I thought only the Human Rights Commission people were dumb enough to make their lifestyle issue out to be the biggest thing since Selma. But now, Free Press is doing the same thing with Net Neutrality. And I know it says it’s the “blogger” section, but this blogger is Free Press Outreach Coordinator Jordan Berg, not some troublemaker off the virtual street. But he seriously wrote last week:
As we commemorate Dr. King’s legacy – which was created and pushed by youth to inspire future generations to work toward equality – we must remember their message: It is not enough to work for change; we need the means to inspire that change. A generation ago, young people across the country organized to give us a day dedicated to that message. Today our fight for justice and racial equality is also about control of the Internet: Will it belong to us or to the corporations?
It marks Berg and Free Press as unserious even to make the mere juxtaposition of Net Neutrality with the fight against the former Confederacy’s Jim Crow adminstered by 80 years of one-party Democrat rule (which for today’s generations too young to remember, was comparable with South Africa’s Apartheid administered by 50 years of one-party National Party rule). And yet, sadly, right wing groups such as the Gun Owners of America and the Christian Coalition, as well as libertarians like Glenn Reynolds, continue to allow their names to be associated with Save the Internet, a front group of Free Press’s. I hope readers who know or are affliated with Save the Internet coalition members will speak up.
Just as the Jim Crow invocations only hurt the campaign against Proposition 8 in California, I expect minority groups to step up their opposition to the Free Press-Google Net Neutrality as such silly comparisons get out.
This isn’t the only communications embarrassment Free Press is dealing with, even. Apparently the neo-Marxists in that organization don’t like it when they get called out as such. Neo-Marxist is an appropriate term I think because Free Press is Marxist for the American service economy. Traditional Marxism was designed for an industrial economy, so those socialists wanted to control factories. Neo-Marxists just want the media, including the Internet, under their power.
Josh Silver and Craig Aaron of Free press flipped out in response, though. First off the attempt the usual Weimar tactic of the ad hominem, implying that the critic is a dishonest shill who only opposes Free Press for pay, and would otherwise agree. Then they have the audacity to make the extended argument that AT&T setting network policy is just like systematic oppression of people in Red China. Even if that comparison itself weren’t as insulting to the victims of PRC tyranny, does anyone else find it odd that Free Press claims that big government is the only way to save us from enduring something like the huge government in China?
Free Press is just so outside of the mainstream that they’re incapable of making metaphors that don’t make normal people want to laugh in their faces. So let’s laugh in their faces in true Alinsky style, shall we? And make sure to defeat Net Neutrality so we have plenty to laugh about.
Remember when I accused Google of censoring search hints? Some of the reactions were just hysterical. So many technically inclined people on the right have a reflexive desire to defend Google and make the kindest assumptions about the company. The company itself claimed that it was all coincidence.
Further research showed that Google was also censoring criticism of Islam, a claim that was met with the same incredulity.
Enter The Jawa Report. Their emailer noticed that hey, now suddenly Google comes up with the a whole list of negative description of Islam just like it does for Christianity, where before there was nothing. Is anyone going to claim that such a sudden, dramatic change is just the random fluctuation of an algorithm? I hope not.
Between Google standing up to China and Islam, I have to wonder if public scrutiny is making the company realize that they must actually be neutral if they want to expect others to be (net) neutral. That would be a benefit to us all given the firm’s market power. Time will tell.
I hear they’re telling a joke at the International Panel on Climate Change: Knock knock. Who’s there? Peer Review. Peer Review who? Your guess is as good as mine.
But seriously, I thought it was bad enough when a single reference to a piece of speculative fiction about Himalayan glaciers made it into a “peer-reviewed” IPCC report. But it turns out to be a trend. Says the Telegraph via Hot Air, in reference to another outlandish prediction:
At first sight, the reference looks kosher enough but, following it through, one sees:
Rowell, A. and P.F. Moore, 2000: Global Review of Forest Fires. WWF/IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, 66 pp. http://www.iucn.org/themes/fcp/publications /files/global_review_forest_fires.pdf.
This, then appears to be another WWF report, carried out in conjunction with the IUCN – The International Union for Conservation of Nature.
One can only imagine how many more references to activist groups are lurking in this and other IPCC literature. It’s as though the IPCC creates its works without anybody ever giving anything a critical evaluation, making Peer Review a truly Orwellian expression and IPCC our very own Minisci, producing as much science as Miniluv produced love.
Don’t laugh. The reverberations in the IPCC’s echo chamber might damage some eardrums.
Jesse Jackson is a hateful, left-wing activist. Does any one deny this? His Rainbow/PUSH Coalition clearly promotes a number of lefty causes if you visit the home page:
- “Stimulus II Needed to Stimulate the Grass Roots”
- “Reduce the Rate: 1% Student Loans”
- “Rainbow PUSH Coalition Applauds Announcement of New DOJ Unit to Focus on Unfair Lending Practices
It doesn’t get better exploring the site, either. Read the commentaries and find gems like these:
- “Much of America has come a long way on race, as the election of Barack Obama demonstrated. The Republican right-wing not so much.”
- “The rabid-right – led by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh – accused the president of hating white people.”
There is no doubt where Jesse Jackson is politically. And yet here is Carly Fiorina’s fast talk at Hogue News to cover for her comments about Jackson that RedState blew the lid off of on Friday:
Well first of all, I strongly disagree with Jesse Jackson and his politics and agenda – and he knows that. But it is also true that Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition has a huge conference in Silicon valley each year and that conference is focused on one thing – and one thing only – and that is to provide opportunities for people – no matter who they are, or the color of their skin, or what their gender – to help them achieve their potential. In this particular case, to achieve their potential in the technology world.
It is a good thing. It is a good thing, when politics is representative of the people that politicians are supposed to represent. It is a good thing when business and politics are more diverse. Not through quotas – not at all. But through opportunities that are provided, and people of merit being able to step up. I’m frankly shocked that anybody would call themselves a conservative and attack the encouragement of opportunity for diverse people.
When push comes to shove, Fiorina borrows from Jackson to attack conservatives, while not seeing any problem with using Hewlett Packard to give his hate group legitimacy and funding. Money is fungible after all. Plus, if we question her involvement with a deeply racist individual who hates conservatives and Republicans, we get accused of “attack[ing] the encouragement of opportunity.” I guess she agrees with the “Reverend” that “the Republican right-wing” has not “come a long way on race,” and is different from mainstream America in our opposition to racism?
Then moving to the radical feminist comments of hers, she doesn’t back down from her America bashing. Before she claimed that America was not a “truly representative Democracy,” hearkening back to the revolution and the colonial claims that the English Parliament was not representative, either. Now she says:
No, we should never be campaigning on identity politics. It s also true, however, that women and people of color, just like white men, bring something to the table. We live in a diverse nation. When you have half of the population as women, and yet about 15-percent of the senior officers in America business today as women, then clearly have not yet achieved a meritocracy. America is all about meritocracy. That is that someone, regardless of their gender, regardless color of their skin, or regardless of where they have come from – that if somebody works hard and has merit that they have the same opportunity, the same potential as everyone else. That is the American dream. And we have not yet achieved it, then we have work to do.
Get that? According to Fiorina, “we have not achieved” a state where “if somebody works hard and has merit that they have the same opportunity, the same potential as everyone else.” That’s effectively what she said last time, when she declared her metric of equality to be equality of outcome.
Fundamentally, Carly Fiorina believes for women what Jesse Jackson preaches for other groups. Much as Jackson believes Republicans and Americans “have [not] come a long way on race,” Fiorina would seem to agree with the claim that Americans “have not come a long way on sex.” She in fact doesn’t disagree with that core agenda, despite claiming she does.
When Jackson preaches the gospel of equality of outcome, which is of course part of the leftist “levelling” warned of by Russell Kirk in The Conservative Mind, Fiorina could be heard from the HP headquarters or the campaign trail shouting a hearty “Amen!” That is why she’s happy to work with him on “diversity,” because both harbor a hate and resentment of an America that does not reward equal outcomes to people on the basis of skin color or gender. Until there is equality of outcome, they will deny that America has equality.
They’re smart and talk of opportunity, because that’s what Americans actually believe in. But until they stop measuring America in terms of outcomes (as Fiorina does when she speaks of employment statistics and the numbers of women in elective office), it’s clear they don’t mean it. And that, friends, is just another reason why Carly Fiorina is inferior to either of her Republican opponents this year.
It’s so cold. The mountains I see all the time, which are rarely anything but a dark brown, and occasionally get white around the highest peaks, were entirely white today.
I think that’s San Gorgonio Mountain and adjacent peaks. It snowed in Yucaipa and below. This is nuts.
When Carly Fiorina speaks on the campaign trail here in California, running to be the Republican nominee to unseat Barbara Boxer, she tries to prohibit recording of her speeches. However somebody snuck in an audio recorder to an event yesterday, and these clips seem to show why she would do that. The real, private Carly seems to be a bit different from the public, ‘conservative’ Carly.
Radical feminist and supporter of Jesse Jackson. That’s a two-fer of reasons to doubt her so-called conservative credentials and instead support Chuck DeVore for Senate.
Peer Review. Ha.
Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.
….Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.
Peer Review. Heh heh.
The New Scientist report was apparently forgotten until 2005 when WWF cited it in a report called An Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China. The report credited Hasnain’s 1999 interview with the New Scientist. But it was a campaigning report rather than an academic paper so it was not subjected to any formal scientific review. Despite this it rapidly became a key source for the IPCC when Lal and his colleagues came to write the section on the Himalayas.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Some scientists have questioned how the IPCC could have allowed such a mistake into print. Perhaps the most likely reason was lack of expertise. Lal himself admits he knows little about glaciers. “I am not an expert on glaciers.and I have not visited the region so I have to rely on credible published research. The comments in the WWF report were made by a respected Indian scientist and it was reasonable to assume he knew what he was talking about,” he said.
I’m sorry, I’m laughing so hard I can’t see the screen. I keep thinking of all the times I’ve been assured that the IPCC and related organizations use only the finest peer-reviewed research, and that we should trust its major publications because its work is by experts in the field. So forgive the lack of in-depth analysis here.
Peer Review: The new punchline.
Go ahead, put this URL into your browser: http://irs.gov/. That’s right: There is no DNS record for irs.gov. Anyone who tries to visit the IRS’s website has to take a guess and add www to it in order to get there.
That’s twice today I’ve had to deal with user-hostile government at work. First the FCC made its public comment forms as obnoxious and difficult as possible, and now the IRS wants to hinder people trying to get their taxes done on time.
The elected Democrats truly are just idiots in their love of government. There really is just something wrong with them.
The proposed Net Neutrality plan before the FCC is in trouble. Until now I’ve called it the Obama-Google Net Neutrality plan, but that’s not entirely the case anymore: the administration is wimping out and cutting its losses on this diastrous idea. According to BigGovernment.com, the only people left fighting for Net Neutrality are far left special interest groups. At least, the ones that don’t represent poor folk who have a hard time getting good Internet access.
When Chairman Julius Genachowski first started talking up the idea, the situation looked terrible. Much as the Congressional Democrats can pass any bill at any time, the FCC should have been able to do whatever the White House wanted. But, much as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have done with Obamacare, Genachwoski went too far and asked for far more power than mainstream America – left and right – was ready to give.
The result is that we can kill Net Neutrality. Please consider sending a message to the FCC today as this is the deadline for public comments.
Max Brooks has a winner here, to be sure. It’s not a light, happy, fun read, but I’m glad I picked it up.