Human Rights in China

Population Control Continues To Claim Victims

By Father John Flynn, LC

ROME, JUNE 7, 2009 (Zenit.org).- China’s human rights record was once more the focus of attention as June 4 marked the 20th anniversary of the bloody suppression of pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

The mainstream media focused on civil and political rights, but the denial of the right of families to choose how many children they want continues to oppress many Chinese.

On May 7, LifeNews.com published a report detailing the findings of an undercover investigation by Colin Mason in China.

The fines for having an illegal child are now three to five times the family’s income, LifeNews reported. Not surprisingly, when couples are faced with the prospect of such a fine, many consent to either abortion or sterilization.

According to Mason, in Guangxi province babies born outside the government’s limits are taken into custody by government officials, who hold the infants until the parents are able to pay the huge fines.

On Feb. 15 the London-based Times newspaper reported that the government’s severe restrictions are provoking widespread protests.

According to the report, Chinese media and Internet commentators are breaking restrictions to report birth control abuses.

Among the abuses, the Times mentioned that women who already have one child face regular pregnancy tests, as well as pressure to be sterilized. The means used to oblige women range from financial penalties to the threat of being sacked from their jobs.

Forced abortion

One case the Times mentioned was that of Zhang Linla, who committed the error of becoming pregnant when she had already given birth to a a daughter. Just six days before the date she was due to give birth she was subjected to a forced abortion.

The article mentioned other examples involving forced sterilizations and live babies being left to die.

On Nov. 17 the Christian Post Web site reported on the case of Arzigul Tursun, a Muslim Uyghur woman who faced the threat of a forced abortion. At the time of the article she was more than six months pregnant and was being pressured by authorities to abort as she already had two children.

On Oct. 5 the South China Morning Post newspaper published a lengthy article chronicling the coercive measures faced by couples not obeying the strict family planning laws.

The article detailed the invasive nature of restrictions on families. Every married couple has to answer to the National Population and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC). Every village and every street in the cities are monitored by a family planning clinic controlled by the NPFPC.

According to the newspaper, there are officially 650,000 people employed to enforce the family planning laws. However, unofficial estimates say the real number is more than a million.

The South China Morning Post gave the example of Jin Yani, who was subjected to a forced abortion due to her contravention of the strict limits. The abortion was carried out in such a brutal manner that she was in danger of death and subsequently spent 44 days in hospital. As a result of what happened, she will never be able to conceive again.

According to the article, authorities are able to act without scrutiny in the rural areas and they employ brutal methods, including the destruction of houses and forced sterilizations.

The newspaper cited Mark Allison, East Asia researcher for Amnesty International, who said that forced abortions remain common.

Penalties

On May 22 the South China Morning Post reported that government authorities have renewed their determination to enforce strict family planning limits. Among the recent measures announced are the free distribution of contraceptives to migrant workers, and increased penalties for extra children.

Revised family planning regulations released by the State Council announced that fines levied on migrant workers who violated the one-child policy would be assessed based on what they could earn in the place they are working, rather than the income levels of their hometowns.

Setting the fine for breaking the family planning rule in the city where they are living in will result in higher penalties.

Incentives to follow official restrictions include extra holidays for those who wait until they are older to give birth, or who voluntarily undergo sterilization. Compliant couples will also receive preferential treatment from authorities when it comes to running their own businesses or receiving social relief.

Such restrictions go against what the majority of Chinese women want, as even government officials admit. According to a Jan. 16 report by the BBC, Chinese family planning officials say their research shows that 70% of women want to have two or more babies.

According to the BBC, the research was conducted in 2006, but has only been released now. Most women -- 83% -- want a son and a daughter, according to the survey.

Missing girls

Apart from the abuses committed by authorities, another grave problem is a dangerous gap in the numbers of boys and girls being born. A combination of the traditional preference for having at least one male child, plus the restrictions on births, means that millions of baby girls have been aborted.

According to an April 10 report by the Associated Press, the latest data reveals that China has 32 million more young men than young women.

The estimate comes from a report published in the British Medical Journal. Moreover, the imbalance is expected to worsen in coming years.

The study found that China has 119 male births for every 100 girls, compared with 107 to 100 for industrialized countries.

The study found that the biggest boy-girl imbalance is in the 1- to 4-year-old group -- meaning that China will have to face the effects of that when those children reach reproductive age in 15 to 20 years.

Even though the government has banned the use of ultrasound tests to determine the sex of a fetus, they are still commonly done.

The consequences of a girl shortage are already being experienced, as the Sunday Times reported May 31. The London-based newspaper chronicled the increasing level of kidnappings of young girls. The girls are kidnapped to eventually be brides for men in regions where there is a severe shortage of girls being born.

The article said that the public security ministry admits to between 2,000 and 3,000 children and young women being kidnapped each year, but local media put the figure as high as 20,000.

A Web site established for parents to put up details of their missing children has information from more than 2,000 families. The hopes of resolving these kidnappings are, however, faint. After two years the site has had only resolved seven cases successfully.

Essential principles

The anniversary of Tiananmen comes shortly after the United Nations commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See's permanent observer at the U.N. offices in Geneva, addressed the subject of human rights in a speech delivered Dec. 12.

“By speaking of the right to life, of respect for the family, of marriage as the union between a man and a woman, of freedom of religion and conscience, of the limits of the authority of the State before fundamental values and rights, nothing new or revolutionary is said,” he commented.

Human rights are not just entitlement to privileges, the Vatican representative pointed out. Unfortunately in China and other countries basic rights regarding the family are still not respected, a situation crying out to be rectified.

American capitalism gone with a whimper

27.04.2009 Source: Pravda.Ru
URL: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-american_capitalism-0

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Stanislav Mishin

The article has been reprinted with the kind permission from the author and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina


© 1999-2009. «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru's editors.

The Clear and Cohesive Message of the International Conference on Climate Change

By Marc Sheppard

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses 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.” -- from the Oregon Petition, signed by over 31,000 scientists

United by that conviction, over 800 scientists, economists, and policy makers arrived in New York City last Sunday to attend the Heartland Institute’s 2nd Annual International Conference on Climate Change. They came to talk a wide range of subjects, from climatology to energy policy, from computer climate models to cap-and-trade, from greenhouse gas (GHG) effects to solar irradiation. But most of all they came to help spread the word that the answer to the question posed by this year’s theme -- Global warming: Was it ever really a crisis? -- is a resounding NO.

Sunday’s keynote speakers wasted no time making that point. Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus scolded those whose alarmist opinions are driven by profits from writing and speaking fees, carbon trading and investments in non-carbon fuel products. And policy makers who blindly accept hyped Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publications as the final word in climate science. In truth, says Klaus, there is no fixed relationship between CO2 and temperatures, as clearly illustrated by the wavering heat trends of the 20th century, despite the steady rise in CO2.

Next, M.I.T’s Richard Lindzen explained that many scientists toe the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) line to “make their lives easier,” as underfunded scientists can write a single paper endorsing AGW and suddenly be inundated with offers. Even ambiguous or meaningless statements that can be easily spun are financially beneficial to scientists, so why complain about the spin? Ever wonder why you never stop hearing about studies finding GW responsible for everything from kidney stones to cannibalism? Explains Lindzen: It’s become standard that whatever you’re studying, include global warming’s effects in your proposal and you’ll get your funding.

Lindzen then dismissed climate models that alarmists depend on as they themselves depend entirely on warming positive feedback but, unlike nature, ignore the cooling effects of negative feedback. And rejected the warming alarmists alarm us about as so miniscule that there’s no need for any external forcing to achieve or explain it. In reality, said the world renowned atmospheric physicist, doubling or even tripling CO2 would have only marginal impacts on temperatures.

Both speakers masterfully set the stage for the days and sessions to come. What follows is just a sampling of the brilliance I encountered.

Roy Spencer echoed Lindzen’s position that negative feedbacks ultimately bring equilibrium to the energy balance, making sustained global warming a non-issue. David Douglass assured us that ocean and atmospheric heat will always work toward such balance as per conservation of energy laws. S. Fred Singer commented that a 2005 paper by Hansen et al claiming that Earth’s energy imbalance is proof of AGW was absurd.

Geologist and former astronaut Jack Schmidt inverted the IPCC position that burning fossil fuels increases atmospheric CO2, which in turn warms the planet. Slowly increasing temperatures from 1660 AD or so, said he, would increase CO2 and methane from land, land confined water, the biosphere and, mostly, the oceans. The vapor pressure of CO2 is temperature sensitive. So as a matter of established physics of gases, we’d expect atmospheric CO2 to increase as temperature increases. Therefore, he concludes, saying that CO2 causes heating is like saying “accidents cause speeding.”

Singer moderated a panel discussion thoroughly debunking a recent paper claiming that CO2 put into the atmosphere lasts thousands of years. Participant Douglass questioned the premise as “it has nothing to do with global warming as CO2 continues to rise but GW stopped after 1991.” But as Singer pointed out, alarmists will claim it proves that peak values reached in the next few years will determine climate for the next millennium.

And Christopher Essex nailed it: Their 1000 year forecast is remarkable – even groundhogs only predict 6 weeks ahead.


The Sun, The Seas and The Science

Astrophysicist Willie Soon proclaimed the sun-induced climate change theory alive and well. He believes that, while IPCC AR4 fraudulently disregarded Milankovich's theory of orbital influences on climate, the comings and goings of the ice ages may be controlled by changes in solar insolation at climatically sensitive latitudes. He displayed adjacent line graphs overlaying 20th Century arctic temperature anomalies with solar irradiance levels on one and atmospheric CO2 levels on the other. Whereas the former lined up almost perfectly, the latter wasn’t even close.

Jack Schmidt pointed out that the 1400 -1900 cold period known as the Little Ice Age corresponds to a cycling sequence of 3 deep minima of sunspot activity and was at its coldest during the last of these minima, the 70 year period of exceptionally few spots we now know as the Maunder Minimum. Dennis Avery reinforced his 1,500 year climate cycle argument and its implications for the current warming period. He told us that solar variations are linked to decade-lagging sea temperatures. What’s more, diminished sunspot activity since 2000 and Pacific Sea Surface cooling since 2008 predict a 20-30 year global cooling due to short term Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).

Don Easterbrook neatly tied variances in the PDO and another natural climate variability, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), to that of solar activity and, ultimately, temperatures. The geologist pointed out that while the IPCC predicted 1°F warming by 2011, there’s been none since 1998, and that the 1°F drop in 2008 was the largest global temperature change ever recorded. He too believes that the current PDO cool phase assures global cooling for as long as the next three decades.

Roy Spencer blamed the PDO for 75% of twentieth century warming. He provided a line graph plotting temperatures against the PDO and the correlation was quite remarkable. Weaker PDOs yielded warmer temperatures and the onset of stronger circulations cooled things down. As one might suspect -- Spencer’s graph depicted a decided cooling trend beginning in 2003.

ICECAP’s Joe D’Aleo also made an extremely compelling argument against the greenhouse effect and for the natural climate drivers of oceans, Sol, and yet another -- volcanoes. On D’Aleo’s graphs, PDO/AMO aligned well with USHCN temperatures over last century, as did stratospheric aerosol levels from volcanic eruptions, and total solar irradiance. He remarked that “all three show a cycle where the last few years look a lot like the 1960’s,” which immediately caught my attention. You see, just hours prior, I had been discussing NY weather with a British representative and had commented that this winter reminded me of those I experienced as a child in the 60’s.

Lord Monckton of Brenchley suggested that the positive feedback factor might actually be half what IPCC claims. Citing Soon’s work, he said temperatures have been plunging at the rate of 2°C per century over the last 7 years, and the reduction of Outgoing Longwave Radiation as observed by satellites is on an order of magnitude below what models predict:

“And Dick Lindzen says that’s game, set and match.”

The True Cost of Green Meddling

California Congressman Tom McClintock offered examples of just how global warming alarmism is damaging his state --- all in the form of radical construction blocking, agriculture crippling, resource wasting legislation the warm-mongers have gotten through to fight it. Here’s a beauty -- a homeowner can be fined $1000/day for refusal to cut down his trees if they block a neighbor’s solar panels, but also faces fines if he cuts them down or clears brush for fire preventive purposes. And Gov. Schwarzenegger – who just proposed the largest tax increase in history to make up for funds lost by his failed green policies -- wants Cal-E-Fornia to be “an example to the country.”

Bennie Peiser, founder and editor of the fabulous CCNet, explained the political backlash European greenies are experiencing. And it’s pretty bad -- Labor and Green parties are seeing the amalgamation of the recession and failed Kyoto-inspired energy policies driving their core voters away. Lawrence Solomon offered more examples of overseas carbon regulation disasters, declaring Kyoto the greatest single destroyer of the environment, especially in the third world.

And speaking of bad GHG accords, Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Chris Horner explained how liberals could sneak Kyoto II through the Senate by changing it from a treaty to an executive agreement. Treaties require a 2/3 Senate vote, and the Gore brigade knows damned well they’d never pull that one off. But with a little legislative sleight-of-hand, the vote required could be lowered to 3/5. And Horner warned in detail against an even slicker trick that would place it on the fast track, making it both amendment and filibuster proof – thereby requiring only 50% plus one.

Needless to say, the regressive tax increase which is Cap and Trade (CAT) was also a popular target.

CEI director Myron Ebell proclaimed John McCain’s loss last November to actually be good news, as McCain is the biggest supporter of CAT in the Senate and actually claims that energy rationing would be a net benefit to the economy. Ross Mckitrick blasted the idea of CAT systems with predetermined carbon caps as betraying a complete lack of faith in their design. If the goal is to force down carbon output, then a “truth-based” floating cap determined by temperature is called for. Suggesting we force down caps regardless of temperature response is a sign that they don’t believe their own rhetoric.

Dave Kreutzer warned that analytical models predict estimated aggregate losses to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $4.8 trillion and job losses in the manufacturing sector of nearly 3 million by 2029 if CAT were imposed under S. 2191. That’s over and above the million manufacturing job losses economists predict will occur even if we do nothing.

On Thursday, Easterbrook responded to a NY Times piece suggesting his positions are aligned with those of Obama’s science advisor -- John Holdren:

“[Holdren] wants carbon cap and trade that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to curb ‘global warming’ that the PDO shows isn’t going to happen in the next several decades (no matter what the cause). The PDO data shows conclusively that global cooling is going to continue for several decades, causing increasing demands of energy and resources (while population escalates), but if we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on cap and trade (as Holdren is pushing), we will have little left with which to handle the real problems of increasing demands on dwindling resources. Holdren’s path will lead to a real global catastrophe.”

And the losses will extend beyond the monetary. Professor Arthur Robinson, author of the afore-quoted Oregon petition, revealed the true reasons we import 30% of our energy, even though “one Palo Verde Nuclear Installation in each state results in $200 billion net export of energy.” Robinson says there are those who would prefer that 30% grow much larger, encouraging higher energy prices and ultimately – rationing. And quickly advised -- once we become victims of rationing in the west we lose our all of our freedoms, but energy deprivation in third world countries will lead to the loss of tens of millions of lives.

And Monckton took on another deadly green scheme as only his Lordship can:

“Their biofuel scam, a nasty by-product of their shoddy, senseless, failed, falsified, fraudulent ‘global warming’ bugaboo, has turned millions of acres of agricultural land from growing food for humans to growing fuel for automobiles. If we let them, they will carelessly kill tens of millions more by pursuing Osamabamarama’s stated ambition of shutting down nine-tenths of the economies of the West and flinging us back to the Stone Age without even the right to light fires in our caves.”

Such, as Kreutzer so perfectly described it, is the true “cost of accomplishing nothing.”


Of Bad Scientists, Bad Data, and Bad Conclusions

Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist John Theon expressed his regret that former employee, James Hansen, “didn’t receive the attention from me that he should have.” What followed was a heartfelt denunciation that included the fact that Hansen’s 1988 announcement of “unprecedented global warming” came as a surprise and embarrassment to Theon, as it was not NASA’s position. He then cried foul over Hansen’s endorsement of John Kerry for president in 2004, particularly after receiving the Heinz Environment Award, a $250,000 prize honoring the late-husband of Kerry’s wife in 2001. He pointed out that a civil servant endorsing a political cause violated the Hatch Act, and that alone should be grounds for dismissal, which he has publically called for. Says Theon: “I think the man is sincere, but he is suffering from a bad case of megalomania.”

There were a number of problems with data collection methods discussed.

Tom Segalstad gave us a lesson in the dubious integrity of ice-core samples. The Norwegian geologist cited numerous problems with retrieval, sampling, and storage, all of which may contaminate results. Remember -- the accuracy of these figures, combined with temperature proxies such as dendrochronology (tree ring growth analysis) is crucial as they are used to plot past temperature/CO2 correlations.

WUWT’s Anthony Watts favored us once again with stories and photographs of misplaced Maximum-Minimum Temperature Systems (MMTS). He and his cohorts have photographed and analyzed 75% of the 1200 plus national weather stations, and the results range from bad to hysterically bad. One slide showed a station in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota where the thermometer was placed within feet of not one, but two air conditioning outlets. The fact this town reported temperature well above those of its neighbors didn’t seem to raise any red-flags with the good folks ate NOAA. So it’s not particularly shocking that only 11% of stations surveyed met the required Class I or Class II requirement of likely measurement error under 1°C.

Joe D’Aleo believes that surface data suffer from serious issues biasing them to the warm side, this due to station dropout, missing monthly data, and inadequate or nonexistent urban heat island effect (UHI) adjustment. Half of the warming since 1880 may be attributed to these measurement contaminations. In fact, Climate Audit’s Steve McIntyre said we don’t actually know that the 1998 was the warmest year of the millennium as minor variations in data version yield different results.

There was also much talk about response and adaptation.

Jack Schmidt believes that while we’re awaiting the collapse of the AGW scare, we should be preparing to deal with inevitable climate change, however unpredictable it may seem. We should recognize that production of our own domestic oil and gas, coal and nuclear resources buys us time to work these challenges and preserve our liberties and our national security. We should choose sustained R&D of potential energy sources, those with clear paths to commercialization rather than continue subsidies for premature production of flawed concepts.

Bob Carter stressed preparedness, warning that abrupt natural climate change is the dangerous hazard (both warming AND cooling) and demands a planned response, which must be assessed regionally. After all, climate hazards in the Gulf of Mexico are not the same as in Australia. Besides, says Bob, if hypothetical AGW actually materializes, well – we’re prepared for that too!

Meanwhile, Dennis Avery reminded us that history shows that warm times have been good times. During the Medieval Warm Period, world population doubled, crops flourished, there was less disease and no bubonic plague. Most of Europe’s castles and cathedrals as well as India’s most famous temples were built during that period. And that as polar bears date back 130,000 years, they’ve managed to adapt through many warming periods more severe than the current one.

So whether warmer or cooler, they’ll adapt again, as will the rest of the planet – including those self-interested homo sapiens.



The Message is Clear, Cohesive, and Catching On

Last Sunday, Klaus sparked a nervous laugh when he fretted continued alarmist mainstream acceptance with the words “last year’s speech didn’t help much.” But immediately following Klaus to the podium, Lindzen reminded the Czech and the audience at large that “we should never stop trying,” which was, of course, warmly received. And the next morning, Larry Solomon gave an inspiring example of why: Recent polls in Canada showed that those who believe in “consensus” fear global warming; those who have heard from skeptics even once do not. In fact, the dominant Canadian party that made carbon pricing a major issue just suffered a major defeat.

During Tuesday’s standing-O-rousing conference-closing speech, in which he marvelously referred to alarmists as “bed-wetting moaning Minnies of the Apocalyptic Traffic-Light Tendency -- those Greens too yellow to admit they’re really Reds,” Lord Monckton added:

“Every opinion poll--even those conducted by the bed-wetters themselves – shows that global public opinion is cooling as fast as the global climate. In one recent survey, ‘global warming’ came at the very bottom of a list of political and environmental concerns, immediately behind the need to clean up dog-poop on the streets. Why? Because dog-poop is a real environmental problem and ‘Global warming’ is not. The correct policy response to the non-problem of climate change is to have the courage to do nothing.”

And then emphasized unequivocally: “There is no climate crisis. There was no climate crisis. There will be no climate crisis.”

Before gaveling the momentous proceedings, Heartland’s own James Taylor offered further encouragement to those despondent over the uphill battle it’s been to promote climate realism in an environment of mass-media-driven hyper-alarmism. Public opinion is, avers Taylor, changing in our direction, and he cited specific polls and current events to support his optimism. And he credited talk radio, cable television, the internet, and blogs with providing information to the American public “whether the mass media wants them to have it or not.”

Yet I couldn’t help recalling something I heard the ever-wise John Sununu state during one of the Q&A sessions that morning, and I paraphrase: Everything we talk about here needs to be translated into something you can put on the 6 o’clock news or explain to your neighbor. He’s right, of course. Go ask a hype-victim what causes climate variations and he’ll reflexively snap “Carbon,” and that’s quite the simple concept to propagate. Now ask a climate realist, if you have the time and patience to sit through the response.

But leaving Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, I wondered whether it really mattered. After all, most believers don’t truly understand the workings of GHG theory, otherwise they’d surely question the influence of a trace gas. And our message may not be easily dumbed-down to a few words, but it is clear, nonetheless.

The very next day Gallup announced the results of a new poll finding that a record-high 41% of Americans now believe the seriousness of global warming is being exaggerated by “mainstream reporting.”

That’s up 11% in just three years -- despite our sometimes involute and ever media-mocked message.

Which lends undeniable assurance to Professor Lindzen’s keynote prediction that “we will eventually win against anthropogenic global warming alarm simply because we are right and they are wrong.”

Marc Sheppard is the editor of AT’s forthcoming Environment Thinker.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/the_clear_and_cohesive_message_1.html at June 04, 2009 - 04:33:16 PM EDT

"On Global Warming is it Harold Ambler or the Royal Society?"

Counterpoint to what I just posted...
Also from Huffington Post

When it comes to issues as important as global warming I find comfort in the Huffington Post ramblings of a rowing musician. Global warming is a lie you say? Well then NASA and the Royal Society be damned.

A new Huffington Post blogger named Harold Ambler has posted an unoriginal rehashing of the same old global warming denial talking points that we've seen over and over again for close to a decade now.

What's so newsworthy here is of course the venue.

Huffington Post has long been a place where this type of junk science has been debunked, not promoted.

I'm sure this little coup has the climate skeptics all giddy, because it definitely has thoughtful bloggers like Adam Siegel at Get Energy Now rightly ticked off:

Huffington Post published Harold Ambler's Mr Gore: Apology Accepted which is notable in its breadth and audacity of disinformation, truthiness, and simply wrong-headedness. Literally books and hundreds (actually, thousands) of scientific studies and analyses have been written that provide the substance to prove Ambler's words false. What is shameful, on top of this, is that this is not just the 'false' and misleading material, but its deceit in support of recklessly dangerous policy concepts that would hinder our ability to move forward to greater prosperity and a stronger American future.

The question for me is: who the heck is Harold Ambler?

And what makes Ambler such an authority on climate science to so confidently make the a claim as bold as global warming being a lie? By the looks of his various bios scattered around the internet it appears that Ambler's background in the area of climate science is non-existent, he is the author of an upcoming book on a rowing team at Brown University and a musician.

Such an outrageous claim as: "It [global warming] is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind," flies in the face of what the top scientific institutions in the world like NASA, the US Academy of Science and the Royal Society have been saying for years and its going to take a lot more than the ramblings of rowing guitarist to prove it.

I am hoping that Ambler's post was some type of technical glitch or editorial goof-up because it is this type of misinformation from wannabe scientists that are a major reason so many people are willing to pass over global warming as a concern they have to deal with.

For many people, especially now with the major worldwide economic problems we are all dealing with, there's enough worry in day-to-day life - putting food on the table, making mortgage payments, finding daycare - and global warming is something that most would naturally like to not have think about.

It's easy to put aside something as big as global warming if we have an excuse to do so and Ambler's post is just the thing for those people with more immediate concerns they have to deal with.

Even if it is just the rehashed misinformation of a rowing musician.

UPDATE:
Arianna Huffington has put out the following message:

Harold Ambler reached out to me about posting a critical piece on Al Gore and the environment. We are always open to posts that present opinions contrary to HuffPost's editorial view -- and have welcomed many conservative voices, such as David Frum, Tony Blankley, Michael Smerconish, Bob Barr, Joe Scarborough, Jim Talent, etc., to the site. We have featured also countless posts from the leading lights of the Green movement, including Robert Redford, Laurie David, Carl Pope, Van Jones, David Roberts, and many others -- and I myself have written extensively about the global warming crisis, and have been highly critical of those who refuse to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific evidence.

When Ambler sent his post, I forwarded it to one of our associate blog editors to evaluate, not having read it. I get literally hundreds of posts a week submitted like this and obviously can't read them all -- which is why we have an editorial process in place. The associate blog editor published the post. It was an error in judgment. I would not have posted it. Although HuffPost welcomes a vigorous debate on many subjects, I am a firm believer that there are not two sides to every issue, and that on some issues the jury is no longer out. The climate crisis is one of these issues.

(Via Dave Roberts at Gristmill.)

Wow - I expected just a bit more than a simple ad-hom attack against Ambler. Why is he wrong? What about his article was false?

"Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted" by Harold Ambler

found this article, it is interesting!

You are probably wondering whether President-elect Obama owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming. The answer is, not yet. There is one person, however, who does. You have probably guessed his name: Al Gore.

Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that "the science is in." Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.

What is wrong with the statement? A brief list:

1. First, the expression "climate change" itself is a redundancy, and contains a lie. Climate has always changed, and always will. There has been no stable period of climate during the Holocene, our own climatic era, which began with the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago. During the Holocene there have been numerous sub-periods with dramatically varied climate, such as the warm Holocene Optimum (7,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C., during which humanity began to flourish, and advance technologically), the warm Roman Optimum (200 B.C. to 400 A.D., a time of abundant crops that promoted the empire), the cold Dark Ages (400 A.D. to 900 A.D., during which the Nile River froze, major cities were abandoned, the Roman Empire fell apart, and pestilence and famine were widespread), the Medieval Warm Period (900 A.D. to 1300 A.D., during which agriculture flourished, wealth increased, and dozens of lavish examples of Gothic architecture were created), the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850, during much of which plague, crop failures, witch burnings, food riots -- and even revolutions, including the French Revolution -- were the rule of thumb), followed by our own time of relative warmth (1850 to present, during which population has increased, technology and medical advances have been astonishing, and agriculture has flourished).

So, no one needs to say the words "climate" and "change" in the same breath -- it is assumed, by anyone with any level of knowledge, that climate changes. That is the redundancy to which I alluded. The lie is the suggestion that climate has ever been stable. Mr. Gore has used a famously inaccurate graph, known as the "Mann Hockey Stick," created by the scientist Michael Mann, showing that the modern rise in temperatures is unprecedented, and that the dramatic changes in climate just described did not take place. They did. One last thought on the expression "climate change": It is a retreat from the earlier expression used by alarmists, "manmade global warming," which was more easily debunked. There are people in Mr. Gore's camp who now use instances of cold temperatures to prove the existence of "climate change," which is absurd, obscene, even.

2. Mr. Gore has gone so far to discourage debate on climate as to refer to those who question his simplistic view of the atmosphere as "flat-Earthers." This, too, is right on target, except for one tiny detail. It is exactly the opposite of the truth.

Indeed, it is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers. Mr. Gore states, ad nauseum, that carbon dioxide rules climate in frightening and unpredictable, and new, ways. When he shows the hockey stick graph of temperature and plots it against reconstructed C02 levels in An Inconvenient Truth, he says that the two clearly have an obvious correlation. "Their relationship is actually very complicated," he says, "but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others, and it is this: When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer." The word "complicated" here is among the most significant Mr. Gore has uttered on the subject of climate and is, at best, a deliberate act of obfuscation. Why? Because it turns out that there is an 800-year lag between temperature and carbon dioxide, unlike the sense conveyed by Mr. Gore's graph. You are probably wondering by now -- and if you are not, you should be -- which rises first, carbon dioxide or temperature. The answer? Temperature. In every case, the ice-core data shows that temperature rises precede rises in carbon dioxide by, on average, 800 years. In fact, the relationship is not "complicated." When the ocean-atmosphere system warms, the oceans discharge vast quantities of carbon dioxide in a process known as de-gassing. For this reason, warm and cold years show up on the Mauna Loa C02 measurements even in the short term. For instance, the post-Pinatubo-eruption year of 1993 shows the lowest C02 increase since measurements have been kept. When did the highest C02 increase take place? During the super El Niño year of 1998.

3. What the alarmists now state is that past episodes of warming were not caused by C02 but amplified by it, which is debatable, for many reasons, but, more important, is a far cry from the version of events sold to the public by Mr. Gore.

Meanwhile, the theory that carbon dioxide "drives" climate in any meaningful way is simply wrong and, again, evidence of a "flat-Earth" mentality. Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation. Why not? Because it only absorbs heat along limited bandwidths, and is already absorbing just about everything it can. That is why plotted on a graph, C02's ability to capture heat follows a logarithmic curve. We are already very near the maximum absorption level. Further, the IPCC Fourth Assessment, like all the ones before it, is based on computer models that presume a positive feedback of atmospheric warming via increased water vapor.

4. This mechanism has never been shown to exist. Indeed, increased temperature leads to increased evaporation of the oceans, which leads to increased cloud cover (one cooling effect) and increased precipitation (a bigger cooling effect). Within certain bounds, in other words, the ocean-atmosphere system has a very effective self-regulating tendency. By the way, water vapor is far more prevalent, and relevant, in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide -- a trace gas. Water vapor's absorption spectrum also overlays that of carbon dioxide. They cannot both absorb the same energy! The relative might of water vapor and relative weakness of carbon dioxide is exemplified by the extraordinary cooling experienced each night in desert regions, where water in the atmosphere is nearly non-existent.

If not carbon dioxide, what does "drive" climate? I am glad you are wondering about that. In the short term, it is ocean cycles, principally the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the "super cycle" of which cooling La Niñas and warming El Niños are parts. Having been in its warm phase, in which El Niños predominate, for the 30 years ending in late 2006, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its cool phase, in which La Niñas predominate.

Since that time, already, a number of interesting things have taken place. One La Niña lowered temperatures around the globe for about half of the year just ended, and another La Niña shows evidence of beginning in the equatorial Pacific waters. During the last twelve months, many interesting cold-weather events happened to occur: record snow in the European Alps, China, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Rockies, the upper Midwest, Las Vegas, Houston, and New Orleans. There was also, for the first time in at least 100 years, snow in Baghdad.

Concurrent with the switchover of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to its cool phase the Sun has entered a period of deep slumber. The number of sunspots for 2008 was the second lowest of any year since 1901. That matters less because of fluctuations in the amount of heat generated by the massive star in our near proximity (although there are some fluctuations that may have some measurable effect on global temperatures) and more because of a process best described by the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark in his complex, but elegant, work The Chilling Stars. In the book, the modern Galileo, for he is nothing less, establishes that cosmic rays from deep space seed clouds over Earth's oceans. Regulating the number of cosmic rays reaching Earth's atmosphere is the solar wind; when it is strong, we get fewer cosmic rays. When it is weak, we get more. As NASA has corroborated, the number of cosmic rays passing through our atmosphere is at the maximum level since measurements have been taken, and show no signs of diminishing. The result: the seeding of what some have taken to calling "Svensmark clouds," low dense clouds, principally over the oceans, that reflect sunlight back to space before it can have its warming effect on whatever is below.

Svensmark has proven, in the minds of most who have given his work a full hearing, that it is this very process that produced the episodes of cooling (and, inversely, warming) of our own era and past eras. The clearest instance of the process, by far, is that of the Maunder Minimum, which refers to a period from 1650 to 1700, during which the Sun had not a single spot on its face. Temperatures around the globe plummeted, with quite adverse effects: crop failures (remember the witch burnings in Europe and Massachusetts?), famine, and societal stress.

Many solar physicists anticipate that the slumbering Sun of early 2009 is likely to continue for at least two solar cycles, or about the next 25 years. Whether the Grand Solar Minimum, if it comes to pass, is as serious as the Maunder Minimum is not knowable, at present. Major solar minima (and maxima, such as the one during the second half of the 20th century) have also been shown to correlate with significant volcanic eruptions. These are likely the result of solar magnetic flux affecting geomagnetic flux, which affects the distribution of magma in Earth's molten iron core and under its thin mantle. So, let us say, just for the sake of argument, that such an eruption takes place over the course of the next two decades. Like all major eruptions, this one will have a temporary cooling effect on global temperatures, perhaps a large one. The larger the eruption, the greater the effect. History shows that periods of cold are far more stressful to humanity than periods of warm. Would the eruption and consequent cooling be a climate-modifier that exists outside of nature, somehow? Who is the "flat-Earther" now?

What about heat escaping from volcanic vents in the ocean floor? What about the destruction of warming, upper-atmosphere ozone by cosmic rays? I could go on, but space is short. Again, who is the "flat-Earther" here?

The ocean-atmosphere system is not a simple one that can be "ruled" by a trace atmospheric gas. It is a complex, chaotic system, largely modulated by solar effects (both direct and indirect), as shown by the Little Ice Age.

To be told, as I have been, by Mr. Gore, again and again, that carbon dioxide is a grave threat to humankind is not just annoying, by the way, although it is that! To re-tool our economies in an effort to suppress carbon dioxide and its imaginary effect on climate, when other, graver problems exist is, simply put, wrong. Particulate pollution, such as that causing the Asian brown cloud, is a real problem. Two billion people on Earth living without electricity, in darkened huts and hovels polluted by charcoal smoke, is a real problem.

So, let us indeed start a Manhattan Project-like mission to create alternative sources of energy. And, in the meantime, let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering continues unabated, day after day.

Again, Mr. Gore, I accept your apology.

And, Mr. Obama, though I voted for you for a thousand times a thousand reasons, I hope never to need one from you.

P.S. One of the last, desperate canards proposed by climate alarmists is that of the polar ice caps. Look at the "terrible," "unprecedented" melting in the Arctic in the summer of 2007, they say. Well, the ice in the Arctic basin has always melted and refrozen, and always will. Any researcher who wants to find a single molecule of ice that has been there longer than 30 years is going to have a hard job, because the ice has always been melted from above (by the midnight Sun of summer) and below (by relatively warm ocean currents, possibly amplified by volcanic venting) -- and on the sides, again by warm currents. Scientists in the alarmist camp have taken to referring to "old ice," but, again, this is a misrepresentation of what takes place in the Arctic.

More to the point, 2007 happened also to be the time of maximum historic sea ice in Antarctica. (There are many credible sources of this information, such as the following website maintained by the University of Illinois-Urbana: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg). Why, I ask, has Mr. Gore not chosen to mention the record growth of sea ice around Antarctica? If the record melting in the Arctic is significant, then the record sea ice growth around Antarctica is, too, I say. If one is insignificant, then the other one is, too.

For failing to mention the 2007 Antarctic maximum sea ice record a single time, I also accept your apology, Mr. Gore. By the way, your contention that the Arctic basin will be "ice free" in summer within five years (which you said last month in Germany), is one of the most demonstrably false comments you have dared to make. Thank you for that!

Source: Huffington Post

"No He Can't" by Anne Wortham

No He Can't
by Anne Wortham

November 6, 2008

Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul’s name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America.

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival – all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn’t look like them. I would have to be wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration – political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead – and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over – and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to – Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine – what little there is left – for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.


Anne Wortham [send her mail] is an individualist liberal who happens to be black and American.

Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/wortham1.html

The Very Different Legacies of Two Court Decisions

Americans Show Themselves at Odds With Roe v. Wade

By Carl Anderson

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut, JUNE 1, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Of the many U.S. Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century, two are perhaps the best known: Brown v. Board of Education, and Roe v. Wade.

So important are these two cases that it was no accident that in a recent speech to graduates at Notre Dame University, President Obama based much of his remarks on their legacies.

But the legacies of these two decisions, and their level of acceptance by the American people, couldn’t be more different.

In 1990, as a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, I had an opportunity to gauge the degree to which America had embraced the legacy of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education: the decision that ended the legal sanction of racial segregation in the United States.

At that time, three and a half decades after Brown, the embrace of the ideal of racial equality had grown steadily, and was clearly embraced by the vast majority of Americans. That is even more the case today.

But if Brown was almost universally accepted by the American people, the opposite is true of Roe v. Wade: the decision that legalized abortion.

Today, three and a half decades after Roe, the consensus among the American people is increasingly -- and overwhelmingly -- opposed to its legacy. As much as Americans have embraced the legacy in Brown, they have moved further and further away from that of Roe, which has been interpreted to allow abortion without restrictions.

And opposition to Roe’s legacy by Americans is a fact: one made very clear by several recent polls.

Now, as the United States prepares for hearings on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to fill an opening on the Supreme Court, they -- and she -- should consider carefully the legacy of both court decisions: the widespread acceptance of the legacy of the first, and the overwhelming rejection of the legacy of the second.

And just how do Americans feel about Roe?

Beyond just agreeing on ancillary issues like adoption or help for women in crisis pregnancies, surveys have found common ground among Americans on the issue of abortion itself.

The Pew survey found that only 18% favored legalized abortion “in all cases,” 28% said it should be legal in “most cases,” 28% said it should be “illegal in most cases,” and 16% said it should be illegal in all cases.

That is, 72% of Americans oppose unrestricted abortion; only 18% are in favor.

The even more recent Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans now identify themselves as “pro-life.” Overall, it -- like the Pew survey -- found that 76% of Americans disagree with of the Roe regime of unrestricted abortion, while only 22% agree.

Taken together, these polls show that Americans, by a more than 3:1 margin, want restrictions on abortion -- a remarkable, if largely unnoticed consensus.

A more detailed survey of Americans’ opinions on abortion several months ago revealed just how deep this consensus among Americans runs. In October 2008, a Knights of Columbus-Marist poll was taken in which the number of those identifying as “pro-choice” was slightly greater than those who called themselves “pro-life.”

Looking back, it accurately predicted the growing consensus we see today on abortion by asking very specific questions about the respondents’ views.

By giving a wide range of options on the subject, here’s what the survey found: Only 8% of Americans agreed with abortion “any time during a pregnancy,” and another 8% supported abortion only during the first six months. But 84% of Americans wanted more significant restrictions.

Sonia Sotomayor has had little to say about abortion, and, of course, as the Senate considers her for the Supreme Court, a small but vocal group will push for her to declare herself a Roe apologist.

But seeking such a litmus test would continue the legacy of a court decision at odds with the moral sense of the American people and would fail to capture the moment or to build real common ground on abortion.

Moving beyond Roe’s limitless breadth in law and in politics generally wouldn’t just make political sense -- and moral sense -- it would be a real change that Americans have been waiting for.

* * *

Carl Anderson is the supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus and a New York Times bestselling author.

La Iglesia en Guatemala condena el asesinato de un sacerdote

El misionero oblato estadounidense Lorenzo Rosebangh

CIUDAD DE GUATEMALA, jueves, 21 mayo 2009 (ZENIT.org).- La Iglesia católica en Guatemala condenó este 20 de mayo el asesinato del sacerdote estadounidense, Lorenzo Rosebangh, perpetrado el pasado lunes en una lejana región del norte de este país centroamericano, a través de la Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala.

El padre Lorenzo Rosenbangh había nacido en Wisconsin, Estados Unidos, el 16 de mayo de 1935 y llegó a Guatemala en 1993. El misionero de 74 años trabajaba en la parroquia Santa Cecilia de la capital.

"La Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado condena enérgicamente el asesinato del padre Lorenzo, misionero Oblato de María Inmaculada", y exige una pronta investigación y esclarecimiento del hecho, señala un comunicado de este organismo eclesial.

Así mismo los Oblatos en América Latina han expresado su dolor por esta nueva muerte de un misionero oblato.

"Una vez más estamos de luto en nuestra región. Seguramente ya se hayan enterado del asesinato del padre Lorenzo Rosebaugh de la Delegación de Guatemala. Iban a un encuentro a Playa Grande, donde fueron asaltados. Le mataran a él e hirieron al padre Jean Claude Ngoma. Es el tercer oblato matado en los últimos años", afirma el padre Miguel Fritz, presidente de la Conferencia Interprovincial de América Latina (CIAL) de los Oblatos de María Inmaculada.

"Unámonos en oración por su llegado al Reino de la Alegría y que desde allá pueda intervenir por nuestro sufrido continente --añade--. ¡Nuestra oración y solidaridad para nuestros hermanos en Guatemala en este momento difícil!".

Según indica la página web de los Oblatos en América Latina, a eso de las 4 de la tarde, de este lunes 18 de Mayo, a la altura de la laguna Lachúa, cuando se dirigía de la ciudad capital hacia la parroquia de Cantabal, Ixcán, junto con otros cuatro sacerdotes, el vehículo en el que viajaban, fue interceptado por dos hombres armados cubiertos con pasamontañas, quienes les dispararon, Asesinando al Padre Lorenzo, mientras que otro sacerdote tambien misionero Oblato, quedó herido y fue trasladado a un centro asistencial.

El padre Lorenzo fue misionero en el Quiché durante varios años. "Muy cercano a la gente, de excelente buen humor, se ponía la botas para ir a las comunidades en los años previos a la firma de la paz, cuando la comunidades estaban acechadas por una dura violencia represiva del conflicto armado interno en Guatemala", indica la página de los Oblatos.

A la pregunta sobre los motivos de este hecho, el padre Erasmo Vásques, de Guatemala, señaló simplemente: "es parte de la violencia que vivmos aquí".

Un novicio, Luis Lorenzo Luján, retrata al padre Lorenzo: "Un Oblato muy especial para todos nosotros aquí en el noviciado, vivía en la casa de adelante junto a Erasmo, en este corto tiempo que el Señor quiso que lo conozcamos lo apreciamos mucho por su sencillez, entrega hacia los más pobres y por su estilo de vida de mucha oración y servicio".

El padre Rosebangh, cuyos restos fueron inhumados este miércoles en un cementerio de la capital guatemalteca, había llegado al país en 1993 para servir como misionero en los poblados de Playa Grande y Chicamán, regiones que fueron las más golpeadas durante el conflicto armado interno (1960-1996).

Denver Prelate Calls Obama Invitation Inexcusable

Says Catholics Have Duty to Defend Life

DENVER, Colorado, MAY 21, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The archbishop of Denver had some "hard words" for Notre Dame's president, Father John Jenkins, after last Sunday's commencement.

Archbishop Charles Chaput criticized the university president Monday in a statement posted on the diocesan Web site, denouncing his decision to invite U.S. President Barack Obama to give the address to the school's graduating seniors.

"There was no excuse -- none, except intellectual vanity -- for the university to persist in its course," the prelate said. "And Father Jenkins compounded a bad original decision with evasive and disingenuous explanations to subsequently justify it."

More than 70 U.S. bishops voiced disagreement with the university's decision to invite President Barack Obama as the commencement speaker and bestow on him an honorary law degree. They noted that it went against the 2004 guidelines set by the U.S. bishops' conference for Catholic institutions of higher education, which states that schools should not bestow honors on individuals who "act in defiance" of the Church's fundamental teachings.

"Let’s remember that the debate over President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame was never about whether he is a good or bad man," Archbishop Chaput recalled. "The president is clearly a sincere and able man. By his own words, religion has had a major influence in his life.

"We owe him the respect Scripture calls us to show all public officials. We have a duty to pray for his wisdom and for the success of his service to the common good -- insofar as it is guided by right moral reasoning."

The prelate also noted as equally important the duty to defend Catholic teaching on "foundational issues" such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research.

"And we also have the duty to avoid prostituting our Catholic identity by appeals to phony dialogue that mask an abdication of our moral witness," Archbishop Chaput said. "Notre Dame did not merely invite the president to speak at its commencement. It also conferred an unnecessary and unearned honorary law degree on a man committed to upholding one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in our nation’s history: Roe v. Wade."

The archbishop accused Father Jenkins of ignoring the concerns of the local bishop, more than 70 other bishops from around the country, including the president of the U.S. episcopal conference, as well as "thousands of Notre Dame alumni and hundreds of thousands of other American Catholics."

"The most vital thing faithful Catholics can do now is to insist -- by their words, actions and financial support -- that institutions claiming to be 'Catholic' actually live the faith with courage and consistency," the archbishop concluded. "If that happens, Notre Dame’s failure may yet do some unintended good."

CEDAW Committee Targets East Timor on Abortion

By Amy De Rosa

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) As pre-session working groups of the committee charged with overseeing compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) meet in advance of the committee's July session, the small Asian nation of East Timor has come under pressure for its continued criminalization of abortion. East Timor’s new penal code, which will take effect early next month, continues to penalize the practice, including abortion in cases of rape or incest, but with the added proviso that exceptions can be made in cases where the mother’s health is in jeopardy.

As East Timor, or Timor-Leste, states in its report to the Committee, "Abortion is still an extremely sensitive issue in Timor-Leste, especially given the traumatic events of recent years." The report goes on to explain some Timorese cultural practices which impact "reproductive health." Contraception is generally unpopular in the predominantly Catholic state, with both men and women seeing it as fueling promiscuity and sexually-transmitted diseases while decreasing the number of children.

A newly independent nation as of 2002, East Timor claims that it is still recovering from 24 years of Indonesian occupation, during which time the Indonesia allegedly imposed family planning programs that were widely resented by the Timorese population. Both men and women remain sensitive to suggestions of limiting family size and to abortion.

Despite general support in Timor for the continued criminalization of abortion, a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as the Alola Foundation and Rede Feto, have been agitating for reconsideration the legal status of abortion. The Alola Foundation has received support from certain United Nations agencies, namely the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Though CEDAW is silent as to abortion, CEDAW committee members have also pushed it under the guise of promoting "gender equality."

East Timor notes that NGOs promoting gender equality are often seen as "meddling" and many Timorese (including women) feel that gender distinctions are important in protecting the integrity of the family, a valued institution in Timor, and that loss of these distinctions could be harmful to women. According to the report, many Timorese also express satisfaction with adat, their native system of justice, despite its failure to treat women as equal to men. Adat represents part of the Timorese adherence to deep-rooted traditions. "Foreign laws" are seen as irrelevant to tradition and therefore ineffective.

Timor’s repeated references to its long-standing customs, its distrust of foreign influence and its discussion of "reproductive rights" abuses suffered by Timorese women during Indonesia’s rule appear to have been met with opposition or indifference from the CEDAW committee. The committee has called upon the Timorese to engage in "modification of customs and practices" it regards as "discriminatory." It also is demanding clarification on how certain CEDAW provisions have been implemented in court cases.

The 44th session of CEDAW will be held in New York from July 20 to August 7. Japan and Tuvalu are also among the eleven nations up for CEDAW review in July.

from C-FAM

World’s Most Powerful Population Lobby Targets Dominican Pro-Life Reforms

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) The Dominican Republic has come under fire from some of the world’s most powerful abortion advocates, aiming to block a proposed constitutional amendment that would enshrine legal protection of the country’s unborn.

The International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), backed by European nations, major foundations and the UN Population Fund, has launched an aggressive campaign to thwart proposed Article 30, which would protect human life “from conception.” The country’s national assembly approved the amendment in a first reading by an overwhelming majority of 167-32 on April 21st, but it must go through a second reading before final promulgation by the President.

IWHC is seeking to draw Dominicans into street protests and letter writing campaigns to the legislature claiming that Article 30 “violates international agreements signed and ratified by the Dominican Republic, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR], the American Convention on Human Rights [ACHR] and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women [CEDAW].”

In fact, the ACHR states that, “Every person has the right to have his life respected. This right shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception.” The two UN treaties cited, ICCPR and CEDAW, do not mention abortion at all, and the committees that monitor them have come under increased scrutiny for reading a right to abortion into the treaties and pressuring States party to the treaties to liberalize abortion laws.

According to its latest annual report , IWHC’s largest backers for its $5.5 million annual contributions include the governments of Denmark, Britain, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), De Beers, and powerful foundations including Ford, the Open Society Institute, Hewlett, MacArthur, Packard, Rockefeller, Woodstock, and Bill & Melinda Gates. IWHC also holds $3 million in assets.

As its funding sources suggest, IWHC maintains strong ties to the population lobby from which it emerged. A recent history of population control details the Population Crisis Committee (today’s Population Action International) founded IWHC to distribute abortion kits in the 1980s. The Hewlett Foundation promoted IWHC to fund abortion that lost U.S. aid under the then newly-enacted “Mexico City Policy.” When “population control” fell out of favor in the midst of massive scandals, the major foundations and feminist organizations re-branded the movement as promoting women’s rights. Today, IWHC’s mission is promoting “sexual reproductive rights and health” for adolescent girls and women.

IWHC’s first president was Joan Dunlop, protégé of John D. Rockefeller, 3rd. Soon after the group’s founding Dunlop recruited Adrienne Germaine, IWHC’s current president from the Ford Foundation where she had successfully convinced Ford to include abortion services in its extensive population control programs. Germaine was a chief negotiator for the Clinton administration’s attempts to get abortion recognized as an international human right at the 1994 Cairo and 1995 Beijing UN conferences. When that effort failed, she joined an elite group of UN officials that launched the 1996 Glen Cove “Roundtable” Report . The report lays out a strategy, which IWHC is using in the Dominican case, to misuse UN human rights treaties to establish a right to abortion by claiming that it already exists.

from C-FAM

Can Notre Dame Turn Back the Tide?

Interview with Cardinal Newman Society President


By Genevieve Pollock

MANASSAS, Virginia, MAY 20, 2009 (Zenit.org).- In the wake of the recent Notre Dame controversy, an opportunity arises to renew Catholic higher education in its identity and mission, says the Cardinal Newman Society president.

Patrick Reilly is the founder and president of the Cardinal Newman Society, an organization dedicated to renew and strengthen the Catholic identity at colleges and universities across the United States.

In this interview with ZENIT, he shares his perspective on the recent controversy surrounding the University of Notre Dame's decision to honor President Barack Obama at its commencement ceremony, and explains how this issue can be a springboard for strengthening Catholic identity at colleges.

Q: Many stories have been emerging about the pro-life response to the Notre Dame commencement ceremony. What kind of response did Notre Dame see that day from students and others who came together for the pro-life cause?

Reilly: The response to the Notre Dame scandal was immense and unprecedented.

More than 367,000 Catholics signed the Cardinal Newman Society's petition against the honor at NotreDameScandal.com.

Bishop John D'Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend, the local ordinary for Notre Dame, boycotted the commencement ceremony.

Nearly 80 bishops, representing about one-third of the dioceses in the United States, spoke out against the honor, and none publicly supported it.

Mary Ann Glendon, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, who was to receive Notre Dame's prestigious Laetare Medal, declined the honor rather than share the stage with America's pro-abortion leader.

Notre Dame students organized prayer rallies, a Mass and an alternate ceremony for graduates.

I prefer to call it a Catholic response, since Americans tend to use "pro-life" as describing a political position. For the bishops and for the Cardinal Newman Society, this was not a political protest against the president, but a protest against Notre Dame's disobedience and betrayal of Catholic values.

Certainly the concerns about honoring President Obama centered on his support for abortion rights, embryonic stem-cell research and U.S. funded family planning programs. But the outrage was directed at Notre Dame and its refusal to abide by the U.S. bishops' 2004 policy against Catholic institutions providing honors and platforms for public opponents of Catholic moral teaching.

It was American Catholics drawing a line in the sand, after decades of harmful dissent and declining Catholic identity at leading Catholic colleges and universities. It is the political left in the United States that tried to portray the scandal in a political context, while hypocritically accusing the bishops of political motivations against the president.

Q: Do you think it met the expectations of the organizers?

Reilly: It depends how one defines success. In the end, Notre Dame ignored the bishops. President Obama was honored by a Catholic university and delivered a well-received address, despite reasserting his pro-abortion position.

That has done significant damage, not only to the pro-life movement but to Notre Dame's integrity as a Catholic university. And it has caused many of us great anguish.

But as Christians, we have to see God's plan in everything. We share a Eucharistic faith; it is through the betrayal of Judas and the Passion that Christ is risen, and the Church is no stranger to suffering and betrayal from within.

These skirmishes only bring the truth to light in a culture that would rather avoid it. In the context of political power and worldly prestige, the Church lost this battle, and secularist educators and the political left enjoyed a minor victory. That victory is illusory, though, in the light of faith.

I believe this may have been a graced moment that gives us an opportunity to move forward in the renewal of Catholic higher education and the pro-life cause.

The extraordinary witness of the bishops and lay Catholics has brought much needed attention to the lack of Catholic identity at many U.S. Catholic colleges and universities.

Faithful Catholics are more committed than ever to a renewal of Catholic higher education.

I predict that the Notre Dame scandal will someday be looked upon as a watershed moment in the project begun by Pope John Paul II with "Ex Corde Ecclesiae" and continued by Benedict XVI with his vision for Catholic education, presented at The Catholic University of America in April 2008.

Q: Now that the graduation day is over, has the controversy ended? Or where do you see it going now?

Reilly: Already some university leaders have indicated plans to lobby the bishops to weaken or perhaps even rescind their 2004 policy against Catholic honors for opponents of Catholic moral teaching. Other "progressive" Catholics have lashed out against the Cardinal Newman Society and against the bishops for opposing Notre Dame's action.

So I suspect that the controversy is only growing, and the secularists in American Catholic education will continue their prolonged fight against the Church. They see no useful role for the bishops and orthodox Catholic theology in higher education. I would not at all be surprised if some of the major Jesuit universities are already clamoring for President Obama's participation in next year's commencement ceremonies.

But the Holy Spirit is working in the Church in America, and the Vatican and the bishops have established a clear direction for Catholic education.

I have no doubt that the future is bright, and that Catholic institutions will be increasingly attentive to their essential purpose of bringing young people to Christ.

Q: What has been the general response and attitude on other college campuses? How have other colleges been affected by this Notre Dame controversy?

Reilly: There are several outstanding, faithful institutions which we recommend to Catholic families in "The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College" and at TheNewmanGuide.com.

Their response to the Notre Dame scandal was typically dignified: By contrast, they chose Catholic and pro-life leaders to honor at their commencement ceremonies, and their public statements helped focus attention on the great value of authentic Catholic education.

For instance, the president of Wyoming Catholic College, America's newest Catholic college, wrote in a letter to Notre Dame, "We are committed to preserving ... faithfulness above all else, for it is the key to our very existence as an institution."

On the other hand, other college leaders have sought to vilify those who opposed Notre Dame's action, by accusing the bishops and lay Catholics of being driven by politics and not Catholic teaching.

The president of Trinity University in Washington, D.C. -- who has been controversial for her own public accolades for pro-abortion politicians like Trinity alumna Nancy Pelosi, now speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the late Jesuit Father Robert Drinan -- used Trinity's commencement ceremony as an opportunity to denounce the "religious vigilantism" of Notre Dame's critics. "A half-century of progress for Catholic higher education is at risk of slipping back into those insular, parochial pre-Vatican II days […when] academic freedom was not valued within the Catholic Church," she claimed.

That is secularist nonsense, though sadly not an uncommon belief at many Catholic universities.

Pope Benedict clearly laid out an authentic version of academic freedom for all of the U.S. Catholic college presidents when he met with them last year. The Holy Father has linked the crisis of truth on Catholic campuses to a crisis of faith. That is what is at the core of the problem in Catholic higher education.

Q: How can Catholics use this as an opportunity to move forward, and to advance the cause of strengthening the Church at colleges and universities?

Reilly: Catholics cannot retreat after making such a strong statement about Notre Dame.

Every time a Catholic college or university acts contrary to its Catholic identity, Catholics should express the same concern.

The Cardinal Newman Society has worked for 16 years to build support for authentic Catholic education by remaining faithful to the bishops and the Magisterium, and we hope that the Notre Dame scandal will convince thousands more Catholics to join the movement in the Church for renewal.

Public witness to scandal has a long-term impact. The Cardinal Newman Society's repeated protests against commencement scandals led to the U.S. bishops' 2004 ban on honors and platforms for public opponents of Catholic moral teaching.

And it was our continued reporting on the disobedience of Catholic colleges and universities that helped motivate hundreds of thousands of Catholics to stand up to Notre Dame. That witness must continue.

But the real hope in Catholic higher education is found in the forward-looking, faithful activity of the best Catholic institutions and individuals within universities like Notre Dame who are working for a renewal of Catholic identity.

Last year we launched the Center for the Study of Catholic Higher Education to study critical issues and promote best practices in Catholic higher education. In the midst of the Notre Dame scandal, the Center issued "The Enduring Nature of the Catholic University" -- posted at CatholicHigherEd.org -- featuring Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay, Wisconsin; Father Augustine DiNoia, undersecretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Father David O'Connell, president of the Catholic University of America; and others.

Father DiNoia writes: "Surely, if the example of Pope Benedict XVI teaches us nothing else, it should teach us confidence in the inherent attractiveness of the Christian faith, and, in particular, the Catholic vision of higher education and of the vocation of the theologian. While the assumptions of the ambient culture will not always be friendly to it, this vision nonetheless deserves to be presented fully and without compromise."

Fully Catholic without compromise. That's the approach to Catholic higher education that Pope Benedict proposes, and exactly what Notre Dame failed to exhibit in its honor to President Obama.

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On the Net:

The Cardinal Newman Society: www.cardinalnewmansociety.org

Bishop D'Arcy Joins Notre Dame Prayer Protest

Calls Student Coalition a Group of Heroes

SOUTH BEND, Indiana, MAY 20, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Bishop John D'Arcy intended to stay away from Notre Dame last Sunday, but he says he belonged on campus to accompany a group of Notre Dame students in prayerful protest.

The bishop of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese informed Notre Dame in March that he wouldn't attend this year's commencement ceremony after the university announced its decision to invite President Barack Obama as the speaker and bestow on him an honorary law degree.

Eighty-two other prelates soon joined Bishop D'Arcy in voicing disagreement with the university's gesture toward Obama, saying it went against the guidelines set by the U.S. bishops' conference for Catholic institutions of higher education.

The 2004 statement says schools should not bestow honors on individuals who "act in defiance" of the Church's fundamental teachings.

But the activity of a coalition of 12 Notre Dame student groups, formed to protest the administration's plans for graduation day, and to organize a parallel event in support of life and Catholic values, caught Bishop D'Arcy's eye.

The coalition, called ND Response, organized a prayer vigil the night before the commencement ceremony, including a directed meditation by Father John Corapi of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity.

The vigil launched an all-night Eucharistic adoration, which concluded on Sunday -- graduation day.

Sunday Mass was held outside on one of the campus quads to accommodate the 3,000 people who had traveled from as far away as Mexico, New York, California and Florida to support the Catholic identity of the university and its pro-life mission.

The outdoor Mass, concelebrated by eight priests and presided over by Holy Cross Father Kevin Russeau, was followed by a rally featuring speakers with ties to Notre Dame.

Cameo

Bishop D'Arcy made a surprise appearance, and after being invited to take the podium, he admitted, "It was not my intention to come today."

He explained, however, that he had visited the Marian grotto on campus and had observed students praying, and later visited the chapel where Eucharistic adoration was being held.

These moments of prayer, he said, "showed me the place for the bishop to be is here."

"The office of bishop is very important," the prelate added. He echoed the words of Pope John Paul II, and affirmed the importance of standing up "for life, all the time, everywhere, without exception."

Bishop D'Arcy told the crowd: "I found myself saying in recent weeks that this is a sad time, that there are no winners. But I was wrong."

He affirmed that the "heroes" are "the young people on campus, the students" who followed in "the great tradition of Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict."

The bishop continued: "Their protest was carried out with love, and with prayer, and with dignity and with respect. But with a firmness, also, as to what is right."

The diocesan newspaper reported that outside groups protested the college's decision at the university entrance with demonstrations that "grabbed national headlines," while ND Response chose to "prayerfully, respectfully and faithfully make their opposition known in a different way."

Bishop D'Arcy concluded, "So there are heroes; all of you here today are heroes, and I'm proud to stand with you."

Inspiration

After the rally, Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, led a rosary at the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, in a prayer vigil dedicated to the 40 graduates present there as a boycott to the official commencement ceremony.

Father Russeau gave tribute to these students in his homily, stating that despite all the media's coverage of the controversy, "one story that I don't hear enough about […] is the response of the student body."

He continued: "In the face of this controversy, I have witnessed countless students who have given me inspiration.

"Students who instinctively know to approach God in prayer about their trials, students who reach out to others in attempts to offer care, students who have demonstrated to me an ability to listen and obey the scripture we proclaim this day."

In these past months, the priest said, it has been inspiring to see the student body's "instinct to come to the altar of the Lord to ask for guidance and strength."

He added: "I can't tell you the number of rosaries and Masses and prayer meetings that have been intentional responses to what many feel is a concession to the culture of death.

"Students, family, friends, alumni, and many of you, have spent hours in adoration looking for the proper response.

"The students that I have come to know here on campus have reminded me that in all things we must respond with love. And to respond with love in hard times, we must ask our Lord for grace. We are here today to bear witness and to love."

A press statement from ND Response affirmed, "Sunday's events not only provided powerful witness to the sanctity of human life but also expressed constructive disappointment at the University of Notre Dame's decision to honor President Barack Obama, who has publicly supported abortion and embryo-destructive stem cell research during his tenure in office."