This image of Berlin by night is via Chris Hadfield/Twitter.
The different colour light bulbs in the West and the East still show up 22 years after the Wall fell.
I have superimposed where I think the Wall actually was (approximately) with the grey dotted line.
Berlin by night and where the wall was
There is more we don’t know that we don’t know that we don’t know. (with apologies to Donald Rumsfeld).
While Solar Cycle 24 is still showing the lowest sunspot activity in 100 years, its activity during February was unexpectedly high. And we don’t really know why.
SC24 Feb 2014 graphic NOAA data from informthepundits
The increased activity in February was certainly not expected but SC24 still remains at a very low activity level compared to recent Solar Cycles.
SC21 – SC24 from solen.info
It is a little too early to see if the similarities with Solar Cycles 5 and 6 (during the time of the Dalton Minimum) will hold up and lead us into another Little Ice Age. Or whether this Landscheidt Minimum will just lead to a 30 year cooling period without quite producing a Little Ice Age.
Interesting times.
The Sun will continue to dance to its own tune and we will make believe that we know what it is doing.
But we ignore the Sun at our peril.
Two years ago we heard about plants being grown from seeds and pods preserved for 30,000 years in the Siberian permafrost. And now comes the news that a giant virus of that time has also been revived and is still capable of infecting other life.
This would have been about 1,500 generations ago. 30,000 years ago the Neanderthals had just disappeared, mammoths, woolly rhinoceros and long-horned bison roamed in Siberia. Modern humans had reached Europe but had not reached the Americas. It was at the peak of the last glacial and the spread of agriculture was still some 15,000 years in the future.
A prehistoric plant resurrected from frozen tissue. S. Yashina et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA
1. Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice
During the Ice Age, Earth’s northern reaches were covered by chilly, arid grasslands roamed by mammoths, woolly rhinoceros and long-horned bison. That ecosystem, known by palaeontologists as the mammoth steppe, vanished about 13,000 years ago. It has no modern counterpart.
Yet one of its plants has reportedly been resurrected by a team of scientists who tapped a treasure trove of fruits and seeds, buried some 30,000 years ago by ground squirrels and preserved in the permafrost
The plant would be by far the most ancient ever revived; the previous record holder was a date palm grown from seeds roughly 2,000 years old. ….. . took samples of placental tissue from S. stenophylla fruits. The plant placenta — an example of which is the white matter inside a bell pepper — gives rise to and holds the seeds. The tissue produced shoots when it was cultivated in vitro, and the scientists used these to propagate more plants. They are the oldest living multicellular organisms on Earth, the team says.
The plants have already blossomed to produce fertile seeds, which were grown into a second generation of fertile plants. During propagation, the ancient form of the wild flower produced more buds but was slower to put out roots than modern S. stenophylla, which is found along the banks of the Kolyma. This suggests that the original has a distinct phenotype, adapted to the extreme environment of the Ice Age.
(S. Yashina et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118386109; 2012).
2. Giant virus resurrected from 30,000-year-old ice
In what seems like a plot straight out of a low-budget science-fiction film, scientists have revived a giant virus that was buried in Siberian ice for 30,000 years — and it is still infectious. Its targets, fortunately, are amoebae… The newly thawed virus is the biggest one ever found. At 1.5 micrometres long, it is comparable in size to a small bacterium. Evolutionary biologists Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel, the husband-and-wife team at Aix-Marseille University in France who led the work, named it Pithovirus sibericum, inspired by the Greek word ‘pithos’ for the large container used by the ancient Greeks to store wine and food. “We’re French, so we had to put wine in the story,” says Claverie. The results are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Legendre, M. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1320670111(2014).
Under a microscope, Pithovirus appears as a thick-walled oval with an opening at one end, much like the Pandoraviruses. But despite their similar shapes, Abergel notes that “they are totally different viruses”. …. Pithovirus has a ‘cork’ with a honeycomb structure capping its opening (see electron-microscope image). It copies itself by building replication ‘factories’ in its host’s cytoplasm, rather than by taking over the nucleus, as most viruses do. Only one-third of its proteins bear any similarity to those of other viruses. And, to the team’s surprise, its genome is much smaller than those of the Pandoraviruses, despite its larger size. ….
While “cloning” of ancient and extinct species is not really possible, it is not too fanciful to imagine that ancient DNA and modern hosts could give rise to creatures having characteristics beneficial during an ice age. And perhaps that could be of some interest when this interglacial ends – as it must – and we do enter into another glacial period.
Cold resistant, woolly cattle and well trained sabre-tooth tigers to mange the wandering herds perhaps. Maybe we might then even want some extra Neanderthal DNA injected into us!! Finally a use for biodiversity!
Washington (AFP) – US Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Kiev this week in a show of support for the embattled leadership, as Washington and its allies slammed Moscow for violating Ukraine’s sovereignty.
kerry to lead the charge on kiev
The Crimea has seen its full share of wars, progroms, forced displacements and ethnic cleansing. It has been “ceded” to Ukraine since 1954. And now, as the Ottomans once allied with France and the UK against Russia, the Neo-Nazis of Ukraine are finding allies among the US, NATO and the EU (G-7).
But Crimea contains 60% Russians!
With apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
Half a step, half a brain,
Half a plan given,
All into the valley of Fools
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
“It’s for Democracy” he said:
Into the valley of Fools
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there no one dismayed?
Tho’ every single member knew
Barack Obama had made reply
Theirs not to question why,
As into the valley of Fools
Sydney Brenner, CH FRS (born 13 January 1927) is a biologist and a 2002 Nobel prize laureate, shared with H. Robert Horvitz and John Sulston. Brenner made significant contributions to work on the genetic code, and other areas of molecular biology at the Medical Research Council Unit in Cambridge, England.
A fascinating interview with Professor Sydney Brenner by Elizabeth Dzeng in the Kings Review.
I find his comments on Academia and publishing and peer review particularly apposite. Peer review – especially where cliques of “peers” determine “correct thinking” – can not provide sufficient room for the dissenting view, for the challenging of orthodoxy. Orthodox but incorrect views thus persist for much longer than they should. Completely new avenues are effectively blocked and ideas are still-born.
Some extracts here but the whole conversation is well worth a read.
How Academia and Publishing are Destroying Scientific Innovation: A Conversation with Sydney Brenner
by Elizabeth Dzeng, February 24th
I recently had the privilege of speaking with Professor Sydney Brenner, a professor of Genetic medicine at the University of Cambridge and Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine in 2002. ….
SB: Today the Americans have developed a new culture in science based on the slavery of graduate students. Now graduate students of American institutions are afraid. He just performs. He’s got to perform. The post-doc is an indentured labourer. We now have labs that don’t work in the same way as the early labs where people were independent, where they could have their own ideas and could pursue them.
The most important thing today is for young people to take responsibility, to actually know how to formulate an idea and how to work on it. Not to buy into the so-called apprenticeship. I think you can only foster that by having sort of deviant studies. ……..
…… I think I’ve often divided people into two classes: Catholics and Methodists. Catholics are people who sit on committees and devise huge schemes in order to try to change things, but nothing’s happened. Nothing happens because the committee is a regression to the mean, and the mean is mediocre. Now what you’ve got to do is good works in your own parish. That’s a Methodist.
ED: …….. It is alarming that so many Nobel Prize recipients have lamented that they would never have survived this current academic environment. What is the implication of this on the discovery of future scientific paradigm shifts and scientific inquiry in general? I asked Professor Brenner to elaborate.
SB: He wouldn’t have survived. It is just the fact that he wouldn’t get a grant today because somebody on the committee would say, oh those were very interesting experiments, but they’ve never been repeated. And then someone else would say, yes and he did it a long time ago, what’s he done recently? And a third would say, to top it all, he published it all in an un-refereed journal.
So you know we now have these performance criteria, which I think are just ridiculous in many ways. But of course this money has to be apportioned, and our administrators love having numbers like impact factors or scores. ….
……. And of course all the academics say we’ve got to have peer review. But I don’t believe in peer review because I think it’s very distorted and as I’ve said, it’s simply a regression to the mean.
I think peer review is hindering science. In fact, I think it has become a completely corrupt system. It’s corrupt in many ways, in that scientists and academics have handed over to the editors of these journals the ability to make judgment on science and scientists. There are universities in America, and I’ve heard from many committees, that we won’t consider people’s publications in low impact factor journals.
Now I mean, people are trying to do something, but I think it’s not publish or perish, it’s publish in the okay places [or perish]. And this has assembled a most ridiculous group of people.
…….. I think there was a time, and I’m trying to trace the history when the rights to publish, the copyright, was owned jointly by the authors and the journal. Somehow that’s why the journals insist they will not publish your paper unless you sign that copyright over. It is never stated in the invitation, but that’s what you sell in order to publish. And everybody works for these journals for nothing. There’s no compensation. There’s nothing. They get everything free. They just have to employ a lot of failed scientists, editors who are just like the people at Homeland Security, little power grabbers in their own sphere.
If you send a PDF of your own paper to a friend, then you are committing an infringement. Of course they can’t police it, and many of my colleagues just slap all their papers online. I think you’re only allowed to make a few copies for your own purposes. It seems to me to be absolutely criminal. When I write for these papers, I don’t give them the copyright. I keep it myself. That’s another point of publishing, don’t sign any copyright agreement. That’s my advice. I think it’s now become such a giant operation. I think it is impossible to try to get control over it back again. …….. Recently there has been an open access movement and it’s beginning to change. I think that even Nature, Science and Cell are going to have to begin to bow. I mean in America we’ve got old George Bush who made an executive order that everybody in America is entitled to read anything printed with federal funds, tax payers’ money, so they have to allow access to this. But they don’t allow you access to the published paper. They allow you I think what looks like a proof, which you can then display.
Elizabeth Dzeng is a PhD candidate conducting research at the intersection of medical sociology, clinical medicine and medical ethics at the University of Cambridge. She is also a practising doctor and a fellow in General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
I have always been uncomfortable with the readiness to “medicalise” all behavioural issues. Where parents or teachers or social workers and others charged with teaching behavioural skills can easily find an excuse for their failures. Because a behavioural problem has been classified as a medical problem. Nearly always leading to the use of medication. There seems to be an unholy alliance between the psychiatry industry and the pharmaceutical industry.
The Psychiatry Bible (DSM 5) has seemed to me to be nothing but a Marketing Brochure for the pharmaceutical companies where
The drug companies pay eminent professors, university officials and teaching hospital chairmen millions ‘in personal income’ to concoct more and more abnormalities so that more and more pills can be dished out by GPs and specialists.
They pocket consultancy fees to attend conferences, give marketing lectures and endorse useless tablets. They are bribed, in essence, not to openly criticise the pharmaceutical industry.
.. people are led to believe they have ‘a problem in their brain’ if they drink too much coffee (‘caffeine-related disorders’), stutter or swear (‘language disorders’), are shy or reserved (‘social phobias’), suffer period pains, are too fat or too thin, feel irritable, sexy, unsexy, sleepless, tired, or experience grief for more than two weeks after the death of a loved one. By these means, 26.2 per cent of all American adults suffer from a disorder of some sort, requiring that it be ‘pharmacologically treated’. Though psychiatric research is by all accounts ‘a hodgepodge, scattered, inconsistent and ambiguous’, one thing has definitely emerged – that anti-depressants don’t work. Extensive trials have shown that placebos induce as much of a degree of uplift as Prozac, Seroxet or any of the other wonder drugs, which simply make patients feel numb, glassy and emotionally disengaged.
Now it seems Dyslexia does not really exist.
Now comes The Dyslexia Debate, published yesterday, a rigorous study of this alleged ailment by two distinguished academics – Professor Julian Elliott of Durham University, and Professor Elena Grigorenko of Yale University.
Their book makes several points. There is no clear definition of what ‘dyslexia’ is. There is no objective diagnosis of it. Nobody can agree on how many people suffer from it. The widespread belief that it is linked with high intelligence does not stand up to analysis.
And, as Parliament’s Select Committee on Science and Technology said in 2009: ‘There is no convincing evidence that if a child with dyslexia is not labelled as dyslexic, but receives full support for his or her reading difficulty, that the child will do any worse than a child who is labelled dyslexic and then receives special help.’
This is because both are given exactly the same treatment. But as the book’s authors say: ‘Being labelled dyslexic can be perceived as desirable for many reasons.’ These include extra resources and extra time in exams. And then there’s the hope that it will ‘reduce the shame and embarrassment that are often the consequence of literacy difficulties. It may help exculpate the child, parents and teachers from any perceived sense of responsibility’.
I think that last point is the decisive one and the reason for the beetroot-faced fury that greets any critic of ‘dyslexia’ (and will probably greet this book and article). If it’s really a disease, it’s nobody’s fault. But it is somebody’s fault. For the book also describes the furious resistance, among teachers, to proven methods of teaching children to read. Such methods have been advocated by experts since Rudolf Flesch wrote his devastating book Why Johnny Can’t Read almost 60 years ago.
It was not so long ago that James Davies addressed the ills of Psychiatry in his book “Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good” and Richard Saul published his book “ADHD Does Not Exist” criticising the over-diagnosis of ADHD. Richard Saul writes in the New Republic:
The stimulants most often prescribed for ADHD represent several different types of agents that help control attention and behavior. These include methylphenidate (like Ritalin and Concerta) and mixed salt amphetamines (like Adderall and Vyvanse). Each of these has a specific effect on the body’s neurotransmitters, or the chemical compounds that help transmit signals within the nervous system. The exact mechanisms by which these chemicals interact are very complex, but essentially, if levels of these chemicals are too low or their activity is blocked, the transmission of messages within the nervous system decreases, corresponding to a state of inattention or impulsivity. Specific medications aimed at targeting attention-deficit and hyperactivity symptoms help increase levels of neurotransmitters and their activity. For example, methylphenidate-based medications like Ritalin increase the activity of the neurotransmitters dopamine and noradrenaline in the parts of the brain that help to control attention and behavior. Adderall also increases dopamine’s effects, but in a more gradual way than Ritalin and similar agents do.
So let’s back up a moment. If stimulants can increase one’s attention span and reduce impulsivity, why shouldn’t we use them? Furthermore, even if we’re masking another underlying condition, aren’t we at least solving the problems of inattention and impulsivity in the patient? The answer to both of these questions is a resounding NO. While stimulants can help people with a variety of symptoms in the short term, they have multiple damaging effects in the short- and long-term. The most common short-term side effects associated with stimulants involve overstimulation, such as loss of appetite and sleep disturbance, but perhaps more troubling are the longer-term effects of stimulant use, which include unhealthy weight loss, poor concentration and memory, and even reduced life expectancy in some cases. Long-term, patients also face the development of tolerance, which exacerbates these side-effects. After a while, the body adjusts its natural production of these same chemicals in the brain, and the temporary improvements in attention and behavior begin to disappear. This is why we see doctors prescribing higher and higher doses of the stimulant to achieve the same effect in the patient as time wears on—a dangerous pattern.
Medicalising behavioural issues or blaming genetic causes for behavioural lapses is a cop-out. Both for the offending individual and for those who ought to be helping the individual to modify his behaviour.
Political correctness is fond of stating that there is “overwhelming” evidence of man-made global warming. They have repeated it so often that many actually believe it. The reality however is that there is no evidence beyond assumptions in models that
Assumptions of the impact of carbon dioxide in models tend to show the assumed impact, but assumptions do not evidence provide.
Patrick Moore (a co-founder of Greenpeace) has been testifying to a Senate Sub-Committee.
Full Statement of Patrick Moore, Ph.D.
February 25, 2014
Chairman Whitehouse, Ranking Member Inhofe, and members of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify at today’s hearing.
In 1971, as a PhD student in ecology I joined an activist group in a church basement in Vancouver Canada and sailed on a small boat across the Pacific to protest US Hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska. We became Greenpeace.
After 15 years in the top committee I had to leave as Greenpeace took a sharp turn to the political left, and began to adopt policies that I could not accept from my scientific perspective. Climate change was not an issue when I abandoned Greenpeace, but it certainly is now.
There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years. If there were such a proof it would be written down for all to see. No actual proof, as it is understood in science, exists.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states: “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” (My emphasis)
“Extremely likely” is not a scientific term but rather a judgment, as in a court of law. The IPCC defines “extremely likely” as a “95-100% probability”. But upon further examination it is clear that these numbers are not the result of any mathematical calculation or statistical analysis. They have been “invented” as a construct within the IPCC report to express “expert judgment”, as determined by the IPCC contributors.
These judgments are based, almost entirely, on the results of sophisticated computer models designed to predict the future of global climate. As noted by many observers, including Dr. Freeman Dyson of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, a computer model is not a crystal ball. We may think it sophisticated, but we cannot predict the future with a computer model any more than we can make predictions with crystal balls, throwing bones, or by appealing to the Gods.
Perhaps the simplest way to expose the fallacy of “extreme certainty” is to look at the historical record. With the historical record, we do have some degree of certainty compared to predictions of the future. When modern life evolved over 500 million years ago, CO2 was more than 10 times higher than today, yet life flourished at this time. Then an Ice Age occurred 450 million years ago when CO2 was 10 times higher than today.
There is some correlation, but little evidence, to support a direct causal relationship between CO2 and global temperature through the millennia. The fact that we had both higher temperatures and an ice age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they are today fundamentally contradicts the certainty that human-caused CO2 emissions are the main cause of global warming.
Today we remain locked in what is essentially still the Pleistocene Ice Age, with an average global temperature of 14.5°C. This compares with a low of about 12°C during the periods of maximum glaciation in this Ice Age to an average of 22°C during the Greenhouse Ages, which occurred over longer time periods prior to the most recent Ice Age. During the Greenhouse Ages, there was no ice on either pole and all the land was tropical and sub-tropical, from pole to pole. As recently as 5 million years ago the Canadian Arctic islands were completely forested.
Today, we live in an unusually cold period in the history of life on earth and there is no reason to believe that a warmer climate would be anything but beneficial for humans and the majority of other species. There is ample reason to believe that a sharp cooling of the climate would bring disastrous results for human civilization.
Moving closer to the present day, it is instructive to study the record of average global temperature during the past 130 years. The IPCC states that humans are the dominant cause of warming “since the mid-20th century”, which is 1950.
From 1910 to 1940 there was an increase in global average temperature of 0.5°C over that 30-year period. Then there was a 30-year “pause” until 1970. This was followed by an increase of 0.57°C during the 30-year period from 1970 to 2000. Since then there has been no increase, perhaps a slight decrease, in average global temperature. This in itself tends to negate the validity of the computer models, as CO2 emissions have continued to accelerate during this time.
The increase in temperature between 1910-1940 was virtually identical to the increase between 1970-2000. Yet the IPCC does not attribute the increase from 1910-1940 to “human influence.” They are clear in their belief that human emissions impact only the increase “since the mid-20th century”. Why does the IPCC believe that a virtually identical increase in temperature after 1950 is caused mainly by “human influence”, when it has no explanation for the nearly identical increase from 1910-1940?
It is important to recognize, in the face of dire predictions about a 2°C rise in global average temperature, that humans are a tropical species. We evolved at the equator in a climate where freezing weather did not exist. The only reasons we can survive these cold climates are fire, clothing, and housing. It could be said that frost and ice are the enemies of life, except for those relatively few species that have evolved to adapt to freezing temperatures during this Pleistocene Ice Age. It is “extremely likely” that a warmer temperature than today’s would be far better than a cooler one.
I realize that my comments are contrary to much of the speculation about our climate that is bandied about today. However, I am confident that history will bear me out, both in terms of the futility of relying on computer models to predict the future, and the fact that warmer temperatures are better than colder temperatures for most species.
If we wish to preserve natural biodiversity, wildlife, and human well being, we should simultaneously plan for both warming and cooling, recognizing that cooling would be the most damaging of the two trends. We do not know whether the present pause in temperature will remain for some time, or whether it will go up or down at some time in the near future. What we do know with “extreme certainty” is that the climate is always changing, between pauses, and that we are not capable, with our limited knowledge, of predicting which way it will go next.
Thank you for the opportunity to present my views on this important subject.
Attached please find the chapter on climate change from my book, “Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist”. I would request it be made part of the record.
Obama will go down in history as a follower rather than a leader, let alone the “leader of the free world”.
I have a theory that Obama’s indecision, his dithering and his aversion to risk of any kind has led to his actually supporting Al Qaida in Syria and is now leading him to help Neo-Nazis in the Ukraine. All in the name of promoting “democracy”. A quick strike in Syria was never on the cards in spite of all Obama’s bluster. He is incapable of taking any actions with such associated risk. Instead he supported the arming of rebel groups which are now being dominated by Al Qaida. His best option now – paradoxically – is that Assad manages to keep Al Qaida at bay. Remarkably the best chances for a real “democracy” – eventually – is now with Assad in power such that Al Qaida does not prevail. (And the example of “democracy promotion” leading to the rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt should not be so soon forgotten. The Egypt with Sissi is not so different from Mubarak’s Egypt).
After Helping Arm Al Qaeda In Syria, US Government Says Al Qaeda In Syria A Threat To US
….. The Syrian Civil War is the epitome of a conflict that has no US national interest involved – neither side is allied with the United States nor is likely to ever be nor is there any vital security or even economic interest at stake.
But despite this total lack of relevance to the American people and country, the Obama Administration tried to enter the war. First there was an attempt to pretend the Assad government was a threat to the United States because it had chemical weapons, but then Assad agreed to remove the weapons. So then President Obama bypassed an American law to prevent arming terrorists to arm the “moderate” rebels within Syria.
Not long after Obama dodged the anti-terrorist law, the Al Qaeda faction of the Syrian rebels was in possession of the weapons Obama sent to Syria. So yes, after refusing to follow a law that was supposed to prevent arming terrorists, Obama ended up arming terrorists. Abysmally stupid does not even begin to describe this policy.
Now the supposedly “democratic” movement in Ukraine is being taken over by the Neo-Nazis. Obama is blustering again against Russia and the inevitable Russian intervention in the Crimea. He threatens that any Russian intervention will have “costs” – whatever that means. It is in part the US meddling in the Ukraine – ostensibly to promote “democracy” which has advantaged the Neo-Nazis and brought the Ukraine to where it is.
Reality on the ground in Ukraine contradicts the incompetent and immoral Obama regime’s portrait of Ukrainian democracy on the march.
To the extent that government exists in post-coup Ukraine, it is laws dictated by gun and threat wielding thugs of the neo-Nazi, Russophobic, ultra-nationalist, right-wing parties. Watch the video of the armed thug, Aleksandr Muzychko, who boosts of killing Russian soldiers in Chechnya, dictating to the Rovno regional parliament a grant of apartments to families of protesters.
Read about the neo-nazis intimidating the Central Election Commission in order to secure rule and personnel changes in order to favor the ultra-right in the forthcoming elections. Thug Aleksandr Shevchenko informed the CEC that armed activists will remain in CEC offices in order to make certain that the election is not rigged against the neo-nazis. What he means, of course, is the armed thugs will make sure the neo-nazis win. If the neo-nazis don’t win, the chances are high that they will take power regardless.
The Russians are already talking about another battle against the Nazis. It seems inevitable that Russia will now ensure its own influence in the Crimea with troops on the ground (even if they bear no Russian insignia). With 60% of the Crimean population being Russian (with 24% being Ukrainian and 12% being Tartars) there is little doubt that Russia will “respond” to calls for help from the Russian population and are already doing so. And once again – paradoxically – it could be Russian intervention in the Crimea which turns out to be the best defense against Neo-nazis exploting the US and Obama’s “promotion of democracy”.
NewsInfo: The newly-chosen prime minister of the Ukrainian southern region of Crimea on Saturday called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to help restore “peace and calm” to the Black Sea peninsula, amid a standoff with the new authorities in Kiev.
Crimea (Google Maps)
Pots calling kettles black and the kettles claiming the pots are even blacker!!
For the sake of balance…..
From Xinhua News:
BEIJING, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) — China published a report on the United States’ human rights record on Friday, in response to U.S. criticism and “irresponsible remarks” about China.
“The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2013” was released by the Information Office of the State Council, China’s cabinet, in response to “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013” made public by the U.S. State department on Thursday.
- The U.S. government spies on its own citizens to a “massive and unrestrained” degree, the report says. The report calls the U.S. PRISM surveillance program, a vast, long-term mechanism for spying on private citizens both at home and abroad, “a blatant violation of international law” and says it “seriously infringes human rights.” The U.S. intelligence services, by virtue of data provided by Internet and telecom companies — including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Yahoo — “recklessly” track citizens’ private contacts and social activities.
- Since 2004, the U.S. has carried out 376 drone strikes killing 926 civilians.
- The U.S. has not ratified, or participated in, a series of core UN conventions on human rights, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
- Solitary confinement is prevalent in the U.S., the report says. In U.S. prisons, inmates in solitary confinement are enclosed in cramped cells with poor ventilation and little or no natural light, isolated from other prisoners; a situation that takes it toll on inmates’ physical and mental health. About 80,000 U.S. prisoners are in solitary confinement. Some have been held in solitary confinement for over 40 years.
- Rampant U.S. gun culture breeds violence that results in the death of 11,000 Americans every year.
- Firearms were used in 69.3 percent of the nation’s murders, 41 percent of robberies, and 21.8 percent of aggravated assaults.
- In 2013, 137 people were killed in 30 mass murder events (four or more deaths each). A rampage in the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington D.C. left 12 people dead.
- Unemployment for low-income families has topped 21 percent.
- The homeless population in the U.S. has climbed 16 percent from 2011 to 2013.
- There are also many child laborers in the agricultural sector in the U.S. and their physical and mental health is seriously compromised.
