Tag: oppression

Chinese embargo of rare earth minerals expands

11:11 pm

China is expanding its embargo on exporting rare earth minerals, blocking shipments to Japan, Europe and the United States. Key quote:

China mines 95 percent of the world’s rare earth elements, which have broad commercial and military applications, and are vital to the manufacture of products as diverse as cellphones, large wind turbines and guided missiles. Any curtailment of Chinese supplies of rare earths is likely to be greeted with alarm in Western capitals, particularly because Western companies are believed to keep much smaller stockpiles of rare earths than Japanese companies.

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Chicago mainstream reporters threaten reporter asking tough questions of Emanuel

7:25 pm

Updated and bumped.The police have now issued an arrest warrent against reporter Jay Levin. (This is based on his behavior in the video below. He is the reporter in the red wind breaker, threatening another reporter, William Kelly, who was asking tough questions of Rahm Emanuel.) Key quote:

This morning, I [William Kelly] filed a police report and signed an arrest warrant against Jay Levine for assault. The Chicago police have already reviewed the video and agreed that an assault was committed.

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Is there no wonder people joke about a “state-run” media? Here, Chicago mainstream reporters threaten a reporter when he tries to ask Rahm Emanuel some tough questions. More here. Best line from CBS reporter Jay Levin:

Let him finish or I’m going to deck you!

Watch the whole video. The good stuff begins at around one minute.

Sorry that much of today’s posts relate to politics and not science or space. I can only follow the news where it takes me.

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Two Democratic candidates try to silence their opposition

1:46 pm

Freedom of speech alert! Rather than debate their opponents, two Democratic House candidates are trying to shut them up.

In the first case, incumbent Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio) is trying to use election laws to block an anti-abortion group from putting up billboards against him. Ed Morrissey at hotair.com has more details.

In the second case, incumbent Kathy Dahlkemper (D-Pennsylvania) is trying to get radio stations to pull the radio ads of another anti-abortion group which attack her for her healthcare vote.

In both cases, the Democratic candidates voted for the Healthcare bill, and seem to want to hide that fact now from the voters. Not only does this illustrate the contempt they have of freedom of speech, it shows us just how toxic the healthcare bill has become politically. I suspect that this law is going to dog the Democrats who voted for it for years to come.

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Climate Talks in China Limp Toward Deadlock

12:25 pm

Thank god for small blessings. The climate talks in China this past week are limping towards a deadlock, with no new agreements. It appears that the biggest problem are disagreements between China and the U.S.

Personally, I love how this quote from the article so nicely illustrates the totalitarian nature of many climate activists and their organizations:

Currently, the World Resources Institute is proposing the White House abandon legislative means and rely on the existing Clean Air Act to make emissions reductions administratively.

In other words, if the elected Congress of the United States is unwilling to pass restrictions (because a majority of the people of the United States oppose them), then the government should ignore the people’s wishes and impose those restrictions, without permission.

Ugh. The less power these environmental dictators have, the better for everyone else.

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We won’t release our contributors because the adminstration will then harass them

2:43 pm

Is this how a government in a free society functions? The Chamber of Commerce won’t release its contributors because they fear the administration will harass and threaten them. And they have experience to back that fear up. Key quote:

What this administration wants is a list of who the companies are who are contributors, and we saw last year . . .when we very publicly ran ads against the Patients Protections and Affordable Care Act . . . there was an attempt to try and find out who were the corporations that were contributing to that effort. When some of those corporate names were divulged, not by us, by others, what did they receive? They received protests, they received threats, they were intimidated, they were harassed, they had to hire additional security, they were recipients of a host of proxies leveled at those companies that had nothing to do with the purpose of those companies. So we know what the purpose here is. It’s to harass and intimidate. [emphasis mine]

That the White House and President Obama are right now willing to accuse their opponents of all manner of evils (taking money from foreign governments) without any evidence is further evidence that there are reasons to fear them.

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Geert Wilder’s words make Muslims uncomfortable

11:43 am

How sad. The harsh words that Dutch politician Geert Wilder has for Islam (now facing prison for saying those words) is making Muslims in the Netherlands feel unsafe. Key quote:

“My family and I no longer feel safe in the Netherlands because Mr. Wilders is continually making hateful remarks about Islamic Dutch people,” said one complaint read out by the judge.

Gee. What about the more than 16,000 violent attacks committed by Islamic terrorists since September 11, 2001, leaving tens of thousands of people dead or maimed? How does this violence make these Dutch Muslims feel?

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It’s okay to kill suffering children says UK journalist

7:59 pm

Seems to be a lot of this kind of genocidal thought going around: A columnist for the Independent in Great Britain admitted in an October 4th interview that she considers it a kind act to kill a suffering child. Key quote:

“[I] think that if I were a mother of a suffering child, I would be the first to want I mean a deeply suffering child I would be the first one to put a pillow over its face, as I would with any suffering thing and I think the difference is that my feeling of horror, suffering is many greater than my feeling of getting rid of a couple of cells because suffering can go on for years,” Ironside said.

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Watch out for those toxic paper clips!

12:06 am

The bureaucracy marches on! The Consumer Product Safety Commission wants the manufacturers of kids’ science kits to test the paper clips in those kits for lead and other toxic chemicals, even if the paper clips were purchased in an ordinary office supply store. Key quote

“It is crazy that the Hands-On Science Partnership needs to be concerned about doing lead tests on products purchased at an office supply store and then packaged into a science teaching kit for use with children,” Commissioner Nancy Nord wrote on her blog. “Even crazier is the fact that if a teacher buys the same paper clip at the same store and uses it for the same science teaching project, it’s okay.”

To me, this quote is even more disturbing:

Commissioners insist the regulations will not ban science kits and would be applied on a case-by-case basis. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the regulation will not be applied objectively, but subjective, at the whim of the regulators. Every product of every manufacturer will have to get the Commission’s approval before it can be sold.

If that isn’t a mandate for mischief, I don’t know what is.

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Iranian blogger sentenced to 20 years

3:32 pm

So, how does this prove that Islam is the religion of peace? In Iran today a blogger was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Key quote:

Hossein Derakhshan was “convicted of cooperating with enemy states, making propaganda against the Islamic system of government, promoting small anti-revolutionary groups, managing obscene web sites and insulting Islamic sanctities,”

It appears that Derakhshan’s worst crime might have been to visit Israel, though speaking freely in an Islamic state might also have been considered blasphemous.

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Only one step short of tyranny

9:16 am

Obama is asking the court for the right to assassinate American citizens, without due process, and in total secret. Key quote:

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly insisted that their secret conduct is legal but nonetheless urge courts not to even rule on its legality. But what’s most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is “state secrets”: in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate their legality. [emphasis in original]

The Bush administration was wrong when it tried to imprison an American citizen without trial. The Obama administration is even more wrong now to claim it has the right to kill an American citizen without trial. Such behavior is unconscionable.

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Violence by Democrat Party activists

9:11 pm

Two violent incidents against innocent citizens, exercising their first amendment rights, have occurred in the past week. The first video shows a man being attacked because he is filming the Democratic candidate for governor at a public event.

Details about this incident can also be read here.

In the second incident, a Republican staffer and Iraqi war veteran was filming at a rally for Ted Strickland, Democrat candidate for Ohio governor, when a Strickland supporter came up behind him and poured a cup of hot coffee down his back.

Details can be found here.

Note that in both cases, it is the Democrat that is committing the violence. This has been the pattern since the Tea Party protests started in April 2009. In almost every case, it has been a liberal/Democrat/union employee who has attacked a conservative protester.

To put it mildly, such stormtrooper behavior by Democratic operatives is not the smartest way to win votes.

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Venezuela Election

9:29 am

In yesterday’s elections in Venezuela, things went both good and bad, with the opposition to power-hungry Hugo Chavez winning a majority of votes but barely capturing a third of the seats (62 out of 165) in the new Congress. Key quote:

The government was always likely to get a higher percentage of seats than votes due to changes in electoral districts and voting rules.

Whether these results will slow Chavez’s efforts to make himself dictator remains unclear.

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Now it’s “global cooling”!

7:37 pm

So now that the “global warming” narrative is beginning to fall flat (sorry John Holdren, but I refuse to play your game and call it “global climate disruption”), what do the elite apparachiks worldwide decide to do? They get together in a private meeting in Spain in June to discuss the future threat from global cooling.

What was that? Did I hear you right? Did you say “global cooling?”

Yup. Key quote from the meeting announcement:

The 58th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sitges, Spain 3 – 6 June 2010. The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, Global Cooling, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations. Approximately 130 participants will attend of whom about two-thirds come from Europe and the balance from North America. About one-third is from government and politics, and two-thirds are from finance, industry, labor, education, and communications. The meeting is private in order to encourage frank and open discussion. [emphasis mine]

If it’s not one thing, it’s another. The goal has never been to save the Earth, but to grab power. Now that the public is questioning the reality of the global warming meme, these blowhards have to come up with some other crisis they can use to maintain their positions of power and control. And if it isn’t getting hotter, maybe it’s getting cooler? Never mind the facts or the science, which remains confused and complex. All they want is some justification, no matter how unjustified, for telling everyone else how to live their lives.

One more thought: How much do you want to bet that a good majority of the participants (the full list) flew in on private jets?

James Delingpole of the Telegraph uncovered this little tidbit, and has some blunt but very true words to say about it.

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The day the Constitution was ratified

8:03 pm

An evening pause: As today is the day in which our Founding Fathers ratified the Constitution, I thought it might be worthwhile to allow Andrew Klavan the opportunity to give us his “A Young Person’s Guide to the United States Constitution.” To quote: We are going to have a little civics lesson, to make up for what you’ve been learning in school.

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Artist goes into hiding

10:35 am

Lost freedom, compounded! The artist who had first proposed the idea of “Everybody Draw Mohammad Day”, then backed off out of fear of attack, has now been forced to abandon her life and career and go into hiding.

It is just this kind of event that makes me wonder: Why would anyone consider Islam a “religion of peace?”

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