An Easter Gift for All Believers: The Shroud is REAL !!

I was fortunate to catch a most recently-made documentary on the Shroud of Turin just in time for Easter.  Also, I hear the Shroud has gone multi-media for the first this weekend it was shown live-streaming on the web as well as being shown live on Italian television for everyone to see for themselves. Pope Francis, while not actually calling in a relic, has come out saying that ''the Shroud is an Icon for all to admire and feel closer to Jesus.''  This documentary was extremely methodical in it's new examination of the Shroud and in its unbiased approach to the many theories explaining the unusual manifestation on it.

The Shroud of Turin continues to spark intense theological debate. While one side believes that the cloth is nothing more than a medieval forgery, the other contends that the x-ray-like image imprinted on it was supernaturally created during Jesus Christ's resurrection. In the past, claims that it was the work of a renaissance artist, an optical print by camera obscura, or as mentioned, a legitimate, faith-inspired phenomenon have abounded. Without doubt, the cloth has confounded supporters and detractors, alike, for decades since it was first photographed and the negative print revealed a startlingly clear image. It is an image of a breaded man (i.e. Jesus) whose body appears to have wounds from nails in his hands and feet -- the pinpricks from thorns around his forehead and a spear wound to his chest.

Now, ''The Mystery of the Shroud'' a book that bolsters the documentary by examining new chemical and mechanical tests were were recently conducted on the shroud, seems to side with the latter assessment.  Journalist Saverio Gaeta and Giulio Fanti of Italy's University of Padua (professor of mechanical and thermal measurement) collaborated on the new book that maintains that Shroud of Turin dates back to the 1st Century and not to a later time period as some have contended. The Vatican Insider has more about the new books stunning claims. ''New scientific experiments carried out at the University of Padua have apparently confirmed that the Shroud of Turin can be dated back to the 1st Century AD. This makes it compatible with the tradition which claims that the cloth with the image of the crucified man imprinted on it is the very Jesus' body was wrapped in when he was taken off the cross.'' He said his tests backed up earlier results which claimed to have found traces of dust and pollen on the Shroud that could only have come from the Holy Land.

The article continued,''What's new about this book are Fanti's findings, which are to be published in a specialist magazine and assessed by a scientific committee. The research includes three new tests, two chemical ones and one mechanical one. The first two were carried out with an FT-IR system, so using infra-red light, and the other using Raman spectroscopy. The third was a multi-parametric mechanical test based on five different parameters. The machine used to examine the Shroud's fibres and test traction, allowed researchers to examine tiny fibres alongside about twenty samples of cloth dated between 3000BC and 2000AD. The analysis was carried out by professors who hail from various Italian higher education institutes. Amazingly, they all agree that the Shroud does, indeed, date back to the period of Jesus' purported death by crucifixion.

The Way I See It....the Shroud of Turin's original dating in 1988 was incorrect and the new FT-IR testing proved it. The previous carbon-14 tests were incorrect due to the fact that the shroud was repaired after a fire in the Middle Ages and that the new fabric used to fix it was sampled and thereby contaminated the first set of results finding the date was much later than many thought.

In his book, Mr Fanti said, after 15 years of research, that the imprint is so unique that it could have been caused by a blast of ''exceptional radiation'' perhaps at the moment of Jesus' reincarnation, although he stopped short of describing it as a miracle. The Vatican has never said whether it believes the shroud to be authentic or not, although the previous pope, Benedict XVI, once said that the enigmatic image imprinted on the cloth ''reminds us always of Christ's suffering.'' This certainly adds another chapter to the Greatest Story Ever Told.

NOTE: for the first time, an app has been created to enable people to explore the holy relic in detail on their smart phones and tablets. The app, sanctioned by the Catholic Church and called Shroud 2.0 , features high definition photographs of the cloth and enables users to see in close-up detail that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye.

Are You Being Groped Like an Egyptian ?

In a powerful scene from the 2010 Egyptian film ''678,'' a veiled woman boards a crowded public bus on her way to work, squeezing through a mass of passengers in search of a space where she will feel least vulnerable. Inevitably, though groping hands reach her and she has no choice but to endure or try to quietly move away. For many women in Egypt, this scene is far too familiar -- warding off potential harassment has long been a part of their daily lives. A study conducted in 2009 found that 83% of Egyptian women have been sexually harassed in public and nearly half described the harassment as occurring on a daily basis. Few women file formal complaints against attackers, either out of fear, embarrassment, or the recognition that the police are unlikely to pursue such cases, but that's about to change soon. The women have had enough!

Unfortunately, in recent months, this atmosphere of impunity has combined with Egypt's volatile politics to produce a spike in harassment and a new trend of violent sexual attacks. These mob attacks are directed primarily against women demonstrators in Tahir Square. On the second anniversary of the Egyptian uprisings on January 25, at least 19 female demonstrators were sexually assaulted! The reports are shocking. In first-hand accounts, women have described being suddenly set upon by large groups of ugly bearded men, were groped, stripped of their clothing and raped. At last one woman was sexually assaulted with a bladed weapon.

Yet the Morsi administration has done absolutely nothing to respond to this unprecedented, intensely violently and seemingly organized wave of attacks. Inconceivably and unconscionably, the deadshit Egyptian president has yet to utter a public word to acknowledge the problem. His prime minister, Hisham Qandil, has offered only a passing reference to possible new legislation to address the issue. With clear video evidence of attacks shown on television and online, the government either lacks the will or the ability to confront the situation. There are strong rumours that the Muslim Brotherhood is behind these attacks as means of discouraging women to join the ranks of the protesters.

More unfortunate than the government' failure to act is the exacerbation of the problem by some among the Salafi leadership. During a meeting of the Shura Council, elected officials blamed the victims for their attacks. A Salafi preacher, Ahmad Mahmoud Abdullah, known as ""Abu Islam'' and owner of a private television channel said raping and sexually harassing women protesters in Tahrir Square is justified, calling them ''crusaders'' who ''have no shame, no fear and not even feminism.''  This pile of Camel-Dung further described these female political activists as ''devils.''  He added, ''They should learn from Muslim women about behaving modestly. There are Muslims and Muslimix.''  Abu Islam was apparently referring to liberal Muslims as ''Muslimix.'' At best, the Morsi administration's failure to address the problem stems from a belief that sexual harassment is a natural consequence of women participating in highly emotional demonstrations.

The Way I See It....this month's United Nation's announcement of an Accord on Women couldn't come soon enough. The Accord urges states to ''strongly condemn'' all forms of violence against women and girls, and to refrain from provoking ''any custom, tradition or religious consideration to avoid their obligations'' thereby eliminating violence against females. While the declaration of the commission is not binding, diplomats and rights activists say it carries enough global weight to pressure countries to improve the live of women and girls. Russia, the Vatican and some Muslim states objected to references to reproduction rights, but did not block its adoption. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood warned the Accord would lead to the ''complete degradation of society.'' (As if my expose above hasn't already shown that Egypt is already a degraded society).

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said violence against women is ''a heinous human rights violation, global menace, a public health threat and a moral outrage."  One doesn't have top look far from the news headlines to read of honour killings, India's bus-rape killing, clitoectomies, 12 year old girl marriages in Sudan and the unbelievable report of a 15 year old rape victim being sentenced to be whipped 100 times for sex-outside-marriage, in public, in the Maldives! (The girl's step-father raped her for years and even murdered the baby she bore and yet she pays for this Muslim stupidity). Ban Ki-Moon added, ''That every woman and girl has the universal human right to be fre of all forms of intimedation and violence so as to fulfill her full potential and dreams for the future.''

Five Foods Not to Eat While Battling a Cold or Flu !

Once again we are being assailed by medical fear mongers about the coming of this year's Killer Flu Season! The guilt-ridden media ads say, ''The flu shot saves lives,'' but it's not so. The high-risk groups; the elderly and children under five are told to get the flu shot to reduce mortality...actually show no better outcomes than the non-vaccinated ones, according to a study in the Archives of Medicine. The world's leading immunogenetist, Dr H. Fudenburg, who has written more than 600 scientific papers, warns that, ''Most studies over-estimate vaccination's benefits. Real and lasting immunity comes from an immune system that has learned from actual organism experience, not from an injection that only stimulates the immune system weakly and temporarily.''  I guess, to put it bluntly....he's saying it's USELESS!

While there are numerous sources out there for natural cold remedies (Vitamin C, garlic, ginger, hydration, chicken soup), it's also good to know which foods to avoid while sick or battling a cold or flu. By eliminating these foods, while hopefully consuming immune-boasting foods, you can recover more quickly and reduce the severity of your symptoms.  Here are the TOP FIVE:

1. Alcohol  --  Alcohol weakens your immune system and dehydrates you. Both of these can make your illness more miserable. Grandma's Hot Toddy might clear things up for a short time, but take it easy and don't overdo it. Keep your body optimally hydrated to help your immune system functioning on high.
2. Dairy Products --  Dairy products my be on the fence (in small portions), as consuming them may not aggravate while doing so to others (you could be one of the ''others''). Dairy products are known to increase mucus production, and mucus is one thing you don't need more of when you are sick. If cold water feels good on your throat, opt for a frozen fruit bar. These with numb your scratchy throat and deliver some useful vitamin C.
3. Juice Drinks --  If you enjoy juicing and make your own 100% juices -- by all means, drink them. But if you reach for your run-of-the-mill orange juice when you're ill, you'd be better off without. Average juices are loaded with extra sugar and that sugar can reduce the ability of white blood cells to fight the invaders. Any benefits you might get from the vitamin C are nullified by the sugar inside. Avoiding sugar in general is a good idea at this time.
4. Fried Foods -- Stay away from excess fats when you are sick. This goes for processed snacks and fried foods as a whole. Foods high in fat produce inflammation and inflammation produces a less active immune system.
5. Fast Foods and Processed Foods --  It should be most obvious to steer clear of fast food and processed foods while fighting an illness. Fast food and most processed foods are devoid of nutritional value; that is, they hardly bring anything to the table in terms of boosting the immune system or amplifying your health potential. Not only are much of these foods made from genetically modified foods, but they also contain a slew of immune-suppressing ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, MSG, artificial colours and much more.

The Way I See It....there are some irresponsible hospitals serving up McDonalds to their sick patients, that doesn't mean these foods are any more valuable. You must treat your body with the best nutrition and not just your runny nose and aches with over-the-counter drugs. Consume foods that boost your immune system. Another fascinating fact is that recent research has shown that a person gets an ''Immune Burst'' of 10,000-15,000 antibodies into their blood supply from a chiropractic spinal adjustment.

When you are sick -- stick with a diet of whole, fresh or frozen foods and plenty of liquids. Drink tea, eat soup (my favourite is Chicken Noodle soup with chopped Shitake Mushrooms - see photo), use spices like turmeric, ginger and garlic, consume some honey and nurse yourself back to health naturally. Generally, the worst symptoms of a cold or flu will only last a few days when you have a high functioning immune system. That's when your body ''rises to the threatening invasion'' and lets you know to rest by making you tired so it can fight with more reserve energy. Don't fight it...that's your body's job.

A Manifesting of Karl Marx's "Manifesto" !

I knew the time would come. Western society's high schools and ideologically monolithic universities have spawned a generation woefully uninformed in the most elementary facts about free markets (capitalism), socialism and communism. There seems to me that the Socialist/Marxists have been imbued with a renewed fervor to spread their poison with the decisive lurch leftward since the election of two Marxist sympathizers; America's  Barack Obama and Australia's Julia Gillard. So I seriously think a short refreshment course for the present generation about communism in practice, where the story is unprecedented misery: a death toll of 100-140 million human beings since 1917. That is twice the combined corpses of WWI and WWII, the two deadlist conflicts in history!  But what about communism as a theory?

We constantly hear the claim: Communism in theory is not as bad as communism in practice. If you read Marx, you'll see that communism promotes sharing, equality and love of man.

In truth, this is arrant nonsense. When I hear it, I know the person has never read Marx's Communist Manifesto, a plainly awful book, similar to the Koran, packed with hatred and, frankly, stupidity. But rather than just say this, I thought I'd attempt a public service by laying out key facts on the Communist Manifesto -- so here we go.  First off, Marx's Manifesto is very brief and inexpensive, leaving no excuse for someone with a strong opinion to not read it. Originally published in 1848, there are several recent editions. Most have decent introductions by a recognized authority. Here, I'll refer to a 1998 edition by Penguin's Signet Classics, which contains some earlier prefaces with the actual Manifesto covering 42 pages.

Marx's writing was painfully ambiguous, though certain identifiable elements emerge, from his revulsion of religion to disgust of traditional morality and the family. Yet, Marx's common thread, which we need to remember, was his contempt for private property. On page 67, he emphasized something all Americans should know, particularly students suffering the perverse professor who somehow admires communism, by stating Marx to this deadshit: ''Professor, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in a single sentence: Abolition of private property.'' That's the real essence of communism, which Marx returned to repeatedly, including in the final paragraph of the Manifesto.

Of course, on this point, a first grader -- let alone a grown adult -- ought to immediately recognize that Marxism can't work.  Abolishing private property is completely contrary to human nature, violating the most innate precepts of all peoples, from the cave to the penthouse. It shatters Judeo-Christian thinking, Western philosophy, the ancient and the modern worlds, Cicero, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Locke, Jefferson, Moses, the Old Testament, the New Testament, Jesus, you name it. Only a fool would not instantly, intuitively realize that implementing this vision would generate mass bloodshed. This is why, I imagine, most Marxist professors dare not have their students read the Karl's Communist Manifesto for fear of being laughed out of the classroom.

In another illuminating section (page 75), Marx interrupted his meandering sophistries with a 10-point program of specific policy recommendations. I'm not going to shy away from stating the obvious: Marx's list is chillingly similar--in some respects, certainly not all--to what the leftists have pushed for decades and even more now in Obama's  government.  Here they are, in direct quotation:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right to inheritance.
4. Confiscation of all property of emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in state hands, by means of a national bank with state capital.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state.
8. Equal obligation of all to work....
9. Free education and indoctrination for all children in schools.
10. Gradual abolition of all distinctions between the town and country by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.

The Way I See It....you can't ignore what the Communist Manifesto is really saying. And what's worse, this bearded bastard desired this not for one country but the world (page 91). It's a prescription for despotism, as Marx himself conceded, prefacing his 10 points: ''Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by despotic inroads. There is only one way to shorten and ease the convulsions of the old society and the bloody birth pangs of the new -- revolutionary terror.!''  You see, Marxism wasn't hijacked by despots; Marxism demanded despots.

Those of you who are newly enlightened, let me summarize. Communism is not a good idea, in theory or in practice, and likewise for its ugly stepsister: socialism. Both are about statism, collectivism, redistribution, nationalization, appropriation, excessive taxation, the inane assertion that public services are ''free'' services, and overall, government control over your liberties and even your life. They -- along with modern progressivism -- differ in degree. There is nothing romantic or altruistic about this ideology.

Commies Come to Challenge the System !

It is astonishing that 24 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall (photo), we still have people demanding Marxism be given another try. Now we hear the Commies are coming to Melbourne, Australia for a conference.. Fifty-one of these scumbags will descend on the University of Melbourne's Student Union Building. Which is apropos, since most of these Marxist slime live, work and infect our youth in Universities around the world.

This conference is being held this week from the 28th of March to the 31st of the month. Of course these atheists  are choosing the highest Christian holy days of  Easter to emphasise Lenin's favourite saying, ''Where Communism begins, atheism begins!''  The many speakers over that weekend will be pushing the topic ''Ideas to Challenge the System''.  How nice!  All arranged by Australia's very own nest of socialist deadshits calling their organization The Socialist Alternative.

Here's a partial list of Australia's contribution of academic Marxist-filth on the speaker's list:

Gary Foley -- lectures in history at Victoria University.
Anthony Lowenstein  --  a board member of Macquarie University's Centre for Middle East and North African Studies.
Jeff Sparrow  --  editor of the left-wing journal Overland (sponsored by Victoria University).
Rick Kuhn  --  is a Reader in Politics at the Australian National University.
Diane Fieldes  --  teaches at the University of New South Wales.
Tom Bramble -- has been a socialist activist since the late 1970's. He is a senior lecturer in industrial relations and is polluting young minds at the University of Queensland.
Max Lane  --  is now a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Party and is a lecturer at Victoria University.
Roz Ward --  is a delegate in the National Tertiary Education Union at La Trobe University.
Jane Kenway --  is a Professional Fellow with the Australian Research Council, a Professor in the Education Faculty at Monash University and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
John Passant --  has been a misguided socialist for over 30 years. He has worked in the Australian Tax Office and academia ( he tutors at the Australian National University.)
Susan Price  --  is the current national co-convener of the Socialist Alliance.  A member of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) for over 13 years. She was NTEU Branch President at the University of New South Wales ( 2006-2008) and now has been Branch Secretary since 2010.

Such people teach our young. One student told Paul Kengor, a professor of political science at Grove City College and author of a book (I quoted in an August 31st posting) entitled ''The Communist; Frank Marshall Davis, Barack Obama's Mentor'', that her university lecturer had ''convinced the entire class that Marxism was 'wonderful' but a misunderstood idea that simply had not been tried correctly. He absolutely brainwashed us!''  An Australian professor told one of my patients that he ''teaches a softer side of communism.''  (sic!)  Professor Kengor did a comprehensive two year study on World History textbooks. He says, ''Their treatment of Communism is scandalous. The greatest abuse is the sins of omission. I could not find a single text that listed figures on the number of dead under communist governments. These omissions were not repeated for historical abuses like the Inquisition, the Crusades, slavery, or the Holocaust. Right-Wing dictators like Cuba's Batista and chile's Pinochet were treated far more harshly than Fidel Castro who generated many victims and was still in power.'' 

The Way I See It....of course the text books were biased because the same academic socialist professorial scum write the textbooks and many on the educational boards sympathize with Marxist ideals. It goes high up....just look at Marxist born and raised President Obama and in Australia, the dyed-in-the-wool Marxist-lover, Prime Minister Julia Gillard (nicknamed "Jul-Liar"). When I read the naive drivel on the Socialist Alternative website saying things like, ''Imagine a society where people take what they need and give what they can; where no one is satisfied until everyone has food,clothing, shelter and quality of life. Imagine a society that no longer pitted workers against each other; in competition for work; where war, famine, poverty, racism, sexism and homophobia were things of the past. There is an alternative to the irrationality of capitalism. That alternative is socialism (Communism),'' I shake my head at the profound stupidity from supposedly smart people.

In short, we now have entire generation of Western youth born after the collapse of the Berlin Wall  and USSR.  They didn't live through the mass repression and carnage that was Soviet communism. They need to hear about it, just as my generation learned the evils of Nazism. We have failed to teach the horrors of the Bolshevik Revolution specifically and of communism generally. Those horrors include over 100 million corpses generated by this vile ideology starting with that revolution in Russia in 1917.  Unfortunately, they are not. And so, we shouldn't be surprised when they get sucked into protest marches that are managed by socialist organizers.

The Tide Ebbs on Another Climate Myth !

Australia's Foreign Minister, Senator Bob Carr recently claimed that global warming and rising sea levels would make KIRIBATI uninhabitable in 20-30 years, saying; ''What I'm looking at here is the living reality of climate change. This sends a message of what might happen to this nation of 100,000 island people should temperatures continue to warm and sea levels rise.''  Carr's alarmist statements are not backed by available peer-reviewed literature. On the contrary, there is ample evidence to show that concerns over Kiribati and other island nations are without scientific foundation. Many of the 33 atolls which make up Kiribati (formerly known as the Gilbert Islands) are low-lying. Its economy is weak with the ending of phosphate mining on Banaba, and income is essentially fro fishing, licensing, overseas workers sending home their earnings and foreign aid.

In 2010, Arthur Webb & Paul Kench, using historical aerial photographs and satellite images, published results which showed that 23 out of 27 Pacific Islands had either remained intact or had grown in area. Some had grown dramatically. The researchers told the BBC: ''That rather gloomy prognosis for these nations is incorrect. It has been thought that as the sea level goes up, the islands will drown. But they won't. When or if the sea level goes up, the islands will start responding.'' In fact, they pointed out that the islands of Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia are among those which have grown, assisted by accumulated coral debris, and sediment. They added, ''We have now got the evidence to suggest that the physical foundation of these countries will still be there in 100 or more years.''  Noted was the relative sea-level rise at Takuu Island and the Carteret Islands. Both groups are on the submarine Ontong Java Plateau, where the sea-level rise can be attributed to tectonic subsidence.

Alarmist messages about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and dangerous sea level rise stems from the thoroughly discredited U.N.'s IPCC statements and are promoted by a number of vested interests. EcoFascist Alarmists cries have been used as emotional and unsubstantiated arguments for a carbon (dioxide) tax and compensation for islanders to be paid by power-hungry Western nations. The purported plight of Kiribati and Tuvalu are now seen as useful vehicles to promote the Australian Government's agenda. We can only hope the lack of global warming over the past 17 years and no real rise in sea level might sink into the dogmatic minds of this government. Thankfully an election is coming in September and with the idiot Julia Gillard defeated, the coalition promised to wipe out the climate change bureaucracy that grew during her years in power.

The Maldives group of low-lying atolls in the Indian Ocean are also frequently mentioned by global warming/sea-level alarmists as being under threat. The Island's politicians, who are forever drawing attention to their homeland's entirely imaginary fate, have used media-attracting stunts such as holding underwater cabinet meetings prior to the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen. Professor Nils-Axel Morner, arguably the world's foremost expert on sea-level measurement, has refuted Maldives President Mohammed Nasheed's disaster scenario with a letter to him. He wrote; ''You have recently held an undersea Cabinet meeting to raise awareness of the idea that sea-levels are rising and hence threatens to drown the Maldives. This proposition is not founded in observational facts and true scientific judgements. Your people ought not to have to suffer a constant claim that there is no future for them. This terrible message is deeply inappropriate as there is simply is no rational basis for it.''

The Way I See It....unvalidated computer model predictions of future global warming and sea-level rise provide no scientific basis for evacuation from low-lying Pacific Islands. It appears that the IPCC and CSIRO, backed by Al Gore, are committed to sea-level alarmism. Both organizations, presumably because of political and financial interests, find it difficult to concede that their predictions are not supported by available science and are unmitigated Bullshit.

The Deputy Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Tavau Teii, argued in a speech to the United Nations saying that; ''Tuvalu is seeking new funding arrangements to protect us from the impacts of climate change. Rather than relying on aid money we believe that the major greenhouse polluters should pay for the impacts they are causing.'' I can see why anyone living on an over-populated island with limited income, sewage, along with fresh water problems, would certainly want to improve their lot. Blaming Australia for producing trivial amounts of non-polluting, life-giving carbon dioxide, leading to imaginary catastrophic global warming and dangerous sea-level rise might well be a scheme of some merit. No global warming and related sea-level alarm would mean NO compensation claims from island nations. Stick to your coconut harvesting guys, and don't think about migrating to Australia...please!

Earth Hour is Back! This Time Turn Off Your Fridge !

This year Earth Hour will extend to the International Space Station, where astronaut Andre Kuipers will watch over the planet as the lights switch off on March 31st. In Sydney, where Earth Hour began at the height of the Global Warming hysteria (2007) by the World Wildlife Fund.  We'll see many celebrities cashing in on the event with thousands of others before spreading out to reach hundreds of millions of the misguided and uninformed in the largest feel-good action for "saving" the planet.

 Obviously the WWF is not going to let-the-cat-out-of-the-bag and expose the truth that there hasn't been any appreciable Global Warming in 17 years! So ignorance marches on with events that will include the pathetic candle-lit sustainable (?) dinners at restaurants we saw last year, as well as unplugged (acoustic) music performances and at other various venues. I hear there will be an opera performed (in the dark ?) in Brisbane. Sydney Harbour will be offering solar-powered boat rides (at night ?), while 7000 other world cities will cater to the enviromentalist's ideology.

Danish environmental writer and academic, Bjorn Lomborg, has made a controversial claim that the mindless insanity of Earth Hour actually increases the world's emissions when global warmists will turn off their lights for just one hour. He says, ''Notice that you have not been asked to switch off anything really inconvenient, such as your heating, air conditioning, television, computer, mobile phone, or any of the myriad technologies that depend on affordable, plentiful energy that makes modern life possible."  But if they did that, these romantics might realise electricity is an essential and not a luxury. Lomborg states, ''Even if everyone in the world cut all residential lighting, and this translated entirely into CO2 reduction, it would be the equivalent of China pausing its CO2 emissions for less than four minutes. In fact, Earth Hour will cause emissions to increase.''

It seems Britain's National Grid operators have found, a small decline in electricity consumption does not translate into less energy being pumped into the grid, and therefore will not reduce emissions. Moreover, during Earth Hour any significant drop in electricity demand will entail a reduction in CO2 emissions during the hour, but it will be offset by the surge from firing up coal or gas stations to restore electricity supplies afterwards. Lomborg adds,  ''And the cozy candles that many participants will light, which seem so natural and environmentally friendly, are still fossil fuels and almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs. Using one candle for each switched-off bulb cancels out even the theoretical CO2 reduction; using two candles means that you'll emit more CO2.''

So, on Saturday evening, 1.3 billion people will go without light for an hour at 8:30 and for the rest of the night, just like every other night of the year, billions more, with no access to electricity....darkness after sunset will be a constant reality for these people. So tell me again....why turning off the lights for an hour is so inspirational? Has it to do with the herd instinct, group think or a mob mentality? It seems the the ''watermelons'', of which the WWF is one of the wealthy ones is priming the ''peasants'' to accept a restricted way of life in the future with talk of how Clean Energy can save a Mother Earth from us bad humans. This form of ideology pays fitting tribute to the leadership of the late Kim-Jong-Ill for creating in North Korea the living example of taking a country back to the 19th century energy future they desire: a dark, cold future (see photo).

The Way I See It....is that if you were actually trying to persuade people they could have their carbon-free cake and still stay in the 21st century....this does not seem the smart way to do it. Particularly, since you present them both immediately before and after Earth Hour with the, well, alternative. I most certainly do not mean so-called ''alternative energy'', but the alternative to their preferred energy sources. Needless to say it won't be the WWFs choice of euphemistically called ''sustainable energy''; that is using the high cost, unreliable sources of wind, sun and sea. The Eco-facists will not give a thought that nuclear power, running on fuel from Mother Earth's own home-grown uranium, would fill the bill much better. So people, here's our energy future with the compliments of the Green movement; brownouts, blackouts and lots of Darkness. If you come to your senses and shake off the Man-made Warming guilt-trip and here's your carbon energy present and future; LIGHTS!   You can keep your Earth Hour!

Survey: Some Children Prone To More Disease !

Suspicions have been confirmed for those wary of vaccinating their children. A recent on-going large study corroborates other independent study surveys comparing unvaccinated children to vaccinated children. This study out of Germany compared disease rates between these two groups and points to a pretty clear disparity as far as illness rates are concerned. As reported by the group Health Freedom Alliance, children who have been vaccinated according to official government schedules are up to five times  more likely to contract a preventable disease than children who developed their own immune systems naturally without vaccines.

This survey's preliminary findings were released last year and included data on 8,000 unvaccinated children whose overall disease rates were compared to disease rates among the vaccinated general public. And in every single disease category, unvaccinated children fared far better than the vaccinated children in terms of both disease prevalence and severity. In other words, the evidence suggests that vaccines are neither effective nor safe. In a similar, but related, study conducted in the U.S. back in the 1990s, researchers found that the death rate among vaccinated children for infection with diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough is also twice as high, on average, compared with unvaccinated children. There is presently an on-going survey in America with well over 11,000 children and results have yet to be released.

''No study of health outcomes of vaccinated people versus unvaccinated has ever been conducted in the U.S. by the CDC or any other agency in the 50 years or more of an accelerating schedule of vaccinations foisted on our children,'' writes Louis Rain, member of the Health Freedom Alliance.
He adds, ''There are now over 50 doses of 14 vaccines given before kindergarten, 26 doses in a child's first year, well before its own immune can get up to speed, it's obscene.''  A Phd immunologist, who wrote the book ''Vaccine Illusion''  (2012), Dr Tetyana Obukhanych, has gone against the dogma of her medical training. She asserts that true immunity to any disease is not conferred by vaccines. Exposure to the disease, whether contracted or not....does!

Of course, none of these studies were picked up by the MSM (mainstream media). None were funded by the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) or the World Health Organization (WHO) or any national or international health agency or medical group. These gutless hypocrites don't dare compare the health on unvaccinated children to vaccinated children objectively and risk disrupting their vaxmania (vaccine mania). Dramatic, debilitating, or lethal vaccine injuries were not and are not the focus since so few, 5% or less, actually get reported to Vaccine Adverse Injury Reporting System (VAERS) in the United States for various reasons including:

• It's a complicated system that takes time from the doctor's practice.
• Most parents don't know about it, and the doctor isn't inclined to tell them.
• Only adverse reactions that occur immediately after vaccinations are considered.
• Since VAERS is voluntary, most doctors don't want to incriminate themselves with vaccine injuries and maintain their denial of vaccine dangers.

So, consequently, even the most terrible adverse reactions are minimally acknowledged, while long-term negative health issues resulting from vaccines are not even considered relevant. Here's a few examples as disclosed at VaccineInjury.info, vaccinated children are twice as likely as unvaccinated children to develop neurodermatitis, a skin disorder marked by chronic itching and scratching. Similarly, vaccinated children are about two-and-a half times as likely, based on current data, to develop a pattern of migraine headaches compared to the unvaccinated. The numbers are even more divergent for asthma and chronic bronchitis, where vaccinated children are 8 times more likely to develop such respiratory problems. Vaccinated children are also far more likely to develop hyperactivity, hayfever, and thyroid disease, with their likelihood 3 times, 4 times and shockingly 17 times higher, respectively, compared to unvaccinated children.

Where the gloves really come off on the issue, however, is with autism, the long-held point of contention in the vaccine safety debate. According to the data, Autism is extremely rare among unvaccinated children. The reality is that vaccinated children are about 2.5 times more likely to develop severe autism compare to unvaccinated children....a shocking finding when considering the medical establishment vehemently denies any link whatsoever between vaccines and autism. And as it turns out, many of the vaccinated children with reported severe autism tested high for heavy metals, including mercury, which further indicts vaccines and their disease-causing adjuvants.

The Way I See It....the correlations shown in these various surveys does not necessarily conclude causation, the overall disparity of disease rates between vaccinate and unvaccinated children at the very least points to a very strong connection that cannot be denied or dismissed anymore. Even after accounting for bias, as the survey's authors have tried to do over the years, the data continues to show much higher disease rates among the unfortunate vaccinated children compared to the unvaccinated children.

The Female Genital Surgery Conspiracy !

The number of women and teenagers undertaking genital cosmetic surgery in Australia and worldwide is increasing at an alarming rate with them turning to health providers to pursue ''designer vaginas''. The most popular procedure is labiaplasty which is covered by Medicare. Although parental permission is required this procedure has been performed on girls as young as 14 years old. Maddy Silver, Sexual Health Therapist, reports that Women's Health Victoria published a paper last month on female genital cosmetic surgery, which it hopes will help generate debate among health professionals and advocates about how to respond to the emergence of these controversial procedures.

Many people think the external genitals of a woman are called the Vagina. But this is wrong: the vagina is the tube of passage inside, which is not visible from the outside. What you can see from the outside is the vulva, and it is the vulva that so many women would like to have surgically altered. The main features of the vulva are the four labia of ''lips''. There are two outer labia, which are called the ''labia majora'' and the two smaller labia the ''labia minora''. The entry to the vagina lies between the two inner lips.

Some women are unhappy with the appearance of their labia. They may particularly complain about the labia minora saying that they are ''too long'' or ''just ugly'' and they should not protrude. Some women have had their labia change in appearance after giving birth. Some believe that labiaplasty, the surgical reduction of the size of their labia, will make them look normal again.  But what is Normal?  During the last decade, images of female genitals have become widely available on the Internet, adult magazines and in some women's publications. But many of these images are totally unrealistic and don't depict normal variations.

The reality is that people who produce these pictures or films use models with ''tidy'' genitals, not particularly because they want to but they have to.  As far as the Australian Classification Board is concerned, if the vulva is protruding too much it'''too rude'' to show. So it seems many women feel the same way viewing their own endowments. Maddy Silver says, ''Cosmetic surgeons and other health professionals are playing on the insecurities of women. There is a lot of money to be made is this business. Just look at all the advertisements on the Internet.'' Medical experts have warned that some young women who approach cosmetic surgery companies are depressed or on medication, and are being sold operations without preliminary access to alternative psychological therapies.

Francis DÁrcy-Tehan, psychologist and clinical sexologist in Geelong, Victoria, became aware of women's genital anxieties and their impact on self-esteem through her private practice work. She asked women to take part in an online survey for her PhD topic The Effects of Genital Image and Body Image on Sexual Functioning in Women and hopes the research will contribute to improving women's sexual health and wellbeing. In her research, so far, she found that to prevent unnecessary surgery it is important to educate health professionals and the public about the anatomy and physiology of the vulva. She states, '' The labia minora is a highly sensitive sexual organ and plays an important role for sexual response. It is dense with nerve endings and sensory receptors, which are highly sensitive to light touch. It is for this very reason you get the horrible practice (photo) by culturally misguided Muslims doing genital mutilations on their young girls, This dreadfully disgusting practice has been all but stamped out in Australia and needs to be worldwide.''

The Way I See It....labiaplasty surgery can have damaging after effects, such as infection, scarring and painful sex. Sometimes labiaplasty results in painful or uncomfortable labia -- if the surgeon makes the labia too short or sculpts the tissue in a way that can cause discomfort or pain on sitting. I am not sure that these surgeons who are happily cutting off pieces of labia realise the additional problems that can occur with this procedure. I'm sure they will get an ''earful'' when the young lady is not happy, but what's done is done.

The main function of the vulva is to give pleasure and labiaplasty and the Islamic abomination of mutilation has the obvious effect to destroy an erogenous zone and can lead to lack of arousal and impede orgasmic responses. My advice is to seriously think again before spending a fortune on an operation that cannot be reversed and may have lasting effects on your sex life.

Britain Succumbs To Green Madness !

Just when you think Australia takes the booby prize for global warming madness, along comes Britain. Readers of my blog might be astonished to hear me report on the media release, last month, by Alistair Buchanan, retiring head of energy regulator Ofgem, warning that March will see the closure of five major coal-fired power stations that between them contribute nearly a sixth of the UK's average electricity needs. Over the next few years, Mr Buchanan fears, Britain will be dangerously close to not having enough power in the grid to keep the lights on!

Even the giant Drax power station (photo) in Yorkshire, which is one of the most efficiently run coal-fired power stations in the world...and supplies 7% of all the electricity used is Britain is on the ''hit-list''. As a result of a change in Government policy, triggered by European Union (EU) rules, Drax will embark on a 700 million pound switch away from burning coal for which it was designed, in order to convert it six colossal boilers to burn millions of tons a year of wood chips instead. Most of these chips will comes from trees felled in forests covering a staggering 4,6000 square miles in the U.S.A. Crazy...right?

The theory is that, by gradually switching to wood -- or biomass as it is officially known -- Drax will eventually save millions of tons of CO2 from going every year into the atmosphere, thereby helping to prevent climate change and save the planet. These idiots obviously haven't read the their own MET Office reports saying that there hasn't been any global warming for the last 17 years! It was a Brit, Christopher Booker, that wrote in his 2009 book, ''The Real Global Warming Disaster'' that the writing was on the wall in the government's energy White Paper of 2003, that Britain's lights were going to go out if this policy was pursued. Yet, Tony Blair signed up to this energy policy centred on building thousands of windmills, already fully aware that Britain would be losing many of it's coal-fired power stations due to an EU anti-pollution directive, and that, foolishly, Britain was unlikely to build any new nuclear power stations to replace those that by now would be nearing the end of their life.

Of course, beside not having enough power, Britons are faced with a terrifying new emerging new element in the Government's energy policy. It well knows that electricity from the tens of thousands more wind turbines it hopes to see built in the coming years will cost between two and four times as much as that from conventional power stations. Its solution to this is to rig the market with new taxes and other devices so that this will make electricity from wind farms somehow seem competitive -- not by making wind cheaper but by doubling the cost of electricity from the gas, coal and nuclear power stations that still provide virtually all the electricity England needs to keep its lights on.

The harsh fact is that successive governments in past 10 years have staked their country's future on two utterly suicidal gambles. First, they have fallen for the delusion that they can depend for nearly a third of their future power needs on those useless and unreliable windmills -- which will require a dozen or more new gas-fired power stations just to provide back-up for when the wind is not blowing. Secondly, at the same time, by devices such as the punitive ''carbon tax'' due to come into force on April 1, they plan to double the cost of electricity acquired from grown-up power stations, which can only have the effect in the coming years of  doubling electricity bills, driving millions more households into fuel poverty.

The Way I See It.....the madness of green zealots is running Britain's energy supplies. If the government were not lost in a green bubble of complete make-believe, it would keep open those coal-fired power stations the EU is forcing them to close, stop subsidising grotesquely expensive wind farms, and it would go flat out to exploit Britain's vast reserves of the shale gas that has more than halved US gas prices in four years.

Unfortunately, Britain doesn't have a government that has the balls to tell the Greenies and the EU to get f-cked!  So their lights will go out, the economy will suffer a catastrophe, power bills will double and tens of thousands more people will die of cold in those freezing winters that the politicians were somehow fooled into believing would never come again.

Where Are The Fukushima Alarmists Now ?

Last night, I watched a documentary marking the first anniversary of the Fukushima Nuclear Plant disaster in Japan. I think most of you know that it was the byproduct of a 8.8 Earthquake out to sea that caused an enormous tsunami that inundated miles of countryside as well as the plant and its backup generators that were in each building's cellars.. With no power to have pumps pour in water to keep the core-rods cool, they overheated and the increased pressure was vented manually in three of the containment vessels....spreading radioactive dust and gas. Note: The Reactors were of an old design and were going to be replaced with a self-contained internal power source to provide backup pumps when it was needed.

Remember the disgraceful scaremongering over this emergency. I know we can't expect the media to be saints, but scares sell and sometimes scares even turn out to be true. But now that we know, a year later, that not a single person died in this crisis, and that not a single person is likely to, either, can we please introduce a new tradition with scaremongers that could still sell papers and lift ratings. Sure, keep interviewing them as we greedily do after every fresh ''catastrophe'', whether it's Fukushima, bird flu, SARS, flooding rain, forestfires or global warming. But then, after everything settles down as it usually does, can we have the same traders-in-fear back for a sobering follow-up. Let's call it ''How did you get it so wrong?''.  Or, ''What's your excuse this time?''

May I propose the first guests? For Top Ratings in the OMG-Fear Category, I want to see the following people lined up against a studio wall to be shot in close-up explaining how they got Fukushima so wrong.
          FIRST, lets ask the writer for Crikey (an Australian electronic magazine) Guy Rundle to show us his dead Fukushima pilots, stripped of flesh. Rundle is the alarmist who wrote: ''As I write this, the Japanese are conducting direct overflies to try and control the continuing damage most like this will be a suicide mission for the pilots and crew. The Japanese crews will slough their skin and muscles, and bleed out internally under the full glare of the world's media.''
          Well, in that recent documentary, they interviewed the pilots and crews of the water-bombing helicopters and they were saying they were experiencing no after-effects from their heroic flights.

          SECONDLY, let's have veteran nuclear hysteric Helen Caldicott, (left) who warned on a number of radio and TV stations that the Fukushima reactor could blow-up at any time (a scenario ruled out by nuclear experts). This she wailed, ''God, hundreds of thousands of Japanese will be dying with two weeks of acute radiation illness....with countless more later suffering from an 'epidemic' of cancers.''
          Come on Helen....explain yourself, now that you were made to be an ignorant fool!!

          THIRDLY,  let's get another twit, Dr Tilman Ruff, (sounds like a dog's name),   who's actually a Nossal Institute of Infectious Diseases expert and long-time anti-nuclear activist (see I told you he was a twit), who wildly claimed ''we might be looking at a Chernobyl-type disaster or worse.'' and hungrily described the many ways people could get sick from the fallout that never really came. Such alarmists were given a red carpet entree into the news rooms of almost every big news organisation when fear was then a hot commodity.

The Way I See It....there was no lasting threat of radiation. Remarkably, outside the immediate area of Fukushima, this is hardly a problem at all. Although the crippled nuclear reactors themselves still pose a danger, no one, including personnel who worked in the buildings, died from radiation exposure. Most experts agree that future health risks from the released radiation, notably radioactive iodine-131 and cesium-134 and -137, are extremely small and likely to be undetectable.

Even considering the upper boundary of estimated effects, there is unlikely to be any detectable increase in cancers in Japan, Asia or the world, according to the World Health Organization report. It states; ''There will almost certainly be no increase in birth defects or genetic abnormalities from radiation.''

Galactic Relevance versus Global Irrelevance !

Man-made carbon dioxide is generally thought to produce global warming. However, in my previous blog postings I covered the fact that the Earth's temperature has remained steady over the last 16 -17 years while CO2 has gone up over 50% in that time. But if carbon dioxide is not the cause, then what is?  Evidence has been accumulating the past 6 years that cosmic rays associated with fluctuations in the sun's electromagnetic field may be what drives global warming. A new theory called cosmoclimatology that proposes a natural mechanism for climate fluctuations has been developed by Henrik Svensmark (see photo),  head of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Center. He published his initial research in 2007 entitled, ''The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change,'' in conjunction with Nigel Calder (a professional science writer). I posted an article on this Blog on the 21st March, 2010, informing my readers about this discovery, entitled ''Nothing Man-Made About Global Warming.''

Some history might help here. Edward L. Maunder reported in 1904 that the number of spots on the sun has an 11-year cycle. The low number of sunspots in the period from 1645 to 1715 produced what is known as the Little Ice Age, the coldest period of temperature during the last 1,000 years. It also called the Maunder Minimum, which once again I explained more fully in a recent posting on 21st of January this year entitled, ''We've Been Snowed By The 'Experts'!" In the article you will see an old print showing a ''Frost Fair'' being held on the frozen Thames River in London.

For many years, climatologists attempted to correlate the number of sunspots with various climate variables, including temperature and precipitation. By the 1980s these attempts were determined to be futile, because the percentage change in solar heating was found to be insufficient to explain the variations. However, this interest began to increase the connection between cosmic rays and sunspots, carbon-14 in the atmosphere, and beryllium-10 on the surface of meteorites. In particular, it was found that carbon-14 dating needed to be corrected for fluctuations in cosmic ray flux. Without such adjustments, many carbon-14 dates were inconsistent. The question raised, could cosmic rays affect other geophysical phenomena as well?

In 1995, Henrik Svensmark discovered a startling connection between the cosmic ray flux from space and cloud cover. He found that when the sun is more active -- more sunspots, a stronger magnetic field, larger auroras, stronger solar winds, etc. -- fewer cosmic rays strike the earth and cloud cover is reduced, resulting in warmer temperatures. ( see chart left )  He suggested that during the Little Ice Age when the sun was inactive, cosmic ray flux from space was high, cloud amount was greater which reflected the sun's rays back out into space and global temperatures were cooler. As the sun became more active after 1750, cosmic ray flux decreased, cloud amount decreased and global temperatures warmed.

Many critics were skeptical of Svensmark's theory until he explained the mechanism by which cosmic rays create more clouds. He designed a laboratory experiment to demonstrate how cosmic rays produce more cloud nuclei on which cloud droplets can form, which he called Cloud Condensation Nuclei (CCN). Most CNN that nucleate cloud droplets in water clouds near the earth's surface are composed of compounds of sulfuric acid derived from water vapor, sulphur dioxide and ozone (found in the air over the ocean). He built a Cloud Chamber containing these gases and found cosmic rays were ionizing molecules in the chamber. This process occurs extremely rapidly and he saw that the elections function as a catalyst to form clusters of molecules that grow and produce sulfuric acid CCN. When the air is lifted by normal meteorological process, these additional CCN form more dense and widespread clouds. A more complete experiment called CLOUD was conducted at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland early last year after numerous delays. Finally on the 23rd of August results of the experiment were published. They show that ionisation from cosmic rays significantly enhances aerosol formation leading to lots of cloud formation.

The Way I See It....Svensmark's theory of cosmoclimatolgy is now completely proven. He has discovered a complete chain events that explains the variations in global temperature that have puzzled climatologists for so many years and that has now led to an explanation for the recent global warming episode and now its 17 years of no further increase and signs of actual cooling. It would be prudent for the political leadership in the U.S., Australia and European Union to look more closely at Svensmark's cosmoclimatology for an explanation of global warming before restructuring our entire economic systems to eliminate carbon dioxide. If, in fact, Svensmark is correct, reducing the concentration of carbon dioxide will not only be the height of stupidity but will have little impact, anyway.

The Republicans Need an X-Factor !

The poor Republicans, besmirched by Obama's campaign managers, the Obama asskissing press as well as the ratbag President blaming them for failing to stop automatic spending cuts which he agreed upon but wanted to weasel out of by tacking on increased taxes. Republicans don't control the U.S. Senate so instead of wasting time and energy in doomed efforts to defeat President Obama's Cabinet nominees or sucking up to illegal aliens, why not focus on issues where Republicans can by off-the-charts popular while forcing Democrats into taking stupid positions.

After the slaughters at Virginia Tech, Aurora, Colorado, and Newtown, Connecticut, every sentient person knows we need to do something about institutionalizing the mentally ill and at the very least -- keeping guns out of their hands. That happens to be impossible right now because liberal, do-gooders closed the institutions. Involuntary commitments even for the severely psychotic went the way of vagrancy laws. Although federal law technically requires background checks to include records of mental illness, the states and mental health industry refuse to provide that information.

Of course, the vast majority of mentally disturbed individuals are not dangerous. But looking at it from the other end, more than half of all mass murder is committed by the mentally ill. Gun ownership doesn't lead to random murder rampages, mental illness does. And the good news for Republicans is: Democrats will only pretend to support keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous psychotics, while working frantically to gut and undermine such measures. Liberals have a fear of ''stigmatizing'' the fruitcakes more than they fear another mass murder. Instead of proposing serious reforms, the Democrats play politics by demonizing responsible gun owners and the Republicans who defend them.

Preventing crazy people from buying guns is very hard. The Marxist-leaning American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) will sue and we'll be tied up in lawsuits for a decade, at which point a Democrat-appointed judge will rule that including records of paranoid delusions in FBI background checks is unconstitutional. These are the same bastards who stopped the Connecticut legislature from passing a Involuntary Commitment law in February, last year, which subsequently denied Adam Lanza's mother the ability to have him committed in the months leading up to the massacre. Since the ''insane'' deinstitutionalization movement got under way in the 1970s, the mentally ill remain mentally ill, but now instead of living in warm, safe institutions, they live out on the streets, in homeless shelters and in soup kitchens, or drift back to their helpless families, occasionally showing up in ''gun-free zones'' to commit mass murder.

After the Virginia Tech shooting, an poll showed that while Americans remain dubious about the effect of more gun control laws, 83% supported requiring states to provide information on the mentally ill for gun background checks. Since then, the mentally deranged have continued committing mass shootings. There is still no way to prevent them from buying guns. It is outrageous that the pure gutlessness of politicians has allowed the idiots in the ACLU to interfere with the public's safety. They all have blood-on-their-hands! Read my December 20th Posting entitled, ''Mental Health Bill Could've Stopped Shooter !'' for the full story.

The Way I See It....Republicans should take a good hard look at the way things stack up against them and change direction. Here's some avenues for success:

• Stop pushing amnesty for illegal aliens; 80% of Americans ferociously oppose you.
• Stop pointlessly opposing Obama's nominess; 99% need a supply of NoDoz just to listen.
• Stop staking out Amnesty International's position on the president's hypothetical ability to use a drone strike on an ''American citizen.''  70% of Americans are against you on this.
• Keep opposing the Democrats' idiotic proposals on gun control; 60-70% support you, but the other 30-40% will hate you because they want to ''Do Something.''
• Keep proposing the involuntary commitment of dangerous psychotics and implementing measures to prevent them from obtaining guns; 83%  of Americans support you and will be furious at Democrats for supporting ACLU for trying to undercut such laws.

Liberals can't help themselves -- they're like Dr. Strangelove with the Nazi salute. The Democratic base will wail, ''Who's to say who is crazy? Maybe we're the crazy ones!'' and bleat about stigmatizing the mentally ill. They secretly feel that Hitler had a better solution. OK...it's your choice Republicans!!  Take positions that will make you extremely popular, reduce mass murder in America and simultaneously reveal the insanity of the Democratic Party, or keep prattling about topics of interest to no one.   Take all the time you need...2014 is a whole year away.

Dangerous Fake Sweeteners' Assault on Milk !

The news from America is unbelievable!  This past week my niece in California put me on to a disturbing article reporting the petitioning of the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) by two very powerful dairy organizations. The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) want the FDA to allow aspartame and other artificial sweeteners to be added to milk and other dairy products without a label!

Aspartame, as you know from my February 24th posting, is made up of three components: 50% phenylalanine (a chemical that affects brain activity by transmitting impulses), 40% aspartic acid and 10% methanol (poisonous wood alcohol). Based on the FDA's track record in handling the aspartame issue, things are not looking good to stop approval of this outrageous measure. For one, back in 1996 when aspartame was first approved for use in thousands of food products, the FDA used 15 ''pivotal'' studies as the basis for its decision.

One of these pivotal studies involved oral dosage of aspartame to infant Rhesus monkeys for 52 weeks. The research was conducted by the University of Wisconsin Medical Center in Madison, Wisconsin. The monkeys were divided into three groups. A low dose group which received 1.0 hm of aspartame/kg of body weight per day, a medium dose group was receiving 3.0gm/kg per day and a high dose group receiving 4-6gm/kg per day. The monkeys were served their aspartame in an orally consumed milk based formula.

Starting about 7 months (218 days) into the experiment, ALL the medium and high dose monkeys began having brain seizures!  The lead researcher stated; All animals in the medium and high dosage groups exhibited seizure activity. Seizures were grand mal type.  One monkey, #m38, of the high dose group, died after 300 days of treatment. Grand mal seizures, also known as tonic clonic seizures are horrific -- a very dangerous seizure which affects the entire brain.'' The low dose monkeys might have started to have seizures as well, but the death of one of the researchers caused a lack of staffing, and the low dose monkeys were withdrawn from the test at 200 days which is before the seizures in the medium and high dose began occurring. As soon as the aspartame was withdrawn from the monkey's diets....the seizures stopped.

How the FDA could call a study ''pivotal'' for approving aspartame use in thousands of products where every single monkey suffered from grand mal seizures and one dying while consuming milk based formula containing this artificial sweetener is incomprehensible. According to Robert Cohen of Oradell, New Jersey who rediscovered this early study, stated, ''It's so obvious that the dairy formula/aspartame milk which the monkeys ingested would have been a key reason for the brain seizures.'' Cohen, who holds a degree in brain chemistry, suggests that the ingestion of dairy has the effect of elevating the pH of the stomach. He contends that drinking a single 12 oz glass of milk would have the effect of buffering the pH of the stomach from 2 to 6. When the stomach pH is 6, he explains, the simple proteins that comprise aspartame would pass through undigested and hence move into the blood stream intact. That would allow the brain to be at the mercy of Phenylalanine.

The Way I See It....it is not only Phenylaline that activated the seizures but the addition of Methanol to further insult the delicate brain tissue concerned with the optic nerve and vision. With aspartame, aka Nutrasweet, already used but still included on the label of many dairy products, it's not a big leap for the FDA to take it to unlabeled status based on the petition from uncaring Big Dairy.

This is especially probable given the FDA's backward interpretation of the Rhesus monkey study which it used to prove human safely and yet all the monkeys suffered from grand mal seizures while ingesting aspartame-laced milk. If these people don't come to their senses and switch to using Stevia in their flavored milks instead, then God forbid the affects on everyone's brain cells. People must write to the FDA voicing their concern.

DING DONG.....The Prick is Dead !

Even before his welcomed death, Hugo Chavez had joined Fidel Castro and ''Che'' Guevara in the pantheon of socialist losers. He is the subject of deep admiration that easily morphs into a form of worship and an antagonism that mutates into equally intense hatred. Chavez, 58, died Tuesday, after two years of cancer treatments. Inevitably, his legacy will be hard to assess objectively as that of other deeply polarizing tin-pot dictators, even if his deeds will be the fodder of endless debate, there are some incontrovertible aspects of his legacy. It's the Good, the Bad and the Ugly!

Chavez's most enduring and positive legacy was his shattering of Venezuela's peaceful coexistence with poverty, inequality and social exclusion. He was not the first political leader who placed the poor at the center of the national conversation and use oil revenue to help the poor, but no one did it so aggressively and with such initial passion. Moreover, it was his ability that made the poor feel that one them was in charge of the country; that had no precedent. Another positive aspect is that he ended the widespread political indifference and apathy nurtured over decades by a system dominated by decaying and out-of-touch political parties. The political awakening of the nation sparked by Chavez has engulfed the people and unfortunately, even the military. And here is where Chavez's negative legacy begins.

After 14 years in power, Chavez did not leave the nation a stronger democracy or a more prosperous economy. This despite his constant reminders that he had finally empowered the long-excluded poor and the fact that he presided over the longest increase in oil revenue in Venezuela's history. President Chavez was one of the most adroit practitioners of a political strategy that became common after the Cold War in many countries that political scientists call competitive authoritarian regimes. This is where leaders gain power through democratic elections and then change the constitution and other laws to weaken checks and balances on the Executive, thus ensuring the regime's continuity and its almost total autonomy while still retaining a patina of democratic legitimacy. It's not accidental that Hugo was the longest-serving head of state in the Americas.

Venezuela's socialist immersion has given it one of the world's largest fiscal deficits, highest inflation rates, worst misalignment of the exchange rate, fastest growing debt and one of most precipitous drops in productive capacity -- including that of the the critical oil sector. Moreover, the idiot Chavez didn't take notice that his nation fell to the bottom of the rankings that measure competitiveness, ease of doing business, or attractiveness to foreign investors, while rising to the top of the list of the world's most corrupt countries. And now we hear the asshole Nicolas Maduro, his successor, says he'll continue with Hugo's policies!

President Chavez leaves a fiercely polarized society. While social divisions always exited, Chavez's brand of politics depended on stroking resentment, rage, and revenge to levels previously unknown. This turned into an ugly facet of Chavez's tenure in having Venezuela become one of the world's murderous countries. Kabul or Baghdad is safer than Caracas, where homicides and kidnappings have become part of daily life. The country is also considered by international law enforcement agencies as a haven for counterfeiters, money launderers and traffickers in persons, weapons, and, of course, drugs. According to the United Nations, Venezuela has become the main supplier of drugs to Europe. The U.S. Treasury has named eight high-ranking members of the government, including the former head of intelligence and minister of defense, as drug kingpins.

In an ironic and surprising twist, it was reported that Iran's leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Wednesday a national day of mourning for Chavez while simultaneously elevating Chavez to martyr-status -- on par with Jesus Christ (who is considered a prophet in Islam) and Islam's 12th imam -- the last of the Twelve Imams who Shiites believe is mankind's savior. Shared ideologies and geo-political foes is one thing. Elevating a South American dictator to the same status as, essentially, one's messiah is quite another and borders on ''fruitcake-ville''. The Iranian leader said, ''I have no doubt that he will return, along with the righteous Jesus and the perfect human." Nonetheless, this is how deep Ahmadinejad's adoration apparently runs. Oh yes, Chavez enjoyed immense popularity in Iran, having made no less than 13 visits to the Islamic Republic during the span of 13 years. Maybe he picked up some radiation poisoning being shown around Iran nuclear processing facility so often. (see inspection photo on left)

The Way I see It....Hugo Chavez deserves to be remembered as a missed opportunity; a man ignorant of the consequences of socialism and all it bestows on any country that pursues its phony promises. Through it all Chavez was uncharacteristically silent and passive, not listening to the free-press before it was extinquished. His complacency as he watched his nation fall into a vortex of murder and criminality will be one of the most ugly and unforgivable aspects of his years in power.

The Venezuelan people gave Chavez a political blank cheque and thanks to the prolonged boom in oil prices he also had a financial blank cheque. Few other heads of state had the combination of vast popular support and immense financial resourses enjoyed by him for 14 years. His total control of all the levers of power ensured that he could do whatever he wanted. And he did! From changing the name of the country to changing its flag to imposing a new and unique time zone on his nation. And much more. What he did not do was leave the country better off than when he became president. I  can only hope when all those stupid individuals who followed him into the votex realize what is left of their country....they line up to piss on his grave.

Report Blames Climate Change for Australian Extremes !

Yesterday the New York Times ran an article describing a report put out by the Australian government's Climate Commission, run by warmist fanatic, Tim Flannery. You've heard of ''Terrified Tim'' from my previous postings and his insistent fear mongering who wouldn't take ''NO'' for an answer to the lack of real global warming over the last 17 years. This is even after the head of the United Nation's I.P.C.C. admitted to that fact last month. The report, titled ''The Angry Summer'', said that climate change was a major driving force behind a string of weather events that alternately scorched and soaked large sections of the country in recent months. Of course, most old-timers will tell one must be cautious to link the two because of the country's naturally occurring cycles of drought ad flooding rains, which are famous for being extreme when compared with much of the rest of the world.

In fact, Flannery was on the morning Today Show yesterday sprueking his Commission's report as gospel. But Karl Sefanovic questioned his ''high-and-mightiness''  about his 2007 pontification that climate change would reduce rainfall so ''even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our damns and our river systems.''  Which he continued saying this in 2008 and 2009 until the heavy rains and ensuing floods of 2010-11 shut him up. But when questioned yesterday he adamantly stated he was misquoted!  ''I said the dams 'may' not fill again,'' he said. Such gall.

When questioned by Leigh Sales on the ABC the night before, she reiterated that the main temperature measures show no statistically significant warming of the world for some 17 years. Flannery implicitly pulled a ''yes-but'' response by saying, ''In a sense what you're saying is correct, Leigh.....but there has been no plateau.  Ninety percent of the heat that is trapped by man-made greenhouse gases goes into the ocean, and when you look at the whole of the Earth, we're seeing a very strong warming trend. The heat imbalance is still there....it has to go somewhere and that's into the oceans.''  (Uh, really Tim?  You're delusional!)

Here are the sea surface temperature figures for the past decade on your left. As Professor Roy Spencer notes, ''.....they should be useful for monitoring signs of ocean surface warming, which appears to have stalled since at least the early 2000s.''  Sadly, Sales did not ask Flannery, now flogging a disgracefully alarmist report under the suggestive tile ''Angry Summer'', to account for his previous dud prediction that global warming will stop those rivers from flooding and dams from filling. This report of his commission makes claims largely on the basis of a single two-week heat wave that broke some records. Of course with the heat came the bush fires.

The Way I See It....the subsequent heavy rains and flooding that we also experience are an historical reality. Back in the 1970-80s these January-February deluges were a common occurrence. Professor Ole Humlum's summary of world temperature data suggests Flannery's Climate Commission in hyping Australia's ''Angry Summer'' is ''engaged in the most outrageous cherry picking to fuel warming hysteria. The whole of 2012 was actually only Australia's 39th warmest year since 1910.''

Generally, on average, global air temperatures were near the 1998-2006 average, although with big regional differences. The Southern Hemisphere was mainly at or below average 1998-2006 conditions. The only important exceptions to this is represented by southern Africa and Australia, which experience temperatures above the 1998-2006 average. The Antarctic continent was near or slightly above the temperature average and built up a lot of snow pack. The global oceanic heat content has been stable since 2003. All this suggests that the heat wave in late January and early February was not climate but weather. The Summer wasn't angry at all, but you should be. The Climate Commission deserves to be abolished immediately and Tim Flannery told to take-a-hike!