‘Not Evil, Just Wrong’: What’s really at stake with global warming
Point of View By CHARLES COLSON
BreakPoint October 15, 2009
Global warming is a fact of life. Not a fact in a scientific sense. Far from it. But a fact in that it is an issue—an issue that will shape public policy, international relations, and the economies of the world for decades to come.
An eye-opening documentary called Not Evil, Just Wrong: The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria is being released this week by the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation—an outfit I endorse.
I dare say the film will be controversial because it tackles head on the sacred cows of the man-made global warming crowd.
The film points out that the British High Court ruled in a lawsuit that Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, “is scientifically flawed and has nine significant exaggerations and factual errors.” Among those exaggerations are the claims that sea levels could rise 20 feet by the end of the century, and that polar bears are disappearing because of global warming (in fact, they are not).
Not Evil, Just Wrong also presents a number of scientists and a founding member of the radical environmental organization Greenpeace, who are unafraid to challenge the chief scientific claims behind global warming.
Phi Beta Iota: In the interest of the public's appreciation for the current situation, below are three graphics illustrating the current political situation and issue-bias spread; followed by a list of books with one point: We the People are ready to take our country back from Wall Street and the craven Demopublicans that have sold us out. Joe Biden might possibly be the key to a non-violent restoration of the Constitution, the Republic, and a nation able to integrate strategy, integrity, and living within its means.
Paul Ray's Empty Middle
Paul Ray, co-author of The Cultural Creatives, is probably the finest pollster in America because he cuts deep into values rather than just positions.
With full credit to Michael Crane and his Political Junkies Handbook,which provided the original map of all the political factions (we added the art), the JPEG to the right illustrates the death of democracy at the hands of the two-party tyranny acting Of, By, and For the Banks–the special interests. Every Member now serving, with a tiny handful of exceptions, is CORRUPT, both financially, and in terms of “party line” discipline betraying their constituencies, and in terms of abdicating their Article 1 responsibilities for balancing the power of the Executive. America is not a democracy in Helsinki Accord terms–it is a quasi-fascist corporate state in which the White House is theater, policy is not based on reality, and the budget has been bankrupted several times over because Goldman Sachs has been given free rein over the Treasury for the last four Administrations.
Robert Baer, a former CIA field operative says, “The notion that we're in Afghanistan to make our country safer is just complete bullshit… what it's doing is causing us greater danger, no question about it. Because the more we fight in Afghanistan, the more the conflict is pushed across the border into Pakistan, the more we destabilize Pakistan, the more likely it is that a fundamentalist government will take over the army — and we'll have Al-Qaeda like groups with nuclear weapons.”
Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops. . . . . . .
Full Story Online
Why Joe Biden Should Resign
Citing a Newsweek story: “Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?” Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. “And how much will we spend on Pakistan?” Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. “Well, by my calculations that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?” The White House Situation Room fell silent.
The central problem of our time is the failure of human organization–its failure to scale, to adapt, to assimilate.
We believe the failure stems directly from a rejection of diversity and a falsification of feedback loops–the absence of integrity.
We've come to the conclusion that the discord between politics and intelligence is contrived–there is no inherent opposition between politics (choice of best path for all) and intelligence (presentation of best achievable truth for all) provided ONE condition is met: integrity among the majority of individuals engaged in each.
The President of the United States recently told the United Nations that “global warming” poses a threat to national security and may engender conflicts as populations are displaced by rising sea levels, droughts, floods, storms etc. etc. etc. However, it is now clear that there is no basis for the notion that the barely-detectable human influence on the climate is likely to prove a threat to climate, still less to national security.
The first principle to which any national security advisor must adhere is that of objective truth. Though he must have an understanding of politics, he is not a politician: he is a truth-bearer. Therefore, he begins by narrowing down the issue to a single, central question whose answer determines whether the suggested threat is real. He then tries to find the truthful answer to that question, and draws his conclusion from that. [Emphasis added.]
Virtually all of Israel is now speaking in one voice against the Goldstone report, against any attempt to blame us over the war in Gaza. We've honed our message to a sharp point and, inspired by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's performance at the UN, we're delivering it with just the right tone of outrage:
How dare anyone deny us the right to self-defense! How dare anyone deny us the right to fight back against terrorism!
Very nice. Puts everyone else on the defensive. The right to self-defense is up there with motherhood and apple pie – who's going to come out against it, especially for us, for Israel, for the Jews, for the people of the Holocaust?
The right to self-defense – perfect.
But I'd like to ask: Do the Palestinians also have the right to self-defense?
We probably wouldn't admit it out loud, but in our heads we would say – again, in one voice – “No!”
This is the Israeli notion of a fair deal: We're entitled to do whatever the hell we want to the Palestinians because, by definition, whatever we do to them is self-defense. They, however, are not entitled to lift a finger against us because, by definition, whatever they do to us is terrorism.
We pay careful attention to the search terms used by those who visit us, and have noticed a very healthy focus on strategy and on secrecy. The two are incompatible.
Strategy, by its inherent nature, must be holistic, transparent, and sustainable. It demands broad collaboration and the broadest possible information-sharing and sense-making.
Secrecy, by its very nature, is reductionist, completely opaque, and generally not sustainable beyond the moment. It restricts collaboration, excludes key stake-holders with relevant information, and does not share effectively.
Michael Herman's book on Intelligence in Peace and Waris the best available review of why intelligence at the strategic level should not be secret.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan's book on Secrecyremains one of the best articulations of the hidden costs of secrecy to a Republic.
