Archive for the ‘US’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

A “right” to bear arms must be constrained not to be a “freedom” to kill

December 16, 2012

I don’t believe there is any such thing as a “fundamental” human “right” or “freedom”.

Of course any society can establish whatever laws or rules and regulations it likes and insist – if it can – that its members follow these. Societies can define and adopt long lists of “fundamental human rights” or “freedoms” as privileges for their members. The granting of such “rights” does not – in itself – guarantee that members of that society always enjoy the rights accorded. Compliance with laws and rules and regulations is not in-built as with natural laws. Many of these “rights” and “freedoms” are contradictory and can be in conflict with each other. Some rights are used by some members to breach other rights and freedoms accorded to others. “Fundamental” freedoms are found to be unworkable and are then constrained or subjugated to other laws or rights. Some are made applicable to some and not to others. The will of the majority is expressed as laws for the majority which are sometimes used as a means for the oppression of minorities. Rights granted to individuals are subjugated to the rights assumed by the state. (It strikes me also that any “law” which does not in itself guarantee compliance is just a made-up rule and has no special “sanctity”. The “sanctity” of human laws is fundamentally suspect.)

None of the so-called human rights or freedoms are in fact fundamental or absolute in practice. Nor should they be. Common sense dictates that they must be constrained and circumscribed. But common sense is lost when the fanatical defense of any particular “right” takes on ideological proportions.

  1. The “right to life” is never absolute and is always circumscribed. States – and their organs – ascribe to themselves the right to take life in specific circumstances. Exceptions are made in cases of self-defense or abortions or accidents or actions in the service of the state.
  2. The “right of universal suffrage” is never absolute. There are always groups of individuals who are denied the right to vote (children, mentally disabled, resident non-citizens, criminals, certain occupations….)
  3. “Freedom of speech” is never absolute. What society considers to be libel, slander, blasphemy, hate or even politically incorrect is banned under pain of punishment.
  4. “Freedom of thought” is not as absolute as one may think. Thinking “terrorist” or “conspiratorial” thoughts is a punishable crime in many societies.
  5. The “right to liberty” is always constrained by the right of a state to incarcerate those it considers dangerous to society. Parents are allowed to curtail this right for their children. Doctors and hospitals are allowed to curtail the movement of their patients.

In the US it is self-evident that the “right to bear arms” is not sufficiently circumscribed. In spite of its implied “freedom to kill” it is fanatically defended to the point of absurdity.

The latest tragedy at Sandy Hook is part of a  long history of school shootings in the US  but the almost religious fanaticism surrounding  gun rights has so far held common sense at bay.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Politics, US | Comments Off on A “right” to bear arms must be constrained not to be a “freedom” to kill

Suit filed in California against Nobel medical prize committee

December 7, 2012

I suspect that this practitioner of human body regenerative restoration science needs publicity badly for some commercial enterprise. That the suit is filed in California itself is suggestive!!

The Nobel awards will be made on Monday December 10th.

Svenska Dagbladet reports today that the “Karolinska Institute (KI) Nobel Committee has been sued for their justification of their award of the medicine prize to Briton John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan, reports the AFP news agency. Rongxian Xu, a researcher based in the U.S., has filed a lawsuit in a court in California”. 

Xu Rongxiang describes himself as Professor, MD, President of CBAIM, Founder of Human Body Regenerative Restoration Science, Inventor of MEBT/MEBO .

=====================================================

Update

This seems to be his book published in September 2009  and seems to be available on line

Chapter 1 Scientific Announcement

Chapter 5 Interpretation of the study on ‘Induction of Stem Cells from Somatic Cells’

===================================================

Xu Rongxiang

Xu Rongxiang

The Australian: Rongxiang Xu, who describes himself as the founder of “human body regenerative restoration science” claims he made a key discovery credited to the Nobel winners a decade before they did.

He filed a lawsuit in California this week against the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, which awarded this year’s prize to Shinya Yamanaka of Japan and John Gurdon of Britain. The two scientists won the prize in October for work in cell programming, a research area that has nourished dreams of replacement tissue for people crippled by disease. Specifically, they found that adult cells can be transformed back to an infant state called stem cells, the key ingredient in the vision of regenerative medicine.

In awarding the prize, the Nobel jury said: “Their findings have revolutionised our understanding of how cells and organisms develop,” and “created new opportunities to study diseases and develop methods for diagnosis and therapy”.

Describing his lawsuit as a first against the Nobel assembly, Xu said he discovered “regenerative” cells in 1984 while studying treatments that have benefited 20 million burn victims in 73 countries. Alleging libel and unfair competition in the suit filed in Orange County, southern California, the Los Angeles-based scientist claims his good reputation was defamed by the Nobel Assembly. Xu claims the Nobel assembly’s statement “is false, as he was the scientist who made the discovery a decade earlier, therefore defaming his exemplary reputation,” said a statement announcing the lawsuit.

“My main priority for filing this suit was to clarify the Academy’s mistaken and misleading statements for the preservation of humanity and future generations,” he was cited as saying.

There was no immediate comment to emailed requests for reaction from the Sweden-based Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet or British Nobel laureate Gurdon.

The Nobel Laureates take center stage in Stockholm on 10 December when they receive the Nobel Prize Medal, Nobel Prize Diploma and document confirming the Nobel Prize amount from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. In Oslo, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates receive their Nobel Peace Prize from the Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in the presence of King Harald V of Norway.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Medicine, US | 2 Comments »

Is the US throwing the UNFCCC and COP18 under the bus?

November 17, 2012

Hot on the heels of the report that the IPCC has not been invited to the COP18 meeting in Doha later this month comes this report that the US is trying to funnel large parts of what is to be discussed at Doha into other forums and effectively bypass and undermine the UNFCCC

Could it be the US and China and India and other non-European countries who are disillusioned with the IPCC, are responsible for the snub?

EurAktiv reports:

The US is considering a funnel of substantive elements of the Doha Climate Summit away from the UN framework and into the Major Economies Forum (MEF), a platform of the world’s largest CO2 emitters, EurActiv has learned.

Since 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has provided an umbrella for talks to curb global greenhouse gas emissions, and on 26 November, will host the COP18 Climate Summit in Qatar.

But it has been confirmed to EurActiv that Washington is increasingly looking to shift policy action to the MEF whose members account for some 85% of global emissions, and which the US views as a more comfortable venue for agreeing climate goals.

If the idea gains traction, it could demote the UNFCCC to a forum for discussing the monitoring, reporting and verification of emissions reductions projects, sources say. …

…… The MEF is a successor to the Major Economies Meetings set up by President Bush, and criticised by several governments for undermining the UN process.

Its participants include: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Politics, UN, US | 1 Comment »

Massive shale oil reserves in Utah and Colorado

November 14, 2012

The reserves are massive but not yet technologically exploitable. I have little doubt that human ingenuity will prevail and before too long. It is just a matter of time and engineering before this oil starts flowing.

Malthusians must be gnashing their teeth as “Peak Oil”  is pushed back – again – by a few hundred years!!

ABC News:

Drillers in Utah and Colorado are poking into a massive shale deposit trying to find a way to unlock oil reserves that are so vast they would swamp OPEC.

A recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that if half of the oil bound up in the rock of the Green River Formation could be recovered it would be “equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.”

Both the GAO and private industry estimate the amount of oil recoverable to be 3 trillion barrels.

“In the past 100 years — in all of human history — we have consumed 1 trillion barrels of oil. There are several times that much here,” said Roger Day, vice president for operations for American Shale Oil (AMSO).

The Green River drilling is beginning as shale mining is booming in the U.S. and a report by the International Energy Agency predicts that the U.S. will become the world’s largest oil producer by 2020. That flood of oil can have major implications for the U.S. economy as well as the country’s foreign policy which has been based on a growing scarcity of oil. …..

The cost of extracting the Green River oil at the moment would be higher than what it could be sold for. And there are significant environmental obstacles. ….. Nevertheless, the federal government has authorized six experimental drilling leases on federal land in an effort to find a way to tap into the riches of the Green River Formation. …….

Getting oil from Green River shale is a different proposition than getting gas and oil from other sites by using the controversial method of “fracking,” fracturing the underground rock with pressurized, chemical-infused water.

The hydrocarbons in Green River shale are more intimately bound up with the rock, so that fracking cannot release them. The shale has to be heated to 5,000 degrees Farenheit before it will give up its oil. ….

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Energy, Engineering, Oil, Technology, US | 2 Comments »

Superstorm Sandy fizzles to a tropical storm

October 30, 2012

Are US politics and media channels driven by fear-mongering and alarmism?

By the time it hit the US coast, the storm system Sandy which had been hyped by an alarmist media, irresponsible insurance companies and  a frightened set of politicians into the “worst storm ever to hit the US” had fizzled to be a tropical storm.

The National Hurricane Center has downgraded Sandy to a “post-tropical cyclone,” as it approaches the New Jersey coast.

It was no hurricane which hit the US coast.

It was no doubt a severe storm but was it really worth cancelling 8,000 flights for?

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, US, Weather | Comments Off on Superstorm Sandy fizzles to a tropical storm

Could Romney really upset Obama? US election gets interesting

October 10, 2012

A few months ago it seemed like a done deal.

The US economy was showing signs of recovery at just the right time for November. The Republican primaries – viewed from very far away – seemed to be self-destructive. The Tea Party kept shooting themselves in the foot and in other parts of their strange anatomies. Mitt Romney seemed to be a personally successful but a wooden candidate lacking the ability to catch the electorate’s imagination. The election was losing interest for me.

And now one Presidential debate seems to have changed all that. I thought Romney was good – engaged and articulate and focused. I did not think that Obama was all that bad but he seemed listless and lacking in the fire he showed 4 years ago. It showed up sometimes as a sort of frustration and he failed to enthuse. Clearly battling with Congress has taken its toll.

Perhaps the key point was that he did not himself seem especially fired up about continuing for another 4 years. He seems tired. From so far away my perceptions are just perceptions but the subject of the US Presidential election has become compulsive again. I am a little sceptical that just one Presidential debate can determine the outcome and suspect that it was the culmination of the many months of disillusionment with Obama and his own apparent loss of enthusiasm. In any event the prospect of a Romney win has become real again.

Who would I prefer to see win? US domestic issues do not affect me except in that they do provide direction for many others outside the US. Instead of looking at whose views I support I prefer to see which candidate better supports my views.

  • In that sense Health Care models are universal and Obama has a healthier view than Romney’s dithering.
  • In Foreign Policy I do not see that there would be much difference in their approach to the Middle East – and the Middle East is what has set the entire world scene over the last decade. Perhaps there is a higher chance of a strike on Iran with Romney (with its risk of World war 3). But neither is likely to reevaluate the relationship with Israel and Israel’s nuclear weapons. And without that the Middle East will remain a flash-point.
  • The possibility of profligate support of subsidy regimes to push politically correct agendas is much greater with Obama. Many of these politically correct agendas are based on alarmism and bad science. Jobs come from wealth creation not from subsidising nonsense. Healthy job creation (sustainable jobs and not just increasing the public sector or throwing money at silly environmental projects) is more likely with Romney.
  • Obama is likely to continue with a taxation view that is fundamentally flawed. Taxation has to shift away from penalising wealth creation and focus on being a disincentive to wealth destruction (by irreversible consumption). Romney will be constrained by taxation orthodoxy but is more likely to move closer to my view.

Not very easy to choose. My preference would be the Obama of 4 years ago against today’s Romney. But the Romney of today could be more interesting than the tired, frustrated and listless Obama on display. The world financial recovery is more likely with Romney than with Obama. I suspect Obama will still win — but the process has become interesting again.

If Ryan wins or draws the VP debate against Biden and if Romney wins the second debate he would – I think – become favorite.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Politics, US | Comments Off on Could Romney really upset Obama? US election gets interesting

EPA particulate experiment subjects warned “.. there is the possibility you may die from this…”

October 5, 2012

I am amazed.

I would not have thought it possible that for whatever the ends a government agency could justify such means.

JunkScience carries a report today:

EPA admits to Court: Human subjects ‘may die’ from air pollution experiments

EPA has admitted to a federal court that it asks human guinea pigs to sacrifice their lives for regulatory purposes — and $12 per hour.

EPA has responded to our emergency motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against its ongoing human experiment (called “CAPTAIN”) involving the air pollutant known as PM2.5.

In the declaration of Martin W. Case, the EPA clinical research studies coordinator for CAPTAIN, Case claims he verbally warns study subjects before the experiment as follows:

… My first approach after being introduced to the subject by the medical station staff is to ask the subject if they have read the consent form. The subjects for CAPTAIN have been given the informed study consent form on a previous visit, and, they are also given the same consent to read again if they have not read the consent the day of the training…

I provide participants with information about fine particles (PM2.s). I say that PM2.s are particles so small that they are able past through your airways and go deep into your lungs, these particles are so small that your usual lining and cilia of your airways are not able to prevent these particles from passing into your lungs, Therefore, if you are a person that for example lives in a large city like Los Angeles or New York, and it’s been a very hot day, and you can see the haze in the air, and you happen to be someone that works outside, and if you have an underlying unknown health condition, or, you may be older in age; the chances are that you could end up in the emergency room later on that night, wondering what’s wrong, possibly having cardiac changes that could lead to a heart attack; there is the possibility you may die from this…

………..

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Environment, Ethics, scientific misconduct, US | 1 Comment »

Opposition to shale gas and cheap US coal only leads to greater use of coal in Europe

September 26, 2012

Not that there is anything wrong with using coal when it makes commercial sense. The demonisation of carbon dioxide is a religion built on a hypothesis which in turn is based on “it must be the cause of global warming” and not on any evidence whatever. In consequence the world-wide drive to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is an unnecessary, expensive and ultimately pointless exercise.

The religious and thoughtless opposition of the “greens” to any use of fossil fuels has led them – especially in Europe – to trying to block exploration, production and exploitation of shale gas. But as with so many “environmentally correct” decisions it turns out to be counter-productive to their own misguided objectives. In Europe this together with the availability of cheap US coals has only served to promote the greater use of coal and an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. The blind pursuit of renewable energy in Europe has already given the highest electricity prices in the world. While the increased emissions of carbon dioxide through greater coal use does not itself matter, the consumer will have to pay even higher electricity prices than would prevail if shale gas were exploited.

Reuters reports:

BRUSSELS/LONDON, Sept 25 (Reuters) – Shale gas has jolted traditional roles in the planet’s climate drama, giving cleaner fuel to the United States, whose displaced coal has headed to Europe to pollute the old continent.

It is an ironic twist for the European Union, whose energy policy is largely based on promoting renewables and a target to cut emissions b y 20 percent by 2020. The U.S. did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol to combat global emissions and its national goals are far less ambitious than Europe’s.

(more…)

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Energy, Europe, US | Comments Off on Opposition to shale gas and cheap US coal only leads to greater use of coal in Europe

Tax on income is easy to levy but fundamentally unsound

September 18, 2012

The latest Mitt Romney “gaffe” is getting much attention. But I was a little surprised to find that while what he said may well be a gaffe in electoral terms – and he may even have lost the Presidential election here – his statement was actually quite correct. I had not appreciated that almost half of all US households paid no federal income tax at all. In the US, federal income tax is a major source of tax revenues and contributes about half of all tax revenues (tax revenues about 15.4% of gdp in 2011 with federal income tax providing 7.3% of gdp). Romney in his leaked video said:

(more…)

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Economy, Politics, US | Comments Off on Tax on income is easy to levy but fundamentally unsound

Has Obama dumped Al Gore?

September 7, 2012

I expect that President Obama does have some electoral advantage in not being saddled with Al Gore – or it could just be that Gore is really upset that the income that would be generated for his companies by cap-and trade is not materialising.

TheDaily reports:

Al Gore is boycotting the Democratic National Convention because he doesn’t get along with President Obama and is disappointed that Obama hasn’t pushed harder for a cap-and-trade law that would force Americans to use less fossil fuels, sources tell Flash.

While tens of thousands of Democrats from across the country are gathered in Charlotte, N.C., Gore stayed in New York to cover the convention for his struggling Current TV channel. “Gore was not treated respectfully by the Obama team. He’s snubbing them, because they snubbed him,” said one Democratic fundraiser. 

Former President Bill Clinton has been given an active role in Obama’s re-election effort, and was given a prime-time slot to speak just before Obama accepted his nomination last night. But Clinton’s running mate, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has been an invisible man. 

“He’s been missing in action. It’s not just the convention. Gore hasn’t made any speeches for  Obama, or campaign appearances, or fundraising solicitations … nothing,” said our source. …..

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Politics, US | Comments Off on Has Obama dumped Al Gore?

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »