Watts Up With Censorship? - The Video is Back!

Watch the video that climate denialists don't want you to see... (past links 1 & 2)



I can see what Watts did not want the video out there; it shows him up for the crock-peddling denalist that he is.

What's Up With Watts II

Since I reported on denailist blogger Anthony Watts use of copyright law to censor one of his critics, lots of others have noticed it and reported on it too:

Climate Crock Anthony Watts Scrubs YouTube Video

Global warming denier uses the DMCA to silence a critic

Watts Up With Watts? Error!

This is Watts waxing-lryical on supposed censorship of the crock-science he defends;

This reminds me of Galileo and his fight with the Roman Catholic Church in 1632. Galileo wanted to publish a book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems which totally revised the earth centric view of the universe favored by scientists, scholars, and clergy of the time and built on the work of the earlier astronomer Copernicus. Galilieo was tried and imprisoned for daring to speak out against the “consensus” of the time for what he saw as a scientific truth.

I think we would all do well to follow this maxim: “People who live in greenhouses shouldn’t throw stones”.

Yes Mr Watt's, People who live in greenhouses shouldn’t throw stones - so why are you hefting a breezeblock? Sacred of debate? It seems the answer is yes.

What's Up With Watts?

I was nosing around on DeSmogBlog and wanted to watch a little video they had posted looking at the denail site Watts Up With That? - but upon clicking on the play button I was presented with this message:

This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Anthony Watts surfacestations.org

How scared of debate is Watts? All along the denailists like to claim that their ideas are being suppressed by THE MAN, yet when in a position to censor somebody disagreeing with them, what do they do? Censor.

Denial Watch: Explaning Bush in the Global Warming Conspiracy

One of the weak but sadly followed conspiracy theories is that global warming is a huge con connoted by The GOVERNMENT/New World Order/Evil Lizards to push Green taxes/state control/world government/research funds for scientists. The problem has been how do you square the Bush circle in this theory - as in G W Bush, in office, opposed the idea of global warming and wrecked any legislations aimed at tackling it. Kinda messes up the the conspiracy theory.

And now the release of previously classified photos from spy satellites showing the loss of sea ice is both further proof of climate change and further messes the GOVERNMENT theory of conspiracy.



Still, we still have the Evil Lizards.

BNP Hammered in Norwich North

Neo-Labour lost - which I am happy about. The Tories won, which I am not - but BNP, failing to get any traction in actual numbers, only managed a paltry 941 votes, putting them two placed above the Monster Raving Loony Party and overall in 7th place.

Ha ha.

The BNP realised that it was in for a drubbing in Norwich North some time ago, and though it announced its intention to stand the dodgy West in a blaze of hype that saw excitable BNP members predict their first MP, it quickly became obvious the party's campaign was firmly stuck in some very deep mud.

The party attempted to stir disharmony in the constituency by falsely claiming that African immigrants were being housed ahead of locals in Norwich, and West became a figure of ridicule as doubts about his status as a "reverend" surfaced and dogged him throughout the campaign.

Realising the party was on a hiding to nothing the BNP stopped mentioning the by-election, and national support for West was not forthcoming. Planned visits to Norwich by BNP Euro MEPs Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons were shelved so as not to taint the pair with the impending disaster, and the puny Norfolk BNP organisation was left to sink or swim on its own.

Bosses Cost Bulk of Pension Schemes

I am surprised I've not seen this news plastered around more. In a nutshell, a new study shows that the bosses of the big FSTE companies cost the pensions schemes far, far more than the ordinary workers. The greedy bastards.

FTSE 100 companies are contributing an average of 70% of executives’ pay to fund the final salary scheme of the top bosses, according to a report by Lane Clark & Peacock.

Higher earners’ pensions are far more expensive than those of ordinary employees. Benefits for employees in final salary schemes cost far less as a proportion of pay than those of senior executives.

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that 80% of companies with 500 employees or more, which have defined benefit pension schemes, require employer contributions of between 15% and 20%. This contrasts with the 70% of salary paid for top executives.

Cleveland’s Worker-Owned Boom

An interesting article that in some ways follows on the the work-occupations in Argentina...

This June, the doors will open at the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, a state-of-the-art, nearly $6 million facility in Cleveland, Ohio.

What’s so special about this laundry? In a word, ownership. The business will be 100 percent owned by its 50 employees, virtually all of whom live in the surrounding community. Life is tough in this neighborhood, where the poverty rate exceeded 30 percent and thousands of homes lay stripped and abandoned even before the current recession began. ...

Iraq War: Right Wing War Blogger's Get it Wrong

Back in 2003, the website Right Wing News asked some leading war-cheerleaders for their opinions of the coalition dead in the upcoming war. This is what they said:

John Hawkins: "Probably 300 or less"
Charles Johnson:"Very few"
Henry Hanks: "Less than 200"
Laurence Simon: "A Few hundred"
Rachael Lucas: "Less than three thousand"
Scott Ott: "Dozens"
Glenn Reynolds: "Fewer than 100"
Tim Blair: "Below 50"
Ken Layne: "a few hundred"
Steven Den Beste: "50-150"

Well they were all totally wrong as currently it stands at around 4600.

Right Wing News didn't bother to ask them about civilian casualties, I guess like the US military, they didn't do body counts. Well for the record the number is around 100,000 to 1,000,000.

They also didn't ask about the financial cost of the war. Prior to the war the Bush people has estimates from $0 (Paul Wolfowitz, "really finance its own reconstruction") to $50 billion (Rumsfeld) to $200 billion (Larry Lindsey - Bush sacked him for this view).

At time of writing; $685,000,000,000 (which might rise to as much as $3 trillion).

Wolfowitz went on to run the World Bank for a bit.
Bliar went on to launch the Tony Blair Faith Foundation to promote peace.

You couldn't make it up...

Overseas Development: $2 Trillion in 50 Years - Banks: $18 Trillion in 1 Year

Says it all really:

"Since the inception of aid (overseas development assistance) almost 50 years ago, donor countries have given some $2 trillion in aid. And yet over the past year, $18 trillion has been found globally to bail out banks and other financial institutions. The amount of total aid over the past 49 years represents just eleven percent of the money found for financial institutions in one year.

The UN Millennium Campaign is urgently calling on rich countries gathering at this week's high-level summit on the economic crisis to make no further excuses that they lack resources and to urgently deliver on their aid commitments."

more at: http://www.endpoverty2015.org

Afghanistan News: Not to Inform but to Recruit

There was an interesting comment in an interesting article on the MOD trying (as always) to control the story on the failing war in Afghanistan. Buried in the article was this:

The Guardian's James Meek, embedded in Helmand in 2006, says he was allowed to speak freely, and had no problems with minders. However, he was sent to a relatively quiet zone, and his requests to visit bases where soldiers were engaged in combat were refused. "I was told quite candidly that the priority was the tabloids and television because it was important for recruitment," he says.

Wow - so the reports on the front line of a war done in our name and paid for with our money, is being controlled to create a story of excitement and combat, 'because it was important for recruitment'. Nice; reminds me of the line in the Young Ones when Neil is looking for a job and the ad in the aper says; Join the Army: It's great you can have a gun if you want one.