Blame America, Always

Unsurprising:

TEMPO.CO , Jakarta - Intelijen Rusia berpikir Sukhoi Superjet 100 yang jatuh pada joy flight 9 Mei 2012 di Gunung Salak Bogor, Indonesia, kemungkinan disabotase Amerika Serikat. Hal ini ditulis salah satu media besar di Rusia pada Kamis, 24 Mei 2012.(Trans.)Russian intelligence think that the Sukhoi Superjet 100 that fell during the "joy flight" on 9 May 2012 and hit Mount Salak, Bogor, Indonesia, could have been sabotaged by the United States. This was written by one big Russian media on Thursday, 24 May.

Pada salah satu artikelnya, tabloid Rusia Komsomolskaya Pravda menulis judul 'Amerika yang Akibatkan Kecelakaan Sukhoi?'.
(Trans.)In that article, the Russian Tabloid "Komsomolskaya Pravda" writes"Did America cause the Sukhoi crash?"

Yes, if the Pravda says so it must be true. They have never ever been the propaganda arm of the Soviet and then Russian government, right?

The Conspiracy that Is

You rember Fast and Furious? No, not the car action movie but this story:

[...]a botched gun-tracking operation that sent thousands of high-powered firearms to Mexico in the hands of known or suspected straw buyers for drug cartels.

Many people asked themselves how could it happen. Was the ATF so incompetent that they utterly screwed up a tracking operation? Was Holder, Attorney General truly in the dark regarding an operation of this type and size?

Or there were darker reasons behind letting weapons fall into criminal hands?

As much as I despise the conspirational mindset, this time it seems that the second option is correct. For reasons like this, from the same article:

[...]Instead of taking him to task for Operation Fast and Furious, Democratic lawmakers have tried to draw attention to what they describe as the country’s weak network of gun laws.

And this:

Democratic lawmakers contend that Operation Fast and Furious exemplifies the need to strengthen U.S. gun laws to give federal law enforcement officials more tools to prosecute criminal weapon traffickers.

“This hunt for blame doesn’t really speak about the problem,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein at a recent Senate Judiciary hearing while discussing Fast and Furious.

“And the problem is, anybody can walk in and buy anything, .50-caliber weapons, sniper weapons, buy them in large amounts, and send them down to Mexico. So, the question really becomes, what do we do about this?”

Yes indeed, I think some fears are confirmed: supplying Mexican drug lords with firearms bought in America was intended to provide ammunition for those demanding tighter gun control.

But the scandal blew up... yet, politicians are the most bald-faced liars and the likes of Feinstein just keep charging on like nothing happened. Like it wasn't ATF agents themselves who bent and broke rules to buy the guns, and delivered them into criminal hands.

Tolerance and True Dedication to Diversity

Those seem to be the governing principles of today's climate science, really:

It doesn’t get much uglier than this. A stasi-esque master list of skeptical scientists and bloggers, with ratings put together by a “scientist” that rants against the very people he rates on his blog.

Well, maybe not. I suppose you know what a list of indesiderables is used for.
To make easier to kick down their doors at dawn.

Seein in Perspective

The World Bank reports (pdf) that the total value of the virtuous carbon markets in 2008 was roughly 126.3 billion dollars.

Super-evil corporation Halliburton states revenues for 18.3 billion dollars in 2008.

But we can still be sure that nobody would lie or misrepresent facts as to benefit from the carbon markets.

Semantic Clarity

Looking for something else on the Internet I unhearted a wikipedia page with the sinister title Climate change denial - now, Aug 29 2008, the article is being considered for deletion, so the link may be dead when you read this.

As one can easily imagine, the article makes the point that anyone denying that human activities are causing a catastrophic rise of global temperature must be a corporate stooge or some other sort of evil man.

But what strikes me is the huge semantic confusion, not only in this paper but in many more - especially on the alarmist side. Semantic is important because, to make a condensed Jeff Goldstein, those who control the narrative control the facts. If we let the alarmist side set not only the term of debate, but the very meaning of words, the debate is lost no matter what (the facts are).

So let's give a few definitions for a meaningful debate.

Climate Change - By all resonable standards of English language, this is the most neutral statement. It simply means that the quantities describing Earth's climate (average temperature in particular) are not constant with time; it says nothing about the sign, magnitude and rate of the change, neither about its causes or consequences. The statement is true, but it is also so vague to be of nearly no use: climate has always been changing since an atmosphere appeared around our planet, and there is nothing unusual about the change occurring also in this age. The use of this expression to imply a decisive role of human activities in climatic changes is linguistically incorrect and intellectually dishonest.

Global Warming - This expression is much more specific: it says that average global temperature (at the surface) is rising, leading to a warmer world. Also in this case, the expression itself contains no indication about the magnitude and rate of warming, and neither about causes and effects of the phenomenon. Again, this expression does not imply a human impact on climate; however, it somewhat implies a recent and/or unusual phenomenon.

Temperature Anomaly - The deviation of temperature, for the region of interest, from the average temperature calculated in a chosen reference timeframe (baseline). Often, anomaly values are normalized - divided again by the baseline value. The choice of reference timeframe alters significatively the baseline position and thus the anomaly values.

Anthropogenic Global Warming - Global warming, but with the cause specified: generated by humans (in layterms, man-made). This is the correct expression to indicate an increase of global average temperature produced entirely or at least for a significant fraction by human activities (in particular, emission of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere).

Green Outside, Red Inside

The other day I found an article that is, to put it mildly, strongly critic of those who think that there can be deeper reasons beyond the global warming alarm than honest and unbiased analysis of available data.

In fact the article labels any speculation in that sense as "conspiracy theory". I don't want to counter all the points made by the author, but discuss a little one in particular: the ridicule heaped on the "idea that environmentalists were Communist sympathizers".

I have been keeping an eye on communist and environmentalist material and publications for the last 15 years, I can say. I have read materials in Italian for the most part, but also in English.

What I have consistently noticed is a deep commonality of assumptions, language and goals between communists and (many) environmentalists. Organizations such as the Social Forum (dead link on purpose: http://www.ussf2007.org/), in fact, intertwine enivornmental and socio-economic issues so deeply that the two threads cannot be separated anymore.

The fundamental assumption that communism injected in the environmentalist movement is that the capitalist economic model is destroying the environment.

The fact that the Soviet Union ravaged the ecosystem worse than any other country can be conveniently swept under the rug, or explained as improper implementation of communism.

But wait, did I say "communism injected in the environmentalist movement"? Yes, I did.
Environmentalism is older than communism, and it began as a largely apolitical concern for the environment, seeing how completely unregulated human activities were damaging nature.

Communists then latched over environmentalist ideas because they were an effective vehicle for their anti-capitalist, anti-bourgeois agenda.

So, it's not quite true that environmentalists are communist sympathizers; rather, communists took over the environmetalist movement for their own ends.

These are, of course, generalizations: the environmentalist movement comprises many million people, and not all of them obviously think alike.

In fact, the "right-wing" or conservative environmentalist, especially in the USA, prefer to define themselves as conservationists and are more oriented towards a kind of management of nature.

Among The Loonies

I had heard that some people think that the WTC towers were destroyed using micro nuclear devices, but so far I never ventured into one of those websites. Today, I decided to read one - and it's more grotesque than a commune of perennially stoned hippies.

See, the idea that the explosion of some kind of bomb - specifically, a nuclear bomb with a definitely sub-kiloton yield - may have brought down the Twin Towers is way out of whack with reality, but still plausible enough to be entertained as an intellectual exercise or conspiracy theory.

But the Author of that report - which could have been produced by a sufficiently large number of monkeys happily typing away - goes way beyond the nuclear bomb scenario. And for him, the much-popular theory of thermite demolition is for those naive enough to stop at first level of conspiracy; the truth is buried much deeper - where it can only be reached with liberal use of strong antipsychotic drugs, I suppose.

In the Authors's mind, the truth about 9/11 is:

The explosions were produced by a clandestine Nuclear Reactor under each tower undergoing a "power excursion" and then a core meltdown.

Behold... insanity in front of your eyes. You can't reason about something like this; it is thoroughly removed from the realm of rational discourse and logical proof. It is nothing but crazily insane.

But if you suspected that the Author couldn't tell his own asshole from a gas tank inlet, you are only right. Read what he says about nuclear fission:

In fact, the elements discovered form a distinctive signature and hallmark of a certain well known chemical process.

Yeah, a chemical process. Nuclear fission is a well known chemical process. And I am a well-known millionaire playboy who blogs only to take a break between a hot night with Lucy Liu and a speedboat race to the Monte Carlo Casino.

Or I could be, if those cheap Reptilian bastards loosened the purse's strings a bit. Bitches.

We Are Screwed

Via Winds of Change, I found this horrible atrocity: on the website of Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a page called Prof. Schpinkee's Greenhouse Calculator.

It is so fucked up that initially I hoped it was a parody but no, it's the real thing. This indoctrination tool will tell you at what age you should die in order to consume you "fair share" of Earth's resources.

This display of brain-damaged suicidal environmentalism makes me mad; fuck them and their anti-human crap. Go live in a cave and eat only the fruits you can pick from trees and the animals you can hunt with your bare hands, but leave me the fuck alone.

We're scrwed if we don't fight back against this envirofascist brainwashing, because it's a rot that comes from within, and more dangerous than any coming from without.

Update: This story is getting big in the blogs: The Rottweiler, Stingray, Steven DenBeste, Coyote Blog and others are all ripping the idiocy to shreds.

Heroism vs. Derangement

In the dark night of the Virginia Tech massacre, there was a shining beacon of light: Liviu Librescu. A Jew of Romanian descent, Holocaust survivor, now Israeli citizen and engineering professor, according to the reports died to save his students. He pinned the classroom's door closed to give the students time to to evacuate the room jumping out of windows, but was shot in the head. Probably - I can only speculate - this fine man knew what is like to be helpless in front of ruthless killers, and decided to fight back when another killer came knocking at the door. And perhaps he concluded that if someone had to die, it was better to sacrifice his old self so that the young, the hope for the future, could survive. Whatever the reason, he behaved like only heroes do.

And now, I like doing this as much as I liked piling up old steel drums used as rubbish bins in a pasta sauce factory, but I regard as my duty to fight dangerous degenerations. There was thread on LGF dedicated to Librescu, and I decided to leave a comment there, hoping that for once the lizards would abstain from their usual ranting. Poor naive, silly me: it didn't take long before Islam was dragged into the melee again.

This time, the smoking gun (as smoking as the .22 I fired at the range last Thursday) is that , according to vaguely described "sources", the killer - identified as Seung Hui Cho, of Korean descent - wrote "Ismail Ax" at the end of a note he left, and on his arm. Soon thereafter, CJ decided to post an entry on this issue.

What's wrong with the modus operandi of too many LGFers and, in smaller part, of CJ himself? First, it begins with confirmation bias: a story - coming from the much-reviled MSM, even - is accepted almost unquestioningly. Because it just confirms a preexisting bias or prejudice: that only Muslims and a few other groups (atheists, communists, anarchists...) are capable of similar acts of senseless violence.

Then it proceeds along the lines of conspirational thinking: no alternative explantions for the writing (assuming the report is accurate in the first place) are examined - only the Islamic link. No other known fact points to a case of "Spontaneous Jihad Syndrome", but that remains rather overlooked (to his credit, not by Charles). There are many other explanations for that writing: it can be related to anime; online games; expressions exclusive of that university; music bands... it can even be something that Cho found accidentally, and thought it was very cool and in-your-face to use as a doomsday expression.

To counter this inane trend, I have decided to set stringent standards of proof for SJS cases:

1 - Reliable witnesses - audio or video tapes even better - must confirm that the perp shouted "Allah Akbar" or similar expressions during his/her attack.
2 - Statements or writings by the perp, dating to before or after the attack, must have a clear Islamic content (for example, a martyrdom video).

Anything less than that, and I will regard the SJS hypothesis in the same way I regard 9/11 conspiracies, Holocaust denial, moon landing "hoax" and the like. If evidence is missing, reaching a conclusion is impossible, as rigorous reasoning imposes - it does NOT mean that the MSM and the government are in on a conspiracy to keep the people blissfully unaware of the Muslim Peril.

I do think that there is something very wrong with a significant fraction of the Islamic world, and that we have to be aware of the radicals and fight them (on the battlefield of ideas, first of all) - but I also think that crying wolf and seeing dark conspiracies at every corner is not helpful and possibly even detrimental.

Right-wing Conspiracy Theories

LGF reports a story concerning a suspicious package at Miami port, which after turning positive in field tests for C4 was finally found to be innocuos.

The level of detail of the news story is too low to make an informed judgement, but I have an idea of what may have happened - and of why innocuous items may result positive for explosives.

The sensors used for field tests are simple devices (often, a sort of mass spectrometer called ion mobility spectrometer) compared to laboratory analytical instruments, built to detect one class of compounds - in this case, explosives. What most explosives (TNT, RDX, HMX) have in common is the presence of nitro groups, which I expect to be the main feature of the IMS signature of explosives. However, nitro groups are also contained in other molecules: dyes, certain solvents and drugs. It is also conceivable that compounds like amines, amides and urethanes (that is, common plastics) may give IMS signatures similar to explosives. Also fertilizers contain high amounts of nitrogen, often as nitrates an ureas (which are not nitro groups, but somewhat close). I'm available to conduct an experimental campaign to clarify these issues, if I can find a sponsor...

There is also the selectivity problem: high selectivity is already difficult to achieve with laboratory instuments; field instruments cannot go very far. This means that they aren't very good at discriminating between different chemicals especially within the same class.

As a matter of design bias, I'd prefer my explosive detector to give more false positives than false negatives, because a false positive is a pain in the back, but a false negative can cost many lives.

The story says that the suspect package in fact contained "sprinkler parts", which is another exercise in vagueness. But if these sprinklers became contaminated with some chemical - in the case of agricultural sprinklers, fertilizers - they may result positive for explosives. An investigation should be launched anyway, at least to find who caused that mess by leaving a suspicious package around.

But instead of acting rationally and fact-checking, a lot of LGFers don the tinfoil hat:

Prysorra 1/8/2007 05:46PM PST
*I answer my own question...
Either:
a. False positive for political pressure
b. Security coverup for political reason.
c. They misread their instruments.
C is not likely.

BabbaZee 1/9/2007 05:36AM PST
I seriously doubt they will EVER tell us the truth on these matters until something actually detonates. Everything that is stopped in time will be reported as "false alarms"

And yes, these are only two comments out of 260+, but most of the few on-topic comments have a similar tone. Only a handful of commenters tried to understand what may have actually happened, and apparently none even did a quick search for the principles of explosive detection.

Whenever a false alarm occurs, at LGF it's always like this - many don't even admit the existence of false alarms; there must always be evil, scheming jihadis somewhere and governmental cover-ups to keep the sheeple blissfully unaware. Sounds familiar? It should; it's the same basis of all conspiracy theories. Change a few words, and you'll get Loose Change 911. (Sligthly edited on 10/01)