of the scientists’ handling of Freedom of Information Act requests and lack of openness, they did not find fault with the climate change science they had produced.
Both Tattersall and a US-based climate sceptic blogger known as Jeff Id said they had received a “formal request” via the blogging platform WordPress from the US Department of Justice’s criminal division, dated 9 December, to preserve “all stored communications, records, and other evidence in your possession” related to their own blogs as well as to Climate Audit, a climate sceptic blog run by a Canadian mining consultant called Steve McIntyre.
The point of this is not to catch the leaker, it’s to intimidate bloggers…. this is aimed at intimidating bloggers rather than catching the climategate leaker…. This has nothing at all to do with finding a hypothetical hackert Jo Nova makes a great point — highlighted — from the Washington Examiner has this story:What This Is Really About
Tallbloke’s computers were confiscated by police today, allegedly in the search for the climategate leaker. But it’s obvious that there won’t be any clues left on Tallbloke’s computer (it would have no record of comments dropped onto wordpress.com, a US service). See Watts Up.
The point of this is not to catch the leaker, it’s to intimidate bloggers.
Jeff ID writes: Tallbloke a fellow recipient blog of the climategate emails, and linked on the right, was raided today in what seems to be a coordinated effort by Metropolitan Police, the Norfolk Constabulary and the Computer Crime division and the U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division. His home was raided and computers were taken for ‘examination’.
They don’t really want to catch the leaker, because a whistleblower is protected by UK legislation. The proof that this is aimed at intimidating bloggers rather than catching the climategate leaker is the coordinated and pointless US dept of Justice action through wordpress. To wit:
Both Tallbloke and JeffID received “the following notification from the U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division and forwarded by Ryan at WordPress. ClimateAudit is also mentioned yet I’m not certain that Steve Received notice. It seems that the larger paid blogs may not have received any notice. On pdf –WordPress Preservation Request-1“
The notification apparently asks them not to make the information public or else... they may terminate their wordpress account.
This has nothing at all to do with finding a hypothetical hacker.
How would anyone feel knowing that agents may turn up at their home, take all their computers, phones, routers and records, and have a copy of all their emails, their tax records, letters to friends, music, photos, information about family and friends, and their passwords?
The inconvenience of living without their computer, software and everything else would cost potentially thousands but worse, for someone who values their privacy, just the knowledge that so much personal information was in the hands of strangers would be unsettling.
Furthermore, there’s the risk that a single malicious person in the government could “leak” the emails, photos, or letters, medical records and spread them on the internet. These are home offices, so everything is on the computer. It would only take one agent — someone thinking it was “only fair” to release all that information. There’s a perverse logic that though the climategate leaker carefully removed personal emails, and was releasing work related information from a work account, it was somehow “just” to release irrelevant personal information from the accounts of volunteers.
If the establishment was really in the mood to send a signal that blogging is a risky business, what’s next — Nixon style tax audits?
See also Tall Bloke & JeffID
Collateral Murder Deconstructed
(Best investigation done on this incident linked via above graphic)
The below video supposedly showing U.S. military Apache helicopter pilots killing innocent persons in 2007 (Iraq) elicited comments from me a while ago. It has come up again in discussion and this time I will post it here at RPT in order to reference it in the future.
Conservative Refocus News Blog has this about the above video:
….However, the Web site does not slow down the video to show that at least one man in that group was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a clearly visible weapon that runs nearly two-thirds the length of his body.
WikiLeaks also does not point out that at least one man was carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. He is seen swinging the weapon below his waist while standing next to the man holding the RPG.
“It gives you a limited perspective,” said Capt. Jack Hanzlik, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command. “The video only tells you a portion of the activity that was happening that day. Just from watching that video, people cannot understand the complex battles that occurred. You are seeing only a very narrow picture of the events.”
Hanzlik said images gathered during a military investigation of the incident show multiple weapons around the dead bodies in the courtyard, including at least three RPGs.
“Our forces were engaged in combat all that day with individuals that fit the description of the men in that video. Their age, their weapons, and the fact that they were within the distance of the forces that had been engaged made it apparent these guys were potentially a threat,” Hanzlik said.
Military officials have also pointed out that the men in the video are the only people visible on those streets. That indicated something was going on and that these individuals still felt they could walk freely, one official told Fox News.
Julian Assange, a WikiLeaks editor, [the guy who leaked the video] acknowledged to Fox News in an interview Tuesday evening that “it’s likely some of the individuals seen in the video were carrying weapons.”….
This frame grab image, taken from a video posted at Wikileaks.org, shows a group of men in the streets of the New Baghdad with weapons just prior to being fired upon by a U.S. Army Apache helicopter July 12, 2007. (FNC)“The watching helicopter crews requested permission to engage, stating “…looks like [the men] possibly uh picking up bodies and weapons” from the scene,[31] and upon receiving permission opened fire on the van and its occupants.[18][24][30] Two children sitting in the front seat were wounded but survived.[18][24][30] Chmagh was killed[18][24][30] along with the father of the children.[32]“ (Wiki)
Some good audio of Julian Assange can be found at Science and Technology’s post titled, The Internet Springs a Leak:
…That may be, but some critics say Wikileak’s posting of some documents in and of itself may be in error.
“To my way of thinking, their approach is quite wrong,” says Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy and publisher of the Secrecy News blog. “Not every act of editorial judgment is censorship, and not every act of withholding information is censorship.”
[….]
Aftergood has plenty of experience receiving, vetting, and publishing secrets. He has praise for Wikileak’s posting of the Baghdad video. “It’s useful for all of us to be reminded from time to time that war is genuinely, unspeakably horrible. And I think this video did the service of reminding all of us of that.”
But Aftergood says, “There are also problems with the video and the way it was released.” He says the video appears to show the presence of weapons such as a rocket propelled grenade (RPG), something not noted in the Wikileaks on-screen graphics. Assange says the video was classified, a claim Aftergood cannot verify. And the titling of the video itself – Wikileaks calls it “Collateral Murder” – is something Aftergood calls “a heavy-handed, propagandistic exercise.”
Just another example of weapons found at the scene as viewed from the helicopter as well as on the ground investigators:
View from the ground:
View From the Apache:
So, all being said, this video making new rounds on FaceBook is a big flop for the anti-military crowd.
The Media`s Bias Gives Democratic Candiddates an 8-to-10% Advantage in the Poles
Whitehouse Shooter Spent Time In Occupy ~ Video of Occupy San Diego Holds Vigil for Him
Could you imaging the press if he had spent time in a Tea Party?
From BigGovernment via LR:
In a nearly thousand-word article written about the arrest and capture of 21-year-old Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, a man suspected of shooting at the White House, you’ll have to read through at least six paragraphs before you get to what should be the most explosive part:
Late on Friday, the police had searched the Occupy DC protest camp, on McPherson Square just blocks from the White House, after reports that the suspect might have spent time there. Protesters there said on Wednesday that the police had been through their encampment several times since then, showing around a photograph of Mr. Ortega.
Yes, that’s right, our suspected shooter apparently spent time with Occupy.
But the memo has obviously gone out throughout the entire journOlist community that this connection must be played down to where it hardly registers at all.
Jared Loughner never once attended a Tea Party, nor did he read Tea Party literature, or subscribe to Tea Party ideas.
Nevertheless, within 24 hours the media elected him to be Chairman Emeritus of the Tea Party movement.
A guy shoots at the White House, and guess what? He’s with the Occupy movement.
And let’s not forgot how Sarah Palin was figuratively lynched by the media for the crimes Loughner’s been charged with after it was discovered her campaign put targets on a map that, uhm, Loughner had never seen.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the media should treat Occupy like they did Palin and the Tea Party during the Gabrielle Giffords tragedy. Two abominations don’t make a right. But we all know how this story would be playing out right now if the suspect were a Tea Partier. And the worst of it is that we’ll probably never be told the truth.
Racist Democrats
Water Bottle “Health” Myths ~ Dispelling Urban Legends RPT Style
I am importing this from my old blog as well as updating the information herein based on information received by my youngest son from a teacher at his high school. This isn’t a “dig” directed at the teacher, rather, this is a good opportunity to deal with just a small aspect of things believed to be true when they are in fact, not. Something that afflicts us all! I also deal with a myth regarding plastics at a post correcting some information used by a local pastor in regards to the “great garbage patch/island” floating in the ocean. A fun adventure into other eco-myths.
Science, not politics, should drive California regs on BPA
…world regulators are in agreement: BPA is safe when used as regulated. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, European Food Safety Authority, Health Canada and the World Health Organization have found that people excrete any BPA molecules that migrate into food from the cans. BPA does not stay in the body and cause harm.
Despite this global consensus, a California committee claimed that BPA could cause reproductive harms and should come with warnings. FDA’s chief science officer, Dr. Luciana Borio, took the unusual step of urging California not to do so. Borio said that the FDA released in December “an extensive, rigorous and systematic four-year assessment” of BPA that concluded that science does “not support BPA as a reproductive toxicant.”
Warnings of false risks, whether about GMOs, BPA or other products, can be as harmful as failing to warn of actual risks. It is not better to be safe than sorry. The purpose of requiring warnings is to help people make smart choices. If products contain warnings of risks that are not real, people may make decisions against their best interests.
Why scare people into avoiding products that provide important benefits? For example, if companies forgo BPA, they may have to sell products with higher health risks or use chemicals that are not proven, less well-known or more costly….
Here is the import/update:
I have worked at Whole Foods long enough to hear many of the “health myths” that typically float through the customer base there. One of these myths about health and product is found in the scare about plastic water bottles. It started in an email referencing a masters thesis by a student at the University of Idaho. Skeptoid writes this about the study:
Most famously, a 2001 study by the University of Idaho found that reuse of plastic water bottles does release risky levels of diethylhexyl adipate (DEHA) into the water, which is potentially carcinogenic. This study was widely reported by the popular media and largely touched off the chain emails and most of the current perceived controversy. But is it true? No. Such a paper was written, but it was not a formal study. It was, in fact, merely the master’s thesis of one student. It was not subjected to any peer review, and cannot accurately be characterized as a study performed by the university. It does not represent any position held by the University of Idaho. And unfortunately, it was not well performed research. DEHA is not classified by the FDA as a carcinogen, but more importantly, DEHA is not used in the type of plastic water bottles that the student evaluated. But it is used in many other plastics, and is present in a lab setting. “For this reason”, concluded the International Bottled Water Association (which is, granted, not a very objective source), “the student’s detection is likely to have been the result of inadvertent lab contamination.” The FDA requires a higher level of scrutiny than that applied by the student writing his paper. DEHA is actually approved for food contact applications, but the fact that it’s not present in the type of plastic that was studied, discredits the entire paper.
The media, according to Snopes, ran with the story even though there was no peer reviews of the students work. They have this part of the myth as false. Another worth-while article to read is on my Carol Rees Parrish, R.D., M.S., entitled, “Bottled Water Myths: Separating Fact from Fiction.” In it it is pointed out that,
Based on the evidence available to date, it appears the true health risks (if any) related to drinking commercially manufactured bottled water or water in refillable plastic bottles may or may not come from the plastic itself. Further study is warranted to determine if poly carbonate plastics can cause harm to humans. Consumers should focus more on the quality of the drinking water, particularly from a microbe perspective as this point is indisputable, rather than chemicals leaching from the container.
One of the organizations implicated as supporting the health risks by bottled water release this statement in their Public Health News Center bulletin:
The Internet is flooded with messages warning against freezing water in plastic bottles or cooking with plastics in the microwave oven. These messages, frequently titled “Johns Hopkins Cancer News” or “Johns Hopkins Cancer Update,” are falsely attributed to Johns Hopkins and we do not endorse their content. Freezing water does not cause the release of chemicals from plastic bottles.
“Email Hoax Regarding Freezing Water Bottles and Microwave Cooking,” John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
In the section entitled “Q&A: Bisphenol A and Plastics,” from the John Hopkins website, this nugget is found in a sea on useful information:
Most single-use water bottles sold in the United States are made from BPA-free plastic, but some reusable containers are made from plastic containing BPA. Given a choice, a product absent of BPA should be considered. It is a good idea to bring water with you for long car trips and activities like sports and hiking. Since these water supplies are likely to be in hot vehicles and in the hot sun, BPA-free containers should be considered. Remember to clean reusable bottles between uses and let them dry upside down so they are ready the next time you need them.
And the Sydney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center links the above pages as responses to the supposed publishing of studies by John Hopkins supporting these claims. The only problem is that they have not published such papers: “Another hoax email that has been circulating since 2004 regarding plastic containers, bottles, wrap claiming that heat releases dioxins which cause cancer also was not published by Johns Hopkins” (source). Like many other areas in life, on needs to find out “where the beef is” in regards to separating myth from fact. A good 4-and-a-half minute video that deals with many aspects of this myth is dealt with by Dr. Joe Schwarcz, author of Brain Fuel: 199 Mind-Expanding Inquiries into the Science of Everyday Life:
Even author of Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It, Elizabeth Royte, mentioned in an interview that this is a myth of grand proportions. (You can hear this interview dated 1-22-09 on the Dennis Prager show.) There are much better reasons to stop using water bottles than hocus-pocus… in the interview she even seemingly convinced Dennis of this. Again, the folks at Johns Hopkins sat down with Dr. Rolf Haden, assistant professor at Department of Environmental Health Sciences and the Center for Water and Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who dispelled the myth saying, “This is an urban legend. There are no dioxins in plastics. In addition, freezing actually works against the release of chemicals.” The main reason one would not want to reuse water bottles is that bacteria will grow in the hard to wash bottles, if you do reuse them a time or two, vinegar or baking soda would be recommended.
Another article bullet points some “healthy” information for the consumer of urban legends to consider:
✦ Bottled water regulation is at least as stringent as tap water regulation. Under federal law the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must pass bottled water regulations that are “no less stringent” than Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations. The law does not allow the FDA to set standards that produce a lower quality product. As a result, FDA regulations mirror EPA regulations very closely and are more stringent in some respects because FDA applies additional food, packaging, and labeling regulations.
✦ Bottled water is substantially different from tap. About 75 percent of bottled water is from sources other than municipal systems such as springs or underground sources. Much of the bottled municipal water undergoes additional purification treatments to produce a higher quality product that must meet FDA bottled water quality standards, packaging, and labeling mandates. In terms of safety, tap water has more documented health-related case reports compared to bottled water. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends bottled water for individuals with compromised immune systems to reduce the risks associated with tap water.
✦ Bottled water containers are a tiny fraction of the solid waste stream. Many people have turned to bottled water to replace other portable drinks containing sugar and calories, producing little increase in total waste. In any case, single-serving plastic water bottles amount to just 0.3 percent of the nation’s solid waste. Bottles used in water coolers are recycled at high rates and have even less impact on landfill waste. Taxing and banning either type of container will not matter much in terms of overall waste.
✦ Plastic bottles are safe for consumers. The chemicals which environmental activists suggest are a problem are not even used in the PET plastic used for single-serving water bottles. Bisphenol A, a chemical found in large five-gallon water cooler jugs and other food containers exists at such low trace levels that there have been no reported health problems and the FDA, along with several scientific organizations around the world, have not found any problem with this substance.
Here is a great 20/20 John Stossel presentation:
Re-Posted Because it Is Lost (Red Eye Exposes Tea Party Race-Baiting)
Correcting A Media/Pop Culture Narrative on Newt Gingrich ~ Plus: C-SPAN Flashback
✦ First and foremost: Newt’s wife he divorced in the 80’s is ALIVE! She did not die!
Here is a portion of a larger post by Jackie Gingrich Cushman:
As for my parents’ divorce, I can remember when they told me.
It was the spring of 1980.
I was 13 years old, and we were about to leave Fairfax, Va., and drive to Carrollton, Ga., for the summer. My parents told my sister and me that they were getting a divorce as our family of four sat around the kitchen table of our ranch home.
Soon afterward, my mom, sister and I got into our light-blue Chevrolet Impala and drove back to Carrollton.
Later that summer, Mom went to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta for surgery to remove a tumor. While she was there, Dad took my sister and me to see her.
It is this visit that has turned into the infamous hospital visit about which many untruths have been told. I won’t repeat them. You can look them up online if you are interested in untruths. But here’s what happened:
My mother and father were already in the process of getting a divorce, which she requested.
Dad took my sister and me to the hospital to see our mother.
She had undergone surgery the day before to remove a tumor.
The tumor was benign.