News

Obama administration used spying, threats and bribes to build support for global warming treaty

2 Comments

From the radically leftist UK Guardian of all places! (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.

The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial “Copenhagen accord”, the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.

Negotiating a climate treaty is a high-stakes game, not just because of the danger warming poses to civilisation but also because re-engineering the global economy to a low-carbon model will see the flow of billions of dollars redirected.

Seeking negotiating chips, the US state department sent a secret cable on 31 July 2009 seeking human intelligence from UN diplomats across a range of issues, including climate change. The request originated with the CIA. As well as countries’ negotiating positions for Copenhagen, diplomats were asked to provide evidence of UN environmental “treaty circumvention” and deals between nations.

But intelligence gathering was not just one way. On 19 June 2009, the state department sent a cable detailing a “spear phishing” attack on the office of the US climate change envoy, Todd Stern, while talks with China on emissions took place in Beijing. Five people received emails, personalised to look as though they came from the National Journal. An attached file contained malicious code that would give complete control of the recipient’s computer to a hacker. While the attack was unsuccessful, the department’s cyber threat analysis division noted: “It is probable intrusion attempts such as this will persist.”

The Beijing talks failed to lead to a global deal at Copenhagen.

[…]Perhaps the most audacious appeal for funds revealed in the cables is from Saudi Arabia, the world’s second biggest oil producer and one of the 25 richest countries in the world. A secret cable sent on 12 February records a meeting between US embassy officials and lead climate change negotiator Mohammad al-Sabban. “The kingdom will need time to diversify its economy away from petroleum, [Sabban] said, noting a US commitment to help Saudi Arabia with its economic diversification efforts would ‘take the pressure off climate change negotiations‘.”

The Saudis did not like the accord, but were worried they had missed a trick. The assistant petroleum minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told US officials that he had told his minister Ali al-Naimi that Saudi Arabia had “missed a real opportunity to submit ‘something clever’, like India or China, that was not legally binding but indicated some goodwill towards the process without compromising key economic interests”.

Wow, so this is what Obama has been working on as the unemployment rate has soared higher to 9.8%.

News

Tom Daschle explains what socialized medicine really means

16 Comments

ECM found this video on Health Care BS.

The thing you need to understand about socialized medicine is this:

  • If you don’t work then you don’t pay into the system
  • If you do work then you do pay into the system
  • If you are young and still voting, then you get treatment
  • If you are old and not still voting, then you get no treatment

So basically, if you collect welfare for your whole life, and choose to sleep with strangers, and then get an STD, then the abortion is FREEEE!

But, if you are old but have worked all your life, and get need surgery for a brain tumor, through no fault of your own, then you get DEAAADDDD!

That’s socialized medicine in a nutshell. And NO, you cannot pay for any treatment over the counter – in a single payer system the GOVERNMENT decides whether you will be treated and when. You pay into the system your whole life based on your income level, and the government treats other people who make free choices to indulge in risky lifestyle decisions. When you finally retire and get sick due to no fault of your own, you can get in line behind the people who want sex changes and IVF. Everyone has an equal life outcome regardless of their willingness to work or make responsible decisions about what is moral/immoral and safe/unsafe.

And what are the incentives in a socialized medicine system? There is no incentive to work. But there is an incentive to be irresponsible and risky with your health. People who spend the day working instead of skiing will pay for people who break their legs skiing instead of working. That’s socialized medicine. That’s “equality”. There is no personal responsibility or accountability in a socialist system.

News

How historically accurate are movies made by Hollywood?

1 Comment

Well, here’s an example from the radically leftist Washington Post of all places. The new movie “Fair Game” about the two Democrats Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The protagonists portrayed in the movie, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV and former spy Valerie Plame, claim that it tells the true story of their battle with the Bush administration over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Ms. Plame’s exposure as a CIA agent. “It’s accurate,” Ms. Plame told The Post. Said Mr. Wilson: “For people who have short memories or don’t read, this is the only way they will remember that period.”

[…]In fact, “Fair Game,” based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions – not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. In reality, as The Post’s Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby reported, Ms. Plame did not work directly on the program, and it was not shut down because of her identification.

The movie portrays Mr. Wilson as a whistle-blower who debunked a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. In fact, an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee found that Mr. Wilson’s reporting did not affect the intelligence community’s view on the matter, and an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush’s statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger was well-founded.

“Fair Game” also resells the couple’s story that Ms. Plame’s exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. A lengthy and wasteful investigation by a special prosecutor found no such conspiracy – but it did confirm that the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative.

As everyone knows, Valerie Plame was not outed by the White House. Even the leftist CBS News reported that she was outed by Dick Armey (Richard Armitage) – and it was an accident. This is not in dispute. And in any case, she was a CIA desk employee at the time of the story, not a CIA field agent.

The root problem of so many of our difficulties these days, from the national debt, to the breakdown of the family, etc., is this seemingly limitless capacity we have to insist on having fun all the time. People seem to not care that if they lie to themselves about a person, then it will not matter if they act on the lies – so long as the lies are entertaining.