schachterrific!

From the Associated Press’ crack investigative team, via Yahoo, a great piece of investigative journalism about a captured terrorist who has remained a mystery since 1973. And is about to be released:

In 1973, a young terrorist named Khalid Duhham Al-Jawary entered the United States and quickly began plotting an audacious attack in New York City.

He built three powerful bombs — bombs powerful enough to kill, maim and destroy — and put them in rental cars scattered around town, near Israeli targets.

The plot failed. The explosive devices did not detonate, and Al-Jawary fled the country, escaping prosecution for nearly two decades — until he was convicted of terrorism charges in Brooklyn and sentenced to 30 years in federal penitentiary.

But his time is up.

Read it. This is a definite must read!

According to the English edition of Pravda, the Earth is on the brink of a new Ice Age. According to compiled data, we are living at the end of a 12,000 year warming period, and the Earth will now begin to cool down and return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years.

The theory of ‘anthropogenic (man-made) global warming’, or AGW took a swift kick in the butt this past year as temperatures around the globa fell, bringing us one of the colder winters in a while:

The central piece of evidence that is cited in support of the AGW theory is the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph which was presented by Al Gore in his 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth.” The ‘hockey stick’ graph shows an acute upward spike in global temperatures which began during the 1970s and continued through the winter of 2006/07. However, this warming trend was interrupted when the winter of 2007/8 delivered the deepest snow cover to the Northern Hemisphere since 1966 and the coldest temperatures since 2001. It now appears that the current Northern Hemisphere winter of 2008/09 will probably equal or surpass the winter of 2007/08 for both snow depth and cold temperatures.

The main flaw in the AGW theory is that its proponents focus on evidence from only the past one thousand years at most, while ignoring the evidence from the past million years — evidence which is essential for a true understanding of climatology. The data from paleoclimatology provides us with an alternative and more credible explanation for the recent global temperature spike, based on the natural cycle of Ice Age maximums and interglacials.

Read the 3-page article here. Sorry, Al.

Take it or leave it.

It’s interesting to note how some mainstream media organization subtly attempt to spin the news, and instead of factually reporting events, choose to leave out parts of the story, or use a carefully nuanced adjective or adverb to subliminally overlay the story with threads of directed meaning.

Case in point: This morning’s Gaza Conflict news from Reuters and the AP.

Here is the Reuters head and first paragraph:

Israel rebuffs U.N. resolution and pursues Gaza war

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Israel rejected a U.N. resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza on Friday and, as jets and tanks again pounded the Palestinian enclave, announced no decision on whether to step up its two-week-old war on Hamas guerrillas.

And here is the same story from the Associated Press:

Israel, Hamas defy UN call for cease-fire

By Matti Friedman and Ibrahim Barzak

JERUSALEM – Israeli jets and helicopters bombarded Gaza Friday and Hamas responded with a barrage of rockets on two cities as both sides defied a U.N. call for an immediate cease-fire.

Interesting difference. But, to me, the best part is in the Reuters paragraph. “Israel… announced no decision….” Isn’t that really non-news? When the speed of news becomes insanely frenetic, suddenly, at this moment, having not made a decision is suddenly newsworthy? And if they decide in an hour? Two? A day? Well, then it becomes news.

Spare me the hype.

French public television channel 2 admitted yesterday that they had mistakenly aired photos of of terrorists blowing themselves up in 2005 at the Jabaliya Refugee Camp while claiming it was destruction caused by the Israeli Defense Forces in the current Gaza conflict:

A news editor at France 2 told Le Figaro Tuesday that they had “made a mistake” by airing those pictures, which he said depict events from 2005.

The media monster needs to be fed. The clock is ticking. There is no time to fact-check. There is no time to verify. Feed the monster. Feed the monster. Another example of misinformation (dis-information?) that gets out into the mediaverse, makes its impression, and cannot be called back.

People you need to take a step back and really use your brains instead of digesting any piece of crap fed to you by a stressed out media.

My opinion, take it or leave it.