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First Ten Amendments to the ConstitutionArticle I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Article II. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Article III. No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Article IV. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Article V. No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or

property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Article VI. In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtain-ing witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Article VII. In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Article VIII. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Article IX. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Article X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

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Cover Story EnvironmEnt

10theGreatGlobal-warmingCrackupby William F. Jasper — Many pundits have written of the demise of the global-warming crusade, but it isn’t dead yet.

15CapandtradebyStealthby Alex Newman — Regionally, cap and trade is booming.

17Cancun:GlobalHysteria,Wealthredistributionby Alex Newman — A global one-child policy and rationing were just a couple of the recommendations at Cancun.

FeatureS HEaltHCarE

21obamaCarerepeal:WhattheDoctorsorderedby Michael Tennant — A large percentage of doctors are adamant that ObamaCare must be repealed.

tranSportationSECurityaDminiStration

25airportsareonlytheBeginningby Becky Akers — The TSA is already expanding its presence.

BookrEviEW

29BenFranklininvertedby Thomas R. Eddlem — Popular American sayings are turned on their heads to reflect liberals’ socialist thought.

HiStory—paStanDpErSpECtivE

33marktwain’stabooedtalkby Jack Kenny — Mark Twain directed his heirs not to release for 100 years some of his manuscripts that contained his unvarnished opinion about touchy topics — the time’s up.

38theWarprayerby Mark Twain — Mark Twain’s satirical treatment of war.

tHElaStWorD

44theWikileaksDisclosuresinperspectiveby Gary Benoit

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DepartmentS 5letterstotheEditor

7 insidetrack

9QuickQuotes

31theGoodnessofamerica

40Exercisingtheright

41Correction,please!

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vol.27,no.1 January10,2011

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FreedomofSpeechIt is easy to allow freedom of speech when people are saying things with which you agree, or at least saying things that are not blatantly offensive. The real test of a nation’s commitment to freedom is when individuals or groups on the fringe say and do offensive, bigoted, or hateful things.

The threatened burning of the Koran by a pastor in Florida and a handful of other peo-ple in America are acts of religious intoler-ance that are condemned by the vast majority of Americans of all faiths. Furthermore, most Americans are repulsed by book burning in general, and rightly associate it with oppres-sive regimes like the Nazis. However, book burners are not, and should not, be prevented from peaceably assembling and expressing themselves. Other Americans will likewise be able to openly express their disapproval of such actions.

This controversy provided an excellent demonstration of America’s continuing com-mitment to freedom and tolerance. Think about it, the Secretary of Defense, a man who commands thousands of heavily armed mili-tary personnel, called the pastor of that tiny church and asked him to please not burn the Koran. That kind of thing would make rulers like Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong-il, Ahmadinejad, and countless others fall out of their chairs laughing, for when an insignificant and pow-erless person causes trouble for a government that doesn’t have restraints, he is just killed — sometimes in a public spectacle of torture or sometimes he just quietly disappears.

In recent years, citizens in other countries have burned American flags, desecrated churches, and burned Bibles and crosses. Those are objects as dear to the hearts and minds of many Americans as the Koran is to Muslims. However, when that happens the American public does not cry out to seize a Pakistani, Arab, or Muslim to kill. Yet that is precisely the kind of barbaric reaction that American and Muslim leaders predict will occur in various nations when a Koran is burned in the United States.

We believe that feeling offended in matters of race, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, or any other aspect does not give someone the right to murder another human being — whether it be in response to a Danish cartoon, Dutch movie, Koran burning, or mosque location in America. Civilized people around the world and their laws recognize that.

People tend to see what they want to see

— or in some cases what their leaders want them to see. If a Koran is burned by an iso-lated bigot in America, Muslims around the world can choose to view that as an attack by all Americans on their faith. Or, they can concentrate on the overwhelming majority of the 310 million American citizens who condemn such an action, and they can join with us in an ongoing quest for religious tol-erance, peace, and justice.

John Marsh

Muncie, Indiana

usefulnessoftheFederalreserve’sComicBooksTo more efficiently use the Federal Reserve’s five comic books, which purport to explain to the layman the wonderful utility of the Fed’s creation of money and market manipulation, here are some suggestions: for evidence in a fraud indictment against the Fed, to insu-late dwellings in an economic bust the Fed creates, as toilet paper during another bust cycle, and as part of a books-for-prisoners project specifically for incarcerated Fed of-ficials to remind them of their Ponzi scheme against the American people.

Dennis Dorotiak

Orlando, Florida

ChangingperiodicallyBeginning when I was about 11 years old, U.S. News & World Report was my most highly valued source of information, edited at that time by David Lawrence. The last page of each edition contained his extremely helpful analyses of key elements of the Con-stitution of the United States. Unfortunately, the current edition of U.S. News & World Re-port is a typical left-of-center rag that does not provide substantive advice or informa-tion unavailable elsewhere. Today, the best alternative to the current U.S. News & World Report is the new aMerican, published bi-weekly by The John Birch Society.

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

It’s official: Texas Con-gressman Ron Paul will be the Chairman of the House Subcommittee for Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology when the 112th Congress convenes in January. Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, who is slated to be the Chairman of the House Financial Ser-vices Committee, of which

the Monetary Policy Subcommittee is a part, announced Paul’s appointment as chairman of that subcommittee on December 9.

Paul himself had made an unofficial announcement of his appointment on the previous day’s Freedom Watch with Judge Andrew Napolitano on the Fox Business Network. Napolitano jested that “the blood pressure is going up as we speak over at the Federal Reserve” as a result of Paul’s appointment, which he termed “great news for those of us who want to find out what the Fed has really been doing.”

Indeed, a quick glance at the policies over which Chairman Paul will have jurisdiction, as listed in Bachus’s announcement, should

gladden the heart of anyone who cares about sound money and the future of the U.S. economy. They include: “Domestic monetary policy, currency, precious metals, valuation of the dollar, econom-ic stabilization, defense production, commodity prices, financial aid to commerce and industry.” The Fed, of course, has its crooked fingers in every one of these. Who better to have in a position to oversee them all, with the power to subpoena testimony from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, than the author of End the Fed?

This is the fourth time Paul has been up for the post but only the first time he has actually been appointed. On previous occa-sions the Republican leadership in the House employed various underhanded schemes to deny him the chair. What was different this time? In an interview with the new aMerican Paul attrib-uted it to several factors, including the passage of time; changes in the political environment; “current economic events”; and, perhaps especially, “the growing support of people outside of Washington at the grass-roots level” who “have now learned more about the Fed,” want it to be audited, and recognize that House Republicans had supported his Audit the Fed bill. He pointed out also that “others in the Congress now are starting to talk about the Fed and why we should have more oversight.” “I think conditions have just changed,” he explained, “and so it looks like everything is falling into place now.”

ronpaulWillHeadCongressionalSubcommitteetomonitortheFed

Score one for the Constitution. U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson, in Richmond, Virginia, ruled December 13 that the ObamaCare individual mandate and its related penalties are un-constitutional, a welcome change of pace from two earlier rul-ings in favor of the Obama administration. Hudson’s ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican, seeking to have the individual mandate ruled unconstitutional.

ObamaCare both proscribes and penalizes an individual’s choice not to purchase health insurance. The earlier judges (in Detroit, Michigan, and Lynchburg, Virginia) had bought the administra-tion’s argument that such a choice has an effect on interstate com-merce and is therefore within Congress’ power to regulate under the Commerce Clause. But Hudson would have none of it. Noting that the administration was relying on precedents such as Wickard v. Filburn (1942) that affirmed Congress’ authority to regulate “a self-directed affirmative move” that “voluntarily placed the subject within the stream of commerce,” Hudson agreed with the Common-wealth of Virginia that under ObamaCare Congress was instead trying “to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market,” a power that could not be supported by any previous federal court rulings. Furthermore, he wrote, the administration’s argument that the individual mandate could be enacted under the Necessary and Proper Clause was bogus because the mandate provision “is nei-ther within the letter nor the spirit of the Constitution.”

The judge opined that “the final word will undoubtedly re-

side with a higher court,” almost certainly the Supreme Court. This ruling will be appealed, and the two previous rulings are already in the appeals process. But regardless of whether the Supreme Court ultimately rules that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, it must be kept in mind that there is much more to ObamaCare than the provisions related to this mandate. As Art Thompson, CEO of The John Birch Society, explained: “Simply getting rid of the mandatory aspect of a citizen purchasing medi-cal insurance gives the impression that the remainder of the law is constitutional. It does not address the issue of assisted suicide, euthanasia, and the mandate for the government to come into the homes of America to find out if your children are being educated correctly and living in a government approved environment.” Thompson believes that the entire law needs to be repealed at the federal level or nullified at the state level.

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President Obama gave a speech December 16 about the supposed “progress” being made in Afghanistan, citing a recently completed annual report on the undeclared war as proof that America’s “core goal” was within reach. But incredibly, he essentially admitted that the United States has been doing it wrong for years and that, eventually, the Taliban would be brought back into the fold.

“Indeed, for the first time in years, we’ve put in place the strat-egy and the resources that our efforts in Afghanistan demand,” Obama announced without offering specifics about what was wrong before. The reduction of American forces in Iraq, he said, provided more leeway for waging the war in central Asia’s noto-rious “graveyard of empires,” as Afghanistan came to be known after defeating countless invading regimes including the British empire and the Soviet Union.

In another startling announcement, Obama made clear that the Taliban, who have been killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan for almost a decade, would be welcomed back into the politi-cal process if they agreed to stop attacking. “We will also fully support an Afghan political process that includes reconcilia-tion with those Taliban who break ties with al Qaeda, renounce violence, and accept the Afghan Constitution,” said Obama, flanked by a nodding Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden.

Of course, since the U.S.-imposed constitution incorporates Islamic sharia law, getting the Taliban to come on board would not seem to be difficult at first glance. However, the Afghan gov-ernment has become known among natives and internationally for rampant corruption, fraudulent elections, extortion, and terror, making the regime difficult to accept for the Afghan people, and especially the Taliban.

“I want to be clear — this continues to be a very difficult en-deavor,” Obama said at the press conference. “But I can report that, thanks to the extraordinary service of our troops and civil-ians on the ground, we are on track to achieve our goals.” He said the objective was not to defeat threats to the security of Af-ghanistan, “and it’s not nation building.” The purpose, he finally claimed, was “defeating al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Yet, when Obama announced the “surge” in December of 2009, there were reportedly fewer than 100 members of al-Qaeda in the entire country of Afghanistan. In fact, even Obama’s Na-tional Security Advisor Jim Jones admitted to CNN in October 2009 that the “maximum estimate” was “fewer than a hundred.”

“In pursuit of our core goal, we are seeing significant progress,” Obama proclaimed in his speech, claiming al-Qaeda leadership was under more pressure than before and that some had even been killed. “In short, al Qaeda is hunkered down,” he added.

obamaClaimsprogressinafghanistan,lookstoWelcometalibanBack

A series of secret U.S. diplomatic cables released by the whistle-blower group WikiLeaks in December shows that the American and European governments used monetary incentives, threats, and even espionage to advance their “climate” agenda at the Decem-ber 2009 global-warming summit in Copenhagen and beyond.

Only a fraction of the more than 250,000 cables have been released so far, and just a few of those were related to the “cli-mate” negotiations last year. But even what little has come out thus far — analysts are calling it the “tip of the iceberg” — is raising eyebrows and generating more anti-U.S. sentiment around the globe. And the revelations certainly didn’t enhance the cause of the global-warming alarmists at last month’s climate-change summit in Cancun.

It turns out that, at the behest of the Central Intelligence

Agency and the American “intelligence” apparatus, the U.S. State Department sent out secret diplomatic cables seeking in-telligence on United Nations bosses, foreign officials, and oth-ers. News reports claimed such an operation — basically using diplomats with immunity as spies — could be considered a violation of international law.

The State Department, while conceding that its staff does gather information around the world, was insistent that Ameri-can diplomats should not be considered spies. But among the information they were collecting was data such as credit card numbers, frequent flyer numbers, telephone records, Internet passwords, biometrics data, “vulnerabilities,” and other “bio-graphical” information. It was also looking for dirt on other governments and officials.

In terms of the climate shenanigans revealed in the cables, the U.K. Guardian reported last month: “Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.”

The newspaper described some of the revelations in the dip-lomatic cables, saying they show “how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global dip-lomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial ‘Copenhagen accord.’” n

Wikileaksrevealsu.S.&EuClimateBullying,Bribery,Espionage

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8 THE NEW AMERICAN • JANUARy 10, 2011

FeelingthepressureFromvoters,kentuckySenatorvowstoBanEarmarks“I know the good that has come from the projects I have helped support throughout my state. But there is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as a symbol of the waste and the out-of-control spending that every Republican in Washington is de-termined to fight.”A former supporter of earmarking, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McCon-nell (R-Ky.) reversed course and is now willing to see the practice banned.

GopBigwigsWanttheFedtoScraptheplantoCreate600BillionmoreDollars“The planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Fed’s objective of promoting employment.”In an open letter published in several major newspapers, a group of prominent Republicans asked Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to abandon his plan to purchase U.S. Treasury bonds with money created out of thin air.

medalWinnerWouldtradeHisawardforreturnofHisSlainComrades“I lost two dear friends of mine. I would give this back in a second to have my friends with me right now.”The first living service member to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War, Army Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta dis-played unusual courage and bravery during a firefight in Afghanistan. He said the honor bestowed on him was “bittersweet.”

CFrpresidenturgesShiftinlanguagetraining“If we’re going to remain economically competitive and provide the skill and manpowerfor our government, I think we need more Americans to learn Chinese or Hindi or Farsi or Portuguese or Korean or Arabic.”Speaking at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass questioned the continuation of teaching European languages in America’s schools.

newmexico’sGovernor-electDownplaysHerGenderandEthnicBackground“I have said over and over again that being a woman and being Hispanic is only one of the small steps. Turning New Mexico around is what is going to be historical.”Governor-elect Susana Martinez wants to be judged by her performance, not by the fact that she is a woman with a Hispanic ethnicity.

irelandFacesBleakFuturealongWithalossofitsreligioustraditions“Ireland found riches a good substitute for its traditional culture. Now we may be about to discover what happens when a traditionally poor country returns to poverty without its culture.”The years of booming economy in Ireland fueled a turning away from religious traditions and, as hard times now face the nation, journalist Christopher Caldwell worries how the Irish people will react.

CoachputsFirstthingsFirst“I’ve not seen my two girls play high school sports. They’re both very talented Division 1-A volleyball players, so I missed those four years. I can’t get that time back. At the end of the day, I’m very convinced that you’re going to be judged on how you are as a husband and as a father, not on how many bowl games we won.”Announcing his resignation as the University of Florida’s football coach, the highly successful Urban Meyer, whose teams have won two national titles, walked away from a $20 million guar-anteed salary. n

— coMPileD by John F. McManus

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by William F. Jasper

What a difference a year can make! In December 2009, thousands of politicians, dip-

lomats, and bureaucrats swarmed into Copenhagen for the 15th Conference

of Parties (COP15) of the United Na-tions Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), accompanied by hordes of journalists, celebrities, and pa-parazzi. According to a UNFCCC press release at the close of the conference, “119 world leaders attended the meeting,

the largest gathering of heads of state and government in the history of the UN.” President Barack Obama was there. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was there, along with a sizeable congressional delegation. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was there. Britain’s Prince Charles was there.

Since the failure of the great global-warming conference in Copenhagen in 2009, many pundits have written of the demise of the global-warming crusade, but it isn’t dead yet.

THE NEW AMERICAN • JANUARy 10, 201110

The Great Global-warming

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Billionaire activist gadfly George Soros was there. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mi-chael Bloomberg, Thomas Friedman, Dar-ryl Hannah, and Bianca Jagger were there. And, of course, Al “Mr. Global Warming” Gore was there.

Fast forward one year to COP16, the UN’s just-completed global-warming confab in Cancun, Mexico. No Barack Obama in attendance. No Hillary Clinton. No Nancy Pelosi. No huge Hollywood en-tourage. No traffic jams of luxury limos. No pontificating by cause-of-the-week billionaires. No elbow-to-elbow crowd of journalists. And none of the minute-to-minute media coverage that was lavished on COP15.

“No big leader is going, only environ-ment ministers at best,” noted Brazil’s President Lula da Silva, in a press con-ference on December 1. “We don’t even know if foreign ministers are going. So there won’t be any progress.” President Lula himself decided not to travel to the Mexican summit.

From Copenhagen, the celebrated su-perstar, to Cancun, the abandoned or-phan. What transpired in the past year to bring about this transformation? President Obama went to Copenhagen as the newly anointed global messiah with a green “mandate.” The mighty green lobby and its media allies built up expectations that a new, global, legally binding treaty to re-place the Kyoto Protocol would emerge from the summit, one that would ratchet

down even tighter emission regulations on greenhouse gases (GHG) and codify concrete commitments by the developed nations to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars to the poor nations — in the inter-ests of “climate justice.”

However, as we all know now, that didn’t happen. All of President Obama’s star power and all of the media hoopla about the coming climate apocalypse were not sufficient to overcome economic, po-litical, and scientific realities, as well as the multitude of opposing forces of the Right, Left, and Center, that ultimately scuttled an over-arching treaty.

Instead of a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol (which expires at the end of 2012), what emerged was the Copenha-gen Accord, a last-minute backroom deal hammered out by Obama and leaders of China, Brazil, India, and South Africa.

Nations adopting the accord pledged to cut their GHG emissions, with the aim of holding planetary anthro-pogenic global warming (human-caused global warm-ing) to under 2 degrees Cel-sius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). The developed countries also committed to a goal of jointly mobilizing $30 billion for the period 2010-2012 and $100 billion a year by 2020 to ad-dress the needs of developing countries.

Militant environmental-

ists condemned the accord as a betrayal, pragmatic “greens” glumly accepted it as “better than nothing,” and anthropogenic global-warming (AGW) skeptics gleefully heralded it as a failure signaling that the movement for a new global Kyoto agree-ment is dead.

“StinkingCorpse”orStalledtrain?“Scams die hard, but eventually they die, and when they do, nobody wants to get close to the corpse,” opined Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden on December 2. “The global-warming cara-van has moved on, bound for a destina-tion in oblivion,” he continued. The UN had set up its latest climate alarmist shop in Cancun, noted Pruden, “but the Wash-ington guests are staying home. Nobody wants to get the smell of the corpse on their clothes.”

Pruden is not the only pundit to have employed corpse or cadaver metaphors in relation to Kyoto and Copenhagen. In a column last February, Walter Russell Mead wrote: “The mainstream media is now coming to terms with the death. En-vironmentalists are still trying to avoid pulling the plug, but the corpse is already cool to the touch and soon it will begin to smell.”

And in a pre-Cancun blog of Novem-ber 28 (“Dead Green Treaty Stinks Up the Room”), Mead wrote that “the rotting, bloated corpse of this UN process could stink up the room for years to come. Like a dead whale on the beach, the [Kyoto] process isn’t going away anytime soon.”

Unlike Wesley Pruden, Professor Mead cannot be pigeon-holed as a “right wing-er”; he’s a Democrat who voted for Obama, teaches foreign policy at Bard College and Yale University, is editor-at-large of The American Interest magazine, and was until

Despite the relentless onslaught of fright-peddling headlines about global temperatures that are (supposedly) steadily skyrocketing, many people have been experiencing the opposite: historic snows and record cold winters, along with cooler summers.

Globalfreezing:While UN activists wailed about global warming, temperatures at Cancun dipped to 100-year lows and motorists in much of the Northern Hemisphere were stranded in record snows.

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2010 the Henry A. Kissinger Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the most influential founts of global-warming alarmism over the past three decades.

Dr. Mead, who has smacked the United Nations and climate zealots in one column after another, is, to be sure, still a minority among the leftward-leaning intelligentsia with regard to global warming. However, prominent environmentalists, including scientists who have been in the forefront of the AGW vanguard, have been defecting and complaining that the global-warming alarmists have hijacked the environmental movement and are devouring all the finan-cial resources while misleading the green movement away from real and more press-ing environmental problems.

Even among the many greens still ad-hering to the dire predictions sketched in AGW doomsday scenarios, there is a growing recognition that they are losing the fight for hearts and minds. “In the wake

of the Copenhagen summit, there is a growing acceptance that the effort to avert serious climate change has run out of steam,” an editorial piece in the British journal The Econ-omist — considered manda-tory reading in many trendy, high-brow circles — recently conceded.

The phrase “has run out of steam” does not carry the finality of “the corpse is already cool,” but it does sig-nal a recognition that the momentum has shifted. However, The Economist, which has been a leading voice in the AGW fear-monger choir, expresses hope that the issue will be resurrected. In the same Economist op-ed cited above, we read: “Perhaps, after a period of respite and a few climatic disasters, it will get going again. It certainly should. But even if it does, the world is going to go on getting warmer for some time.”

So, is it dead or just stalled? There are good reasons for believing that those who are already singing a funeral dirge over the entire AGW movement are celebrat-ing prematurely. It may be down, but it is far from out. The midterm elections in No-vember have made both the House and the Senate less amenable to global-warming nostrums and have probably spelled doom for any Kyoto-type treaty. They have also

given hope that the new Congress may act to rein in the EPA and prevent the admin-istration from implementing draconian Kyoto-style controls via regulatory fiat. But they should not be misinterpreted as a stake through the heart of the global-warming movement.

theCausesofaGW’sFallThe reasons for the great global-warming crackup are many. This article focuses on several of the most important, and then as-sesses the status of the “corpse” and the chances that it may resurrect, or reincar-nate, in a slightly different form.

Walter Russell Mead, in one of his scathing essays, says: “The [global-warm-ing] movement died from two causes: bad science and bad politics.” To which could also be added bad economics and bad psychology. Those four “bads” have been exposed and upended by a number of recent “tipping points,” such as the actual recorded temperature decline of recent years, highlighted by spectacularly cold and snowy winters; the astounding record of scientific fraud and unethical behavior revealed in the “Climategate” e-mail scan-dal; the bribery, coercion, and deception revealed by the WikiLeaks documents; the defection of many former climate alarm-ists, including many of the UN’s IPCC scientists; thousands of scientists organiz-ing and speaking out against the co-opting of science by the alarmists; consumer and taxpayer “sticker shock” at the price tag of AGW alarmism — especially during our recession; and the public’s sense of betray-al at being “had” by politicians, scientists, and journalists who have been shown to have repeatedly propagated wild exag-gerations, hype, and outright lies. Here are some of the more pointed examples:

• Mugged by reality: Despite the relent-less onslaught of fright-peddling head-lines about global temperatures that are (supposedly) steadily skyrocketing, many people have been experiencing the oppo-site: historic snows and record cold win-ters, along with cooler summers. The “Al Gore Effect” has entered the standard lexi-con to describe the frequent phenomenon of freezes and blizzards wherever Al Gore goes to pontificate on the “crisis” of global warming. It occurred, of all places, on the media-saturated planetary stage in Copen-hagen — just as Gore arrived at COP15.

The EPA’s proposed new restrictions on boilers could close down many factories, schools, hospitals, office buildings, and mills, and put nearly 800,000 jobs at risk, according to a study by the econometrics firm IHS Global Insight.

Glaciergate:Following the “Climategate” e-mail scandal, the UN’s IPCC was forced to admit that its dire predictions of Himalayan glaciers melting were mere wild speculation, based on nothing more than the IPCC’s hot air.


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Talk about “inconvenient truths”! Speak-er Pelosi and dozens of other prominent warmists were forced to flee from Den-mark in haste aboard their private jets to avoid being stranded by the blizzards and record cold wave. The amusing irony was not lost on millions of viewers and read-ers. The choice of Cancun for this year’s alarmist huddle avoided a repeat of that embarrassment, but not by much. It didn’t stop Mother Nature from slamming much of the rest of the world with super-frigid temps and paralyzing snowstorms, and even hitting Cancun with 100-year record low temperatures — six days in a row. The reality is that although the so-called experts keep assuring us that the planet is burning with a fever, many people know they have been putting on more sweaters — and they’re still cold.

However, these anecdotal accounts, widespread though they be, are not the only evidence contradicting the media-driven climate catastrophism. It turns out that the satellite temperature data also show that there has been no global warm-ing over the past 15 years.

No less an authority than Professor Phil Jones, one of the world’s lead warming alarmists and head of the Climatic Re-search Unit at the University of East An-glia (the man and institution at the heart of the Climategate scandal) admitted this when cornered in a BBC interview this past February. Dr. Jones said he agreed

“that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming.” He also acknowledged that temperatures have been cooling slightly since 2002. Uhhhhhhh, that kinda con-tradicts the dominant, screeching, “sky is falling” narrative of the past decade, does it not?

• Climategate skullduggery: In late 2009, an unknown source released thou-sands of e-mail communications of some of the top names in global-warming alarmism, showing evidence of fraud and deception: deleting and withholding of inconvenient and contradictory evidence; efforts to get colleagues with whom they disagree fired and to prevent them from being published; and much more. Many of these scientists — Michael Mann, Phil Jones, James Hansen, Kevin Trenberth, Keith Briffa, Tom Wigley, et al. — are the “experts” who have provided research for the UN’s IPCC reports that are driv-ing the AGW campaign. Michael Mann’s infamous “hockey stick” temperature graph, which figures prominently in Al Gore’s movie and the IPCC reports, is a prime example. It shows a relatively straight shaft extending from 1000 A.D. to 1900, when a blade turns sharply up-ward, suggesting that warming in the 20th century was “unprecedented,” and caused by man’s activities. This widely accepted “evidence” of AGW has been proven to be a colossal sham.

“I view Climategate as science fraud, pure and simple,” says Princeton physics professor Robert Austin. Harold Lewis, emeritus professor of physics at the Uni-versity of California, Santa Barbara, and a member of the American Physical Society for 67 years, says Climategate is further proof that “the global warming scam … is the greatest and most successful pseudo-scientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.”

“The climate-change establishment has tried to eliminate any who dare question the science,” Princeton physics professor William Happer said in testimony before a congressional committee. “This was made very clear in the Climategate Letters, which reveal the blacklisting of research that strays from the party line with the aid of hostile peer reviewers and helpful edi-tors, and threats to any journal that did not cooperate — in some cases leading to the removal of editors.” Clive Crook, senior editor for The Atlantic, said of Climate-gate: “The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.”

• More reality muggings: In 2010, the climate establishment was rocked by a number of scandals. In January, the IPCC was forced to admit that it had no evidence to back up the spectacular claim in its 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers could dis-appear by 2035, a claim that was the basis for fright-peddling headlines worldwide. To this must be added the exposure of the IPCC’s fraudulent claims regarding sea levels rising, flooding in Bangladesh, Af-rican crop harvests, Amazon rain forests, and hurricanes — to mention but a few of its embarrassing black eyes. One of the most shocking scandals that gained wider exposure in the past year concerns the extensive problem of reliance on weath-er station thermometers that are sited in urban heat islands, which provides a strong bias for AGW and is in violation of national and international siting standards. Dr. David Evans, formerly of Australia’s Department of Climate Change, says this is “cheating,” pure and simple.

• Consensus crackup: Although science does not work by consensus and is never “settled,” Al Gore and the climate establish-ment have claimed that only a few crack-pot scientists question the “overwhelming” evidence supporting the AGW crisis theory. A 2009 U.S. Senate study published a re-

theskyisn’tfalling:Contrary to the theatrics at Cancun, which included models of well-known monuments drowning, global sea levels are not rising.

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port with statements of dissent from more than 700 prominent international scientists (which has since been updated to more than 1,000), including many of the UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change scientists. A petition project launched by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medi-cine has collected the signatures of over 31,000 scientists in the United States, in-cluding many involved in climate research, challenging AGW alarmism.

A 2007 U.S. Senate report revealed that global-warming alarmists had been funded to the tune of $50 billion since 1990, as compared to only $19 million to warming skeptics. This disparity has put the skeptics (or “realists,” as many prefer to be called) at a huge disadvan-tage. However, over time they have suc-cessfully established a large network with many websites that now can circumvent the censorship of the alarmists and the major media.

• Sticker shock: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has stated that averting cli-mate disaster may require “investments” of $15 trillion to $20 trillion over the next two decades for so-called “clean energy.” UN proposals for “climate justice” in-volve transferring $100 billion per year from developed to developing countries. The preposterous price tag of these and other AGW schemes has finally dawned on much of the American public. Together

with the current recession, this has made rejecting alarmist nostrums a “no brainer.” Surveys repeatedly have shown global warming to rate at the bottom of the list of Americans’ concerns.

newGameinD.C.Realizing he will be unable to get a new all-encompassing treaty through the Sen-ate, President Obama appears to be intent on circumventing the Constitution and implementing the UN climate agenda via executive order, using regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “The President has made clear and we have made clear that the United States is standing behind the pledge that we made last year,” Obama’s climate czar Todd Stern told a press briefing on November 22, referring to the Copenhagen pledge to reduce GHG emissions. “There are differ-ent ways to skin the cat,” Stern added, an obvious reference to the EPA’s claim to regulatory authority over CO2, ozone, and other GHG emissions.

Thankfully, the midterm elections have dramatically changed the power grid in Washing-ton, D.C., bringing many new AGW skeptics to Congress and strengthening

the hands of climate realists such as Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who have fought an uphill battle for many years.

“We’re not going to let EPA regulate what they’ve been unable to legislate,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the in-coming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Many people and communities whose livelihoods are at stake hope the Republican leadership in the House is serious about that. The EPA’s proposed new restrictions on boilers could close down many factories, schools, hospitals, office buildings, and mills, and put nearly 800,000 jobs at risk, according to a study by the econometrics firm IHS Global Insight. And that’s only one set of regulations out of several the EPA is at-tempting to foist on the nation.

As noted in the next article by Alex Newman (page 15) there is also the impor-tant fact that the militant “climate change” activists have not put all their green eggs in one basket. They have diversified and are pursuing their objectives on multiple, mutually supportive levels. Their regional “climate initiatives” aimed at the state and local levels are forging sub-national links that are well on the way toward achieving piecemeal what they haven’t been able to obtain in one fell swoop through a single global treaty.

The unconstitutional administrative regulations of the EPA (and other federal agencies) together with the proliferation of local-state-regional schemes represent a genuine, ongoing, and imminent threat to our economy and our liberty. Unless the American Gulliver is soon awakened to this danger, these Lilliputian threads that are rapidly multiplying and tighten-ing about us will have us trapped. Now is not the time to gloat over difficulties the global-warming alarmists are experienc-ing; now is the time to press forward and make sure they are decisively defeated on all fronts — once and for all. n

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new aMerican are available at quantity-discount prices. To place your order, visit www.shopjbs.org or see the card between pages 34-35.

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Cha-ching!According to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the world may need to “invest” $20 trillion in UN-approved schemes over the next two decades to fight global warming.

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by Alex Newman

While many Americans have been focused on battling cap-and-trade legislation at the national

and international levels, global-warming alarmists have been quietly foisting the same thing upon unsuspecting states and local governments through a regional sys-tems approach. This backdoor approach was heartily endorsed and promoted at the recent United Nations COP16 summit in Mexico. Using unconstitutional partner-ships between U.S. state governments and foreign sub-national rulers, these schemes to limit carbon dioxide emissions essen-tially achieve the same desired effect as the national and global proposals: restricted en-ergy use and higher energy prices for con-sumers, and more money for governments.

The first and most prominent of these U.S. cap-and-trade systems is known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). It was created not by the people through their legislatures, but by a so-called “Memorandum of Understanding” between state Governors. Legislatures then imple-mented the scheme in their states.

Consisting so far of 10 Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states — Connecticut, Dela-ware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York,

Rhode Island, and Vermont — the scheme is described on the RGGI website as “the first mandatory, market-based effort in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” The system also includes other American states and certain Cana-dian provinces as “observers” — for now.

RGGI’s board of directors is made up primarily of each participating state’s top environmental bureaucrats. The “Initia-tive” works by establishing caps on carbon dioxide emissions at a certain level, then auctioning off “emissions permits” to the highest bidder. Eventually, the CO2 caps will be lowered, causing even higher en-ergy prices as companies and public utili-ties pass along the added costs to consum-ers. By 2018, the RGGI plans to reduce energy-sector emissions by 10 percent.

Thus far, the scheme has netted close to a billion dollars by selling “carbon credits” to utility companies and other firms in par-ticipating states, earning about $50 million through an auction held on December 1, despite not selling all of the available cred-its. The first auction was actually held in 2008, and there have been nine since then. Spoils from the emissions permits are then handed out by state governments to com-panies, environmental groups, and others.

Incredibly, the RGGI has managed to avoid public scrutiny of its operations by

incorporating as a non-profit organization and leaving enforcement and regulation to the individual states. The RGGI corporation claims it does not have to respond to public requests for information since, technically, it is not actually a government entity.

But the corruption is already coming out in the open. “New Hampshire con-servationists had high hopes for how $18 million in funding generated by the Re-gional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) might advance energy efficiency projects,” wrote columnist Fergus Cullen in the New Hampshire Union Leader earlier this year. “Unfortunately, cronyism and corporate welfare hallmark too many grants awarded by the Public Utilities Commission so far.”

Cullen’s piece details, among other things, the outrageous handouts to “envi-ronmental” front groups and big business-es that helped push the scheme through. For example, an activist group in New Hampshire called “Clean Air Cool Planet” was incorporated by out-of-state bigwigs to promote global-warming alarmism —

CaliforniaGovernorarnoldSchwarzenegger, touring a “green” apartment building with former New York Governor and RGGI co-founder George Pataki, has been instrumental in forging unconstitutional regional partnerships against “global warming.”

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CapandtradebyStealth:U.S. States Partner With Foreign Governments

Though international plans for an agreement limiting greenhouse gases and setting up cap and trade have been stalled, at regional and state levels they are booming.

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including Al Gore’s discredited “docu-mentary,” An Inconvenient Truth.

“Having helped create this pot of money, Clean Air was one of the first in line with its hand out so it can do more alarmist advocacy, paid for with public resources awarded by friends,” Cullen explains. The group has already received almost half of a million dollars. Another example cited by the columnist: “Yogurt on a mission” pro-ducer Stonyfield Farm, with $300 million in yearly sales, received nearly $150,000 to upgrade its air-conditioning system.

Money was basically shoveled out, “cre-ating opportunities for the well-connected and the in-the-know” while “millions of dollars have gone out the window, wast-ed like heat leaking out of an uncaulked pane,” Cullen concludes.

But RGGI executive director Jonathan Schrag — who after intense public pres-sure recently disclosed his salary of almost $170,000 per year — thinks the scheme is great. “I look forward to building RGGI Inc. into a dependable administrative ally of each state’s RGGI program,” Schrag said in a press release when he was appointed

executive director. “The states have done tremendous work to develop the first CO2 cap-and-trade system in the U.S.”

Not everyone thinks so, though. And in an e-mail to supporters, the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise warned of even bigger problems to come. “RGGI is the prototype for more regional cap & tax entities,” wrote the organization’s executive vice president Ron Arnold. “Soon RGGI will expand to every state and stick you with astronomical energy prices.” Arnold blamed the “corruptocrats in Washington” for the “gigantic waste of tax dollars,” add-ing that the “crooks behind RGGI must be exposed” and held accountable. He also said that, despite RGGI claims that it is “making a significant impact to combat the threat of global warming,” the data prove otherwise. “The only impact RGGI has made so far is they have raised energy prices and created a slush fund for each member state,” Arnold charged. And according to his letter, “the fact that global warming isn’t even real” won’t prevent the “climate change scam” from spreading to other states. And he’s right — it’s already happening.

An even bigger and more ambitious ef-fort that includes Canadian provinces — and even Mexican states as “observers” — is set to go into effect in 2012. Known as the Western Climate Initiative, the scheme is described on its official website as “a collaboration of independent jurisdictions working together to identify, evaluate, and implement policies to tackle climate change at a regional level.”

Among the participating “jurisdictions”: California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Montana, and four Canadian provinces. So-called observers, “jurisdictions” that are likely to join soon, include six Mexican states, an additional six U.S. states, and another three Canadian provinces. A similar scheme for the Amer-ican Midwest, under the banner of the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord, is also set to enter into effect in 2012. The agreement encompasses Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, the Canadian province of Manitoba, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wis-consin — for now. Three other U.S. states and one additional Canadian province are “observers.” n

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by Alex Newman

Thousands of climate dignitaries rep-resenting almost every national gov-ernment on Earth flew to Cancun,

Mexico, for the great event. Security pre-cautions were extensive: Battleships could be seen from the beach while thousands of soldiers and police lined the jam-packed roads. It was time for the 16th “Conference of the Parties,” or COP16 for short. The an-nual summit, which was held this year from November 29 through December 10, is an extravaganza of the United Nations Frame-work Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC. The previous year’s COP15 in Copenhagen was massive — over 50,000 attendees in all, not counting protesters. It was well publicized, too. But after the spectacular failure of COP15 to deliver a binding climate treaty, and with little hope of securing one this time, expectations for COP16 were purposefully set low.

Unlike Copenhagen, which was deluged with Presidents, Prime Ministers, and high-level Cabinet officials, heads of state and top officials mostly stayed away from Can-cun. UN bigwigs even downplayed the sig-nificance of the talks, dampening hopes of any major deal being reached. In compari-son to the 2009 confab, where more than 5,000 journalists instantly reported every little detail to the world as it happened, large swaths of the world press basically ignored, or even ridiculed, the Cancun con-ference. The UNFCCC did not even fill the smaller quota of 2,000 slots it had allotted for the world press corps at COP16.

Apropos for UN events, COP16 began with a lavish climate “Fiesta” on the beach, paid for by taxpayers around the world. While preaching austerity for the rest of humanity, the self-anointed Earth saviors lived it up: gourmet food; fancy drinks; excellent service; expensive enter-tainment, including a live mariachi band;

and, of course, carbon emissions aplenty. Americans for Prosperity got in the party and filmed the giant gala; their video, en-titled “Bureaucrats Gone Wild,” is posted online for your edification. But it wasn’t all party time; eventually the global “civil servants” had to get down to business.

The serious work of the summit began with a particularly bizarre start. The UN’s new climate boss, Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica, kicked off the climate festivities with a prayer to the ancient Mayan jaguar goddess known as Ixchel. Describing the mythic entity as a goddess associated with the moon, reason, creativity, and weaving — while carefully omitting Ixchel’s as-sociation with war, human sacrifice, and cannibalism — Figueres called on Ixchel to “inspire” the climate delegates.

“May she inspire you, because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave to-gether the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and

leftistgroupsinCancun celebrated the arrival of Socialist Bolivian President Evo Morales, a climate extremist who repeatedly called for ending “capitalism” while demanding more money from “rich” countries.

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Global Hysteria, Wealth RedistributionA global one-child policy along the lines of China’s and rationing similar to that implemented during WWII were just a couple of the recommendations at Cancun.

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creativity as your tools,” Figueres said in the opening speech, conveniently glossing over the massive sums of taxpayer money also being used as tools. “Excellencies, the goddess Ixchel would probably tell you that a tapestry is the result of the skillful interlacing of many threads.... I am con-vinced that 20 years from now, we will admire the policy tapestry that you have woven together and think back fondly to Cancun and the inspiration of Ixchel.”

Fearmongering&“Solutions”The doom and gloom started right away. Another introductory speech, this one by host-country President Felipe Calderon, painted an approaching dire apocalypse. “If we don’t act to prevent climate change, the cost will be much higher to reverse its effects,” claimed “His Excellency” Calde-ron (the UN really refers to distinguished delegates like that). “Approximately five to 10 percent of world GDP would have to be dedicated to alleviate the devastat-ing changes.” Even worse: “The disasters caused by climate change are threatening the survival of human beings,” Calderon opined. He cited a hurricane, a fire, and a drought — phenomena that have plagued

mankind for thousands of years prior to the invention of SUVs — as evidence of his claims and the need for massive wealth re-distribution and a global carbon regime. It’s for “the children,” of course, he concluded.

Meanwhile, a coalition of more than 40 island nations was claiming that, without big money and drastic regulations, it would soon be “the end” for them. “We are facing at this moment the end of history for some of us,” claimed Antonio Lima, vice-chair of the Alliance of Small Island States. “All these countries are struggling to survive. They are going to drown.” The solution, according to another alliance representa-tive: “dramatically increase funds for the smallest and poorest of us.”

Socialist Bolivian President Evo Mo-rales said delegates needed to fight a “bat-tle between capitalism and life.” Without a strong agreement, global warming “will keep getting worse,” he warned. Some of his proposed solutions: a “Climate Tribunal” for “climate criminals,” imple-mentation of his “Declaration of Rights” for “Mother Earth,” and, of course, lots of capitalist money transfers. His senti-ments were echoed by representatives of tin-pot dictators around the world — most

of whom love to blame the problems they have created in their own countries on global warming and “evil capitalist” coun-tries. Morales’ counterpart in Venezuela, socialist strongman Hugo Chavez, blamed a downpour that washed away some shan-ty towns in his utopia on “capitalism,” too. Their supposed solution: world socialism.

This, naturally, was music to the ears of the Socialist International (SI), the world-wide organization of socialist and com-munist parties, which plays an important role at all UN conferences. The Socialist International — which counted Obama’s “Climate Czar” Carol Browner among its leaders until she left SI to join the new U.S. administration — joined the call for committing at least $100 billion per year into a United Nations “Green Fund,” os-tensibly to save the poor.

A proposal by Professor Kevin Ander-son, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the U.K., made a splash at Cancun. Anderson au-thored a paper for the Royal Society urg-ing the adoption of a draconian World War II-style rationing system — for carbon emissions. “The Second World War and the concept of rationing is something we need to seriously consider if we are to ad-dress the scale of the problem we face,” he explained in the article, urging world rulers to limit electricity and prohibit food imports, among other things. His sugges-tion would involve a total freeze on eco-nomic growth in developed countries and “carbon rations” for every person on the planet. Unbelievably, at least one of his “Royal Society” colleagues said even that would not be enough.

Another remarkable proposal came from media baron Ted Turner. Like the climate delegation from China, Turner urged plan-etary overlords at a luncheon in Cancun to adopt a global one-child policy modeled after the brutal communist Chinese sys-tem. “If we’re going to be here [as a spe-cies] 5,000 years from now, we’re not going to do it with seven billion people,” claimed Turner, who has five children of his own.

SkepticsEnlightenWithreason—andpranksDespite the avalanche of alarmism com-ing out of the summit, a few cooler heads did show up to offer their opinion. The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

mexicanpresidentFelipeCalderonspoke frequently at the Cancun summit, warning of humanity’s impending doom and demanding more money for Third World dictatorships as his country continues its descent into chaos.

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(CFACT), a market-oriented non-profit organization that deals with development and environmental issues, put on several events. They appeared to be the only well-represented group at the whole conference that could be classified in the “skeptic” category, which is to say they don’t buy into the false “consensus” that human ac-tivities are significantly causing a heating of the planet and therefore must be cur-tailed. Not surprisingly, their message was generally not very well received by con-ference participants.

Among the CFACT activities was a press conference promoted as “an oppor-tunity for journalists to balance their cov-erage of COP16 by listening to all points of view.” Very few reporters, however, bothered to show up — let alone balance their coverage. The event included talks from several “skeptical” experts includ-ing Lord Christopher Monckton, the chief policy advisor to the Science and Public Policy Institute and science-policy advisor for Margaret Thatcher when she was Brit-ish Prime Minister. “I think the world is in danger of throwing away its democracy, prosperity and freedom if it carelessly ac-cepts what seems to me unresolved sci-ence and economics,” he told the press conference. “To try to stop this problem by cutting carbon is like King Canute [a King of England] trying to stop the tide [by commanding it to stop].”

University of Alabama research scien-

tist, best-selling author, and former senior scientist in climate studies with NASA, Dr. Roy Spencer, was easily among the most qualified experts at the entire COP16 summit. He also spoke at the CFACT press conference. Among other things, Spencer told the assembled journalists that it would be irresponsible to force poor people to stop burning fossil fuels in favor of expen-sive and inefficient alternatives. He also attacked a paper published in the journal Science about clouds and their effect on climate change, calling the paper “a step backward for climate research.”

Some youth CFACT activists — their group is called Collegians for a Construc-tive Tomorrow — also showed up. And they exhibited a sense of humor in bat-tling the alarmism, getting delegates, ac-tivists, and other conference “experts” to sign a petition for banning “Di-Hydrogen Monoxide,” otherwise known as water. Nearly every delegate they asked readily signed on to banning the evil substance, often while drinking water from a nearby watercooler. “There’s kind of this aura about the conference that these are experts meeting,” CFACT executive director Craig Rucker told the new aMerican from Cancun. “But they are not people en-dowed with some sort of spe-

cial scientific understanding of the natural world. They’re very ordinary folks who, in our opinion, have much more of a political agenda than they do a scientific one. That’s what the video on di-hydrogen monoxide revealed.” CFACT also obtained the signa-tures of climate delegates on a bogus peti-tion to reduce the U.S. GDP by six percent via trade restrictions if the U.S. does not cooperate with the international commu-nity on carbon reduction.

The CFACT video of the Cancun at-tendees signing these farcical petitions has been posted all over the Internet, pow-erfully demonstrating the mindset of the green true believers who are demanding to control the planet.

process,protests,progressIn the press, the hottest topic throughout the summit was the Kyoto Protocol. The 1997 agreement expires in 2012. Cur-rently, it is the main mechanism used by the warmists internationally to limit emis-sions and raise money. It basically forces developed countries, accounting for less than one-fourth of total global emissions, to cut back on releasing carbon dioxide through the Clean Development Mecha-nism. The money raised by selling “carbon credits” is used to finance “green” projects in poorer countries.

But in Cancun, there was a problem. Japan’s climate delegation steadfastly refused to renew its commitments, com-plaining that China, India, and the Unit-ed States — some of the world’s largest “emitters” — were not participating. “It does not make sense to set a second com-mitment period,” Japanese Environment Vice-Minister Hideki Minamikawa told reporters. “[Signatories] to Kyoto only represent 15 per cent of global emissions, but the countries who have signed up to

While preaching austerity for the rest of humanity, the self-anointed Earth saviors lived it up: gourmet food; fancy drinks; excellent service; expensive entertainment, including a live mariachi band; and, of course, carbon emissions aplenty.

Climateprotestors, some of whom poured human waste in the streets and vandalized private property, are seen here carrying the picture of communist mass-murderer Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

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the Copenhagen accord cause 80 per cent of emissions. We want a single binding treaty.... We should jump ship to a more effective framework.” Canada, Russia, and some other governments were also opposed to renewal. But Third World gov-ernments on the climate dole, including the communist Chinese regime and other, smaller ones, demanded the renewal of Kyoto as a precondition for “progress.” Climate delegations had reached an im-passe — or so it seemed.

FinalagreementsThe summit in Cancun failed to produce a binding deal or even a concrete renewal of the Kyoto Protocol. However, the UN climate dignitaries did finally reach an “agreement” of sorts, citing the accord as evidence of progress and vowing to expand the climate regime later. Almost

every government in the world signed on to what the global body is calling the “Cancun Agreements.” And similar to the process used to create the COP15 Co-penhagen Accord last year, wealthier regimes simply bribed rulers of poor nations with continued promises of free technology and at least $100 billion per year by 2020 to fight “climate change.”

Exactly where the money will come from has still not been determined, however.

“Cancun has done its job,” claimed UN climate boss Christiana Figueres in a statement at the summit’s conclusion. “The beacon of hope has been reignit-ed and faith in the multilateral climate change process to deliver results has been restored.” She said the Cancun Agree-ments represented a “new beginning,” not the end. “It is not what is ultimately required, but it is the essential foundation on which to build greater, collective am-bition,” she said.

Predictably, the agreements were at-tacked by far-Left greens for not going far enough fast enough, many of whom were out in force at Cancun, serving as a foil to make the delegates appear as “capitalist” stooges by comparison. However, critics on the Right noted that even though the

summit did not accomplish what the pro-testors and even the summit’s most ambi-tious advocates had hoped, the agreements are far from being the harmless documents described in most media accounts.

“Notwithstanding the carefully or-chestrated propaganda to the effect that nothing much will be decided at the UN climate conference here in Cancun, the decisions to be made here this week sig-nal nothing less than the abdication of the West,” declared science-policy expert Lord Monckton after reading one of the draft documents. “The governing class in what was once proudly known as the Free World is silently, casually letting go of liberty, prosperity, and even democracy it-self,” he added. “No one in the mainstream media will tell you this, not so much be-cause they do not see as because they do not bloody care.”

Cathie Adams, Sovereignty & Security chair for Eagle Forum and a correspondent at COP16 for IRN/USA Radio Network, has been attending UN summits since 1995. “The United Nations knows what they want and they put facilitators in place to accomplish their end goal,” she told the new aMerican. “It really has never been a process of nations joining together. It’s a process of nations submitting to an inter-national authority.” She said the finalized Cancun Agreements were “huge” for the UN. “What they came up with in the final draft was a process to begin the scheme where they’re going to be able to have a global tax,” she said, referring to a plan to have a UN body collect taxes on shipping and aviation to supposedly fund “climate” action. “It is incredulous for the UN to de-mand that a sovereign nation pass laws to fit the UN’s political agenda, but that is essentially what they did,” Adams noted. She also said 2012 — the 20-year anniver-sary of the climate hysteria — will prob-ably be the big date for a final, binding treaty.

The next COP climate summit is sched-uled for early December 2011 in Durban, South Africa. And while some observers are already predicting the imminent col-lapse of the alarmist movement and ridi-culing the scam in the world press, other analysts claim that the UN climate “mon-ster” is still far from dead — especially with the tens of billions of dollars already invested in it. n

Some youth CFACT activists also showed up. And they exhibited a sense of humor in battling the alarmism, getting delegates, activists, and other conference “experts” to sign a petition for banning “Di-Hydrogen Monoxide,” otherwise known as water.

unitednationsclimateboss Christiana Figueres speaks during the COP16 opening session, where she invoked the Mayan goddess Ixchel for inspiration in battling “global warming.”

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EnvironmEnt

by Michael Tennant

When, in 2009, the American Medical Association (AMA) endorsed President Barack

Obama’s healthcare reform bill, many Americans probably assumed that most physicians therefore backed the legisla-tion. In fact, that was not the case at all.

Regular readers of the new aMeri-can are undoubtedly aware of The John Birch Society’s Choose Freedom — Stop ObamaCare tour last fall, which featured physicians opposed to the recent federal takeover of medicine. (See, for example, “Doctors for Freedom” in the October 11, 2010 issue.) However, the doctors partici-pating in the Birch Society’s tour are far from alone; they are joined in the fight

by many other doctors’ groups, some of which were formed explicitly to oppose ObamaCare. TNA recently interviewed the leaders of three of these organizations: Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS); Dr. Hal Scherz, found-er and president of Docs4PatientCare; and Dr. Adam Dorin, founder of Physicians Against Obamacare.

DoctorsGoingagainsttheGrainThe AAPS is by far the oldest of these or-ganizations. Founded in 1943 to oppose the federal government’s first attempt to nationalize healthcare, the Wagner-Mur-ray-Dingell bill (named after its spon-sors, Sen. Robert Wagner of New York, Sen. James Murray of Montana, and Rep.

John Dingell, Sr. of Michigan, all Demo-crats), the AAPS has been a consistent, principled opponent of government intru-sions into medicine ever since. It opposed Medicare and Medicaid from the outset and, in 1993, sued then-First Lady Hil-lary Clinton and other federal officials for their secrecy surrounding the healthcare task force that came up with Clinton’s leg-islation to create a single-payer national health-insurance scheme. (A federal judge found in favor of the plaintiffs, only to be overturned on appeal.) The group later participated in lawsuits against various provisions of the Health Insurance Porta-bility and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 and on May 25, 2010, became the first organization of healthcare providers to file suit against ObamaCare.

Dr.HalScherz,founder and president of Docs4PatientCare, formed the group to oppose ObamaCare after the AMA endorsed it. Now he wants to grow the organization into a “strong force in Washington” to “help people understand issues that affect our patients.”


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You wouldn’t know it from watching TV, but a large percentage of doctors are adamant that ObamaCare must be repealed. These doctors are trying to air physicians’ views.

ObamaCare Repeal:Just What These Doctors Ordered

Dr. Jane Orient, an internist in solo private practice in Tucson, Arizona, and clinical lecturer at the University of Ari-zona College of Medicine, has been the executive director of AAPS since 1989. She explained that AAPS “take[s] a stand on principle, and it’s been that same prin-ciple since we were founded. We believe in the U.S. Constitution and limited gov-ernment and the Oath of Hippocrates and that physicians shouldn’t be compromis-ing themselves by getting into conflicts of interest with their patients.” To that end, AAPS encourages doctors to deal directly with their patients for payment, avoiding both public and private third-party pay-ments; patients, however, are free to file claims with third parties. Orient practices what she preaches: She said she has “never taken insurance” and “never did partici-pate in or take Medicare.”

Atlanta pediatric urologist Hal Scherz founded Docs4PatientCare in the spring of 2009 to, in his words, “represent doctors in this country who lost their representa-tion when the AMA bailed out and when their specialty societies and state medical societies failed to do the job of stopping the onslaught against American medicine” that is ObamaCare. Witnessing the Obama administration’s attacks against doctors go unchallenged by medical societies,

Scherz, as he recounted it, “got 40 doc-tors to go into a room, to agree to pony up some money, and that we were going to try to go ahead and put together an or-ganization to get the word out” in hopes of preventing the passage of ObamaCare. Thus was born Docs4PatientCare, whose membership has since grown to 3,500 doc-tors and, according to Scherz, “thousands more in our alliance, people who support what we are doing.”

Scherz believes that the group’s efforts were successful in getting the public to express to Congress its opposition to the ObamaCare legislation. Unfortunately, he said, “the problem was that Congress wasn’t listening, and they did what they wanted.”

Having recognized early in the organi-zation’s existence that they had “an oppor-tunity to be more than just a one-issue ad-vocacy group to stop ObamaCare,” Scherz said Docs4PatientCare’s main objective now is “to grow our membership so that we become a strong force in Washington so that we can go ahead and represent doc-tors and help people understand issues that affect our patients every day because no-body has ever done that before.”

A late but still very valuable entry into the anti-ObamaCare fray is Physicians Against Obamacare, a website created by

Dr. Adam Dorin, an anesthe-siologist in San Diego, Cali-fornia. Dorin, playing off his strength as a writer (he is the author of the 2007 book Jihad and American Medicine), cre-ated the website in the spring of 2010, just as ObamaCare was becoming law.

The site caught the atten-tion of AAPS, which contact-ed Dorin. Together they spon-sored the National Doctors Tea Party, which held events across the country, beginning with August 7 rallies, includ-ing one in Dorin’s home base of San Diego. That rally at-tracted 25 speakers, among them Dr. Orient; Reed Wilson of Docs 4PatientCare; Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily.com; Sally Pipes, president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute and author of The

Truth About Obamacare; San Diego talk-show host Roger Hedgecock, who occa-sionally substitutes for Rush Limbaugh; and Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle. Dorin said the event “was just a lot of fun” and received “a fair amount of media attention.” “I think we raised awareness and got people to realize that the AMA does not speak for anything close to the majority of docs,” he added. Orient counted the event a success, say-ing that it “enabled us to express a lot of basic ideas” that “weren’t being said at all” but became “planted in the public discourse” as a result.

Dorin obviously enjoys his public role, though he prefers to write rather than, as he put it, “just sit there and yell and scream all the time.” With the success of Physicians Against Obamacare under his belt, he de-cided to create America’s Medical Society, which was formally launched in October. Much like AAPS and Docs4PatientCare, America’s Medical Society is intended to represent members of the medical profes-sion. Dorin said he created the society in part because he wanted Docs4PatientCare and AAPS to “come together to form one” organization but “saw that it wasn’t going to happen.”

(Orient argued that trying to combine the groups under a single umbrella, so to

Dr.Janeorientistheexecutive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS); AAPS has been fighting socialized medicine since 1943. It sued to stop “HillaryCare” in the 1990s and was the first doctors’ group to file a lawsuit against ObamaCare.

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speak, would merely add “another layer of administration.” Furthermore, she noted that while the groups aren’t “working against each other” and, in fact, have coop-erated on more than one occasion, they do “have some different ideas about things” and “different priorities.” AAPS, for ex-ample, is a very conservative organization trying to roll back nearly all government involvement in medicine, whereas the majority of Docs4PatientCare’s members are, according to Scherz, “center or cen-ter-right” and therefore willing to accept a greater degree of government intervention in their field.)

In addition, Dorin felt that the cost of membership in those organizations might be prohibitive for some doctors and de-cided to “create a real low-overhead alter-native” with only nominal, or potentially no, membership fees. According to Dorin, there are “about a thousand docs” actively aligned with Physicians Against Obama-care and “probably more than that” as members of America’s Medical Society (he declined to provide a specific num-ber), though still “a bit less than AAPS or Docs4PatientCare.”

it’snotaboutimprovingHealthcareDespite their differences, which are usually a matter of degree rather than kind, the three physicians agree on several key points.

The first point of agreement is that ObamaCare is a destructive piece of legis-lation that ought to be repealed as soon as possible. Orient, with characteristic direct-ness, called it “not healthcare reform” but “an attempt to destroy the currently exist-ing institutions both for health insurance and for providing medical care.” Scherz, too, declined to consider it a healthcare law but deemed it rather a “tax-and-ration-ing” law. Dorin referred to it as “going the socialist route,” which he said is “the worst way” to reform the healthcare system. He explained:

My brother’s lived in London the last two-and-a-half years, and he has the best insurance in the world through [his employer], and yet he’s the first person to tell you that the healthcare system isn’t even close to what it is in the United States. The quality, the cleanliness, the way it’s kept up, the ability to get things done — it’s just

not there, and I think that unfortunately that’s what’s going to happen in medi-cine [here in America].

The British National Health Service (NHS), of course, is the socialist entity with which Centers for Medi-care and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Don-ald Berwick claimed to be “in love.” One of the rea-sons Berwick is infatuated with the NHS is that it rations care, something Berwick believes is inevitable in any healthcare system. As he put it, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care; the de-cision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.” Dorin noted that “the only way [ObamaCare] can work … is to lower the level of care, ration it.”

Moreover, Berwick, whom Dorin called “the wrong person for the job,” is a pro-ponent of wealth redistribution, declaring that “any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized, and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate” — a point not lost on Orient,

who argued that “a lot of [ObamaCare] is just simply redistribution of wealth.” AAPS contends in its lawsuit that Obama-Care “violates the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment,” she explained, “be-cause it is taking property from people and forcing them to pay it [to] a private insurance company.” That is, of course, redistribution, albeit in this case from the poorer and less fortunate to well-heeled, politically connected corporations.

Even more troubling to these physicians than the socialist aspect of the legislation is the damage it will do to the doctor-patient relationship. Scherz, for example, said that ObamaCare and other federal policies “are very patient-unfriendly” and “put the gov-

This deal with the devil, if you will, has not come without a price, namely the AMA’s independence. Scherz pointed out that the AMA originally came out in favor of ObamaCare, opposed it after finding out what was in it, and then reversed its position once more and endorsed it.

DoctorWayneiverson(left)andDoctoradamDorin are shownat the August 7 National Doctors Tea Party in San Diego. The rally, a joint effort between Physicians Against Obamacare and AAPS, was the first in a series of such events that Dorin says “raised awareness” among the public that many physicians are opposed to ObamaCare.

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ernment between the patient and the doc-tor, and that is just unacceptable.”

Orient, Scherz, and Dorin are all hoping that ObamaCare is repealed. Scherz and Dorin have more faith in Republicans to do the right thing — both said they be-lieved the incoming GOP House of Repre-sentatives is likely to defund some parts of ObamaCare — than Orient, who recalled that although Clinton’s 1993 attempt at healthcare nationalization went down to defeat in a Democrat-controlled Congress, the Republican Congress that followed in its wake “enacted quite a lot of it” in HIPAA. This time, she said, “we’ll have to see whether they stand their ground.”

A second common belief among the doctors is that the AMA, as Scherz put it, “has become a special-interest group unto itself” rather than representing physicians across the country. Dorin calculated that the annual cost of membership in the AMA and affiliated state and local organi-zations is around $2,000 — and, he added, “that’s a lot of money to be sold out, not being represented.”

What gives the AMA its enormous clout in Washington, the doctors agreed, is the roughly $100 million it takes in annually from member and non-member physicians alike as a result of a government-granted monopoly on Medicare and Medicaid billing codes. Orient, as it happens, is the person who uncovered the unholy alliance between the Health Care Financing Ad-ministration (HCFA), which is now CMS, and the AMA in 1998. HCFA had given the AMA the exclusive copyright on the codes, and doctors have ever since been forced to fund the AMA through their pur-chases of code books, the sales of which generate enormous royalties for the AMA.

This deal with the devil, if you will, has not come without a price, namely the AMA’s independence. Scherz pointed out

that the AMA originally came out in favor of ObamaCare, opposed it after finding out what was in it, and then reversed its position once more and endorsed it. “And,” he concluded, “you can just con-nect the dots and figure that somebody twisted their arm and reminded them that if they didn’t play ball they would lose their monopoly.”

The third thing on which the physicians concur is that real healthcare reform lies in the direction of the free market, not socialism. Every one of them mentioned that health insurance ought to cover only catastrophic care, not everyday sniffles. ObamaCare, said Orient, “basically out-laws anything that follows the principles of insurance” by prohibiting insurers from refusing customers with pre-existing

conditions and from impos-ing limits on policyholders’ benefits, which only exacer-bates the problem. The doc-tors believe that, in addition to repealing ObamaCare, tax policies that encourage employer-based, non-cat-astrophic health insurance should be modified. Putting patients in control of their own healthcare spending —

“a return of personal responsibility,” as Scherz described it — is the first step to-ward reducing costs.

Finally, the doctors all expressed some degree of optimism that ObamaCare can be stalled if not repealed. As mentioned earlier, Scherz and Dorin are fairly certain that Congress will defund parts of Obama-Care; and Dorin believes that the Senate and the White House will go Republi-can in 2012, after which “ObamaCare’ll … probably get repealed in ’13,” though he fears that some of it will already have taken hold by then and will be difficult to repeal. Orient, although not quite so con-vinced that Republicans will stand by their campaign promises, said, “I do not think the situation is by any means hopeless be-cause I think Americans are waking up. There’s a limit to what the federal govern-ment can do because it really doesn’t have any money, and I think we’re in for some very, very hard times.” “But,” she advised, “I think what we need to do is stay true to our principles and help each other out.” And that is the best prescription for the health of our families, communities, and nation, in good times and bad. n

To learn more about ObamaCare and how to stop it,

go to www.JBS.org/StopObamaCare.

AAPS contends in its lawsuit that Obama-Care “violates the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment,” Dr. Jane Orient explained, “because it is taking property from people and forcing them to pay it [to] a private insurance company.”

Dr.DonaldBerwick,head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, testifies during a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee. Berwick, who said he is “romantic about” the British National Health Service, is a proponent of rationing (i.e., denying) healthcare and redistributing wealth through socialized medicine.

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by Becky Akers

The Transportation Security Ad-ministration (TSA), notorious for groping and ogling naked passen-

gers at checkpoints, has long claimed that its “mission” is “protect[ing] the Nation’s transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce.” You may ask how delaying travelers in enormously long lines “ensure[s] free-dom of movement”; recall that these same jokers contend as well that their sexual assaults protect us. At least their double-speak and Orwellian “logic” are consistent.

As the TSA’s attacks on travelers es-calated in the weeks prior to Thanksgiv-ing, many commentators feared that if the agency prevailed in its molestation, it would extend its abuses everywhere. “If we allow them to implement these procedures in our airports,” an unattributed article at endoftheamericandream.com warned,

“pretty soon they will start popping up in subway stations, courthouses, sports stadi-ums and even at our workplaces.”

Unfortunately, the TSA didn’t wait to see whether we “allowed” it to “imple-ment these procedures” or any others: they’ve been “popping up in subway sta-tions, courthouses, sports stadiums and even at our workplaces” for years now. The agency is remarkably lax about find-ing terrorists, so lax, in fact, that no one in its employ anywhere at any time has ever ferreted out a single one. But it busily fulfills its “mission” of controlling every mode of transportation — and much, much more. Indeed, cynics who maintain that the agency has nothing to do with secu-rity and everything to do with dictatorship would argue it far exceeds that “mission,” the better to teach us serfs who’s in charge.

Since government at one level or anoth-er outright owns or heavily subsidizes and regulates virtually all transportation in this

country, the TSA encounters little resis-tance to its malignant growth (aside from turf wars, that is: the local cops it tries to enlist in its efforts disdain the TSA’s un-armed, unprofessional buffoons).

It has long “partnered” with Amtrak, for instance, bragging on September 23, 2008: “Amtrak Office of Security Strategy and Special Operations (OSSSO), Amtrak Police, Transportation Security Adminis-tration (TSA) personnel and officers from approximately 100 commuter rail, state, and local police agencies mobilized today for the largest joint, simultaneous North-east rail security operation of its kind, involving 150 railway stations between Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Essex Junc-tion, Vermont.”

The “750,000 rail passengers [who] ride along the Northeast Corridor and other rail systems integrated with [it]” would have witnessed this “highly visible police and security presence.” They may even have

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transportation sEcurity administration


Even as Americans’ mutterings about TSA’s improprieties are turning to bellows about personal abuse and unconstitutionality, the TSA is already expanding its presence.

airportsareonlytheBeginning

tSamaycallit“security,” but it’s actually sexual assault and meets the legal definition of that crime in many states.

suffered one of its “random passenger bag inspections.” Can the sexual abuse and pornographic scanning the TSA inflicts at airports be far behind?

Undoubtedly, many “domestic terror-ists” lurked among those 750,000, given the Department of Homeland Security’s generous definition of the term: Its re-port last year on “Rightwing Extremism” smeared militias, veterans, protestors of abortion and of the UN — basically any-one who balks at Our Rulers’ evisceration of the Constitution. “Terrorists” riding the Northeast Corridor have now tasted the Feds’ power: Wanna bet they’ll think twice before challenging it?

So cocksure is the TSA, and so complic-it are the corporate media, that the agency can afford to be honest when announcing these “mobilizations.” It makes no bones about centralizing authority, quoting “Am-trak Police Chief John O’Connor” in its press release: “We are one team, with one mission.... Without question, this opera-tion provided the longest wall of security ever mobilized along the East Coast.” Another press release a year later for a similar “mobilization” crowed, “Today’s operation illustrates the growing coopera-tion among police departments in States, cities, and towns throughout the northeast with their partners in Amtrak, commuter rail and mass transit systems, and TSA.”

Then there’s this from “John Sammon, TSA assistant administrator, Transporta-tion Sector Network Management”: “It

is critical that we continue to expand and exercise our collective ability.” Really? Critical to what? “Today’s event offers the opportunity to demonstrate in dramatic fashion the force potential and security en-hancement value of regional collaboration as TSA joins its professional colleagues throughout the Northeast to … provide a highly visible security presence during rush hour.” Translated from the Jargon, that means, “Hey, slaves, go ahead and resist: make our day!”

tootingovertroublingtrainsJust as it owns Amtrak, government owns all the trains underground, too. TSA in-terprets that as an open invitation to in-vade these systems as well. When the “new head of the Transportation Security Administration,” John Pistole, assumed office last summer, he blustered to USA Today, “Given the list of threats on sub-ways and rails over the last six years going on seven years, we know that some terrorist groups see rail and subways as being more vulnerable because there’s not the type of screening that you find in aviation.... From my perspective, that is an equally important threat area.” And no doubt worthy of the same atrocities the TSA commits at airports.

New York City’s iconic subway, one of the largest and oldest in the world, whisks more than five million riders about the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Manhattan each weekday. In 2005, the

NYPD decreed that it would henceforth “randomly” search passengers’ belong-ings. Why? Because it can, according to NYC top cop Ray Kelly.

His excuse was the bombings in Lon-don’s famous “tube” that summer. But New York’s elite had itched to search the citizens who pay their salaries for years. Indeed, Kelly told the New York Times, “You need an event such as London for people to realize this is a procedure put in place for their safety.... The issue is what the public will accept. You still need an event to get public support.” Even the Times noted Kelly’s haste in exploiting the tragedy: “It took less than two hours after the bombing attempts in London’s tran-sit system … for … Kelly, to decide to begin random checks of passengers’ bags in [New York].”

It didn’t take much longer for these un-constitutional, warrantless searches to fell their first victim: They “netted one arrest almost immediately,” the Associated Press reported. “Authorities stopped [a man out-side a train station on Long Island] after noticing something suspicious about his van. They reportedly found a machete, imitation handguns, an electronic stun gun and a martial arts weapon in the vehicle.”

Taxpayers exercising their rights guar-anteed by the Second Amendment are not the only prey. “Those caught carrying drugs or other contraband could be ar-rested,” too. This mirrors airports, where the TSA constantly seizes passengers with pets it doesn’t approve (exotic snakes or even, in one case, dead birds preserved in brine), pornography, or immigration papers of the wrong color — but nary a terrorist.

In April 2009, TSA moved in on the NYPD’s action. Again, there was an ex-cuse: New York’s perpetual shortfall in funds meant the NYPD couldn’t spare the cops necessary to rifle backpacks and purses. And so “Transportation Security Administration bag screeners from Ken-nedy, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty air-ports will be replacing most NYPD cops in the subway that screen bags for explo-sives,” Fox News explained. “About 30 TSA screeners a day will be pulled from the three area airports Monday through Friday to inspect bags at various subway locations throughout the city.”

TSA instituted similar dictatorship

amtraksecurity? Sexually assaulting passengers at airports should be more than enough evil for any agency, but the TSA is expanding to all forms of transportation.

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in Los Angeles in the summer of 2008. And it would certainly violate the Fourth Amendment in every city with under-ground track if it had the money and personnel. Instead, it hits them with its melodramatic “VIPR teams.”

According to the TSA, “Visible Inter-modal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams” consist “of federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspec-tors, transportation security officers, be-havior detection officers, and explosives detection canine teams.” These ninjas “work with local security and law en-forcement officials to supplement exist-ing security resources, provide deterrent presence and detection capabilities, and introduce an element of unpredictability to disrupt potential terrorist planning ac-tivities,” which is TSA-speak for, “They delay, inconvenience and are supposed to intimidate passengers so there’s no mis-taking who’s boss.”

Fortunately, that directive doesn’t seem to have penetrated the boots on the ground. They practice instead the sloth and in-competence that paralyze bureaucracies while mercifully shielding us from their grand designs. When “dozens (if not more) of TSA screeners, FAMs [Federal Air Marshals], and ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] descended on the

Tri-Rail commuter train [in South Florida],” one eyewit-ness at flyertalk.com report-ed that “most … were stand-ing around and talking, not giving a single eye to other passengers or their surround-ings. It was a morning long coffee break.”

BombardingBusesandFerriesMeanwhile, TSA threatens “to expand the VIPR concept beyond the rail sector to other forms of mass transit.” No telling how many potheads and py-thons they’ll snag.

Taking the bus instead of trains won’t protect you from the TSA’s nonsense, as “Bryce Williams and 689 other passen-gers” in Orlando discovered on October 22, 2009. They “went through tougher-than-normal security procedures … as part of a random check coordinated by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration,” according to the Orlando Sentinel. “[Fifty] officials from agencies including TSA, Orlando police, the Orange County Sher-iff’s Office, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection patted down passengers.” VIPR has also pummeled Greyhound’s terminal in Memphis, as well as the city’s light rail

on November 30, 2009; ditto for Charlotte, North Carolina, on May 28, 2008, Tampa, Florida, on February 16, 2010 — the list continues ad nauseam.

Frighteningly, the TSA often describes these raids as “augment[ing] normal trans-portation security operations.” But what’s “normal” about frisking people waiting to board a bus unless a country languishes in totalitarian misery?

When TSA isn’t hassling people on bus-ses and trains, it’s pestering commuters on ferries. In 2007, yet another press release from its indefatigable, tax-funded scribes proclaimed, “In the past three years, TSA has conducted pilot tests on several high-volume commuter ferry systems, includ-ing the Cape May-Lewes Ferry in New Jersey, the Golden Gate Ferry in Califor-nia and the Jamestown Scotland Ferry in Virginia.” Without a single warrant, its agents searched both “ferry riders” and “passenger vehicles lining up to board the boats.”

New York City’s Department of Trans-portation shuttles 21 million folks an-nually between Staten Island and Man-hattan on its ferries. For three weeks in 2009, the TSA irradiated those pas-sengers with millimeter waves: “Prior to boarding,” these criminals confessed on the bureaucracy’s website, “passen-gers will move through the terminal’s turnstiles at their normal pace. The screen-ing equipment will be angled to passively screen passengers.” (Translating once more from the TSA Jargon yields, “With any luck, the poor slobs won’t even know we’re shooting carcinogenic rays at them!”)

The agency is remarkably lax about finding terrorists, so lax, in fact, that no one in its employ anywhere at any time has ever ferreted out a single one. But it busily fulfills its “mission” of controlling every mode of transportation — and much, much more.

newyorksubway: TSA often “partners” with local cops to intimidate commuters on their way to work, where they earn the taxes to pay for their chains.AP Images


“Passengers will not be asked to stand in place, nor will they even need to break stride. Video images of the scanned passengers will be monitored by TSA’s Transporta-tion Security Officers from a sta-tion set up to the side of the waiting area. The TSOs in the monitoring station will be in communication with roving TSOs and will notify them of any passengers who dis-play an anomaly. An abbreviated pat down area will be available for resolution of those anomalies” — sans a warrant, of course — “and TSA-certified explosive detection canine teams will be available to screen passengers’ baggage.”

Naturally, the media coos its admiration for this despotism. When cops frisked Greyhound’s passengers in Florida, the Orlan-do Sentinel chirped, “The idea is to keep off guard terrorists and others who mean harm, thereby improving safety for passengers and workers.” Actually, the idea is to keep shredding the Consti-tution until there’s nowhere to hide from the State. Don’t want goons ogling and groping you at airports? Too bad: They’re ogling and groping you on trains, buses, and fer-ries too.

GovernmentGumptionGrowsThese spreading horrors are consistent with government’s encroaching essence in general (remember Jefferson’s observa-tion that “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground”). They also dovetail specifi-cally with the TSA’s vague and expansive “mission” of “protect[ing] the Nation’s transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement.”

More confirmation came last Novem-ber, at the height of passengers’ fury over the TSA’s sexual assaults, when the agency’s über-fuhrer confessed that she lusts to irradiate and molest all travelers, not just those who take to the skies. Janet Napolitano is Secretary of the gargantuan Department of Homeland Security (circa 220,000 employees, $50 billion annual budget), among whose bureaucracies lurks the TSA. Bloviating on Charlie Rose, this

two-bit tyrant announced, “I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime.... So what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections [sic for “power”] there?”

A “Homeland Security official” tried to prevent an uproar by denying to Fox News that “the use of … full-body scan-ners is … under consideration,” at least for mass transit, “saying they ‘would not be feasible in a system with hundreds or thousands of access points.’” But of course he lied. Airlines have “hundreds or thou-sands of access points,” dauntingly scat-tered nationwide rather than concentrated in a single city, and that didn’t thwart the TSA’s compulsory strip-tease.

Chillingly, TSA increasingly strikes places that have nothing to do with trans-portation. “Dozens of TSA officers” in-fested Super Bowl XLIII in 2009, accord-ing to the agency’s PR, while dozens more patrolled other sites around Tampa.

Perhaps scariest of all are the TSA’s

forays into political spaces. The agency set up shop in the streets of Peterborough, New Hampshire, in 2008 and searched people attend-ing John McCain’s “Town Hall Meeting.” Nor was this a fluke. On February 18, 2008, the TSA screened folks hoping to hear pres-idential contender Barack Obama when he spoke at Beloit College in Wisconsin; the same scenario repeated itself that October at the Arch in St. Louis. Granted, siccing the TSA on fans of McCain and Obama may seem fitting punish-ment, but the constitutional rami-fications appall.

So far, the TSA leaves its com-puterized strip-searches at airports when it ventures elsewhere. But if it gets away with them there, it will surely foist them on trains, buses, ferries, stadiums, political events — and more.

And easily, too: A portable porno-scanner already exists that takes the TSA’s X-rated X-rays on the road. It ostensibly “inspects” cargo and vehicles — as if the Feds have any constitutional authority to do either. Concealed inside a van, the gizmo covertly denudes

pedestrians, motorists, even citizens inside buildings; none have the slightest suspi-cion that a government agent is leering at their nakedness. The scanner’s manu-facturer boasts, “This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspec-tion system ever.” New York City’s police department bought some, as have an “un-disclosed number of government agen-cies” worldwide.

Unless we abolish this vile agency, the TSA will carry its war on Americans from airports, bus stations, and political events to highways, shopping malls, even sidewalks. The Supreme Court long ago invented an “interest” for government in “safe aviation.” It has further decreed that such “interest” outweighs our petty con-cerns for personal privacy so that buying a ticket means we implicitly consent to any and every abuse the Feds dish out.

What court will hesitate to extend that “interest” to the streets, that forfeiture of privacy to the mere act of subsisting under D.C.’s dictatorship? n

assumingeveryoneisaterrorist,and abusing him accordingly, not only violates the Constitution, it endangers us by squandering time and resources on imaginary “threats.”

AP Images



by Thomas R. Eddlem

Poor Lenin’s Almanac: Perverse Left-ist Proverbs for Modern Life, by Bruce Walker, Outskirts Press: Denver, Colora-do, 2010, 197 pages, paperback, $20.95. Available at Amazon.com.

B ruce Walker has almost turned Ben Franklin and his aphorisms in Poor Richard’s Almanack on

their head. Almost. He has taken many of the favorite sayings of our parents and grandparents and — in the voice of to-day’s amoral socialists — inverted them into what amounts to the operating prin-ciples of the modern state and its salaried myrmidons.

The problem is that most of the Anglo-Saxon proverbs he inverts never appeared in Franklin’s original Poor Richard’s Al-manack. But the aphorisms he inverts should be familiar to most readers:

To err is human, to forgive divine.Children should be seen and not

heard.The bigger they are, the harder

they fall.

Each of these, according to “Poor Lenin” socialists in today’s world, becomes, re-spectively:

To err is human, to forgive ideologi-cal.

Parents should be seen and not heard.

The bigger they are, the better they are.

Walker appropriates and reverses the say-ings of even political celebrities far more modern than Benjamin Franklin, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Martin Lu-ther King, as well as actual phrases lifted directly from the Bible. The purpose of the

book is to illustrate how per-verse modern leftist culture has become in recent dec-ades, and how it has warred against all traditional moral-ity that originally produced American freedom.

In a religious vein, Walk-er’s Poor Lenin proclaims, “Thou shall not commit monogamy.” The book ex-plains why this is virtually a leftist law: “Many social problems are ‘solved’ by a Jewish or Christian married couple who have been hap-pily married for 30 years.... What is the welfare rate for this demographic group?... The traditional, stable, per-manent family is the worst nightmare of anyone who would like to run your life.”

One particularly poign-ant inverted aphorism is the dubious FDR slogan: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” While the original quote was used to allay Americans’ fears of socialist economic poli-cies that were supposed to rescue America from the Great Depression but actually deepened and extended the depression, the perverse version confected by Walker is a perfect explanation of modern Americans’ mis-understanding of freedom: “The only thing we have to fear is freedom itself.”

Roosevelt spoke of “freedom from” a variety of ills: hunger, poverty, home-lessness, healthcare needs, etc. But real freedoms don’t promise delivery of mate-rial goods to people who haven’t earned them, since that also means that it imposes a form of slavery upon others who must produce and provide the goods for deliv-

ery. “Real Freedom — ‘freedom of’ — includes the chance of personal failure as well as personal success,” Walker writes. “Give more and more power over our lives to Poor Lenin, and he will be able to de-liver us through more ‘freedoms from.’”

Walker also lashes out at the lack of in-tegrity of judges on the Supreme Court in recent decades:

Judges, supposedly protecting us from the excesses of government, magically find that the very limited powers of the federal government are,

Popular American sayings that reflect the credos that Americans have strived to live by through our country’s history are turned on their heads to reflect liberals’ socialist thought.

Ben FranklinInverted


Book rEviEw

in fact, infinite.... Judges have deter-mined that a black man in America can never be a real person (in Dred Scott), and that public accommoda-tions which are “separate but equal” do not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amend-ment (Plessy v. Ferguson), and then later can routinely uphold invidiously unequal treatment of white people or men as a “remedy” for past wrongs. “The Judge Giveth. The Judge Ta-keth Away. Blessed is the Name of the Judge.” … Because judges can take plain text and, through legalistic alchemy, transform black into white and white into black, law — always a preserve of rights against abuse — can be turned, instead, into a weapon against the people.

This book is a visit through the sensible mind of Bruce Walker. However, just about everyone will find something to disagree with in this book, and this re-viewer is no exception. One such Walker comment is: “Poor Lenin thinks noth-ing, in time of war, of calling one of our greatest generals, ‘General Betray-us’ or revealing the secrets of how we are winning the war on the front pages of the New York Times or accusing our soldiers (without proof) of razing vil-lages and raping virgins.” There’s a lot to pick apart in that statement. One of our “greatest generals”? Winning the war? Are we even at war at all if Congress re-fuses to declare it (as the U.S. Constitu-tion requires)? Was there no proof of Abu Ghraib? Of Haditha? Of the WikiLeaks video of American helicopter pilots who knowingly gunned down a wounded man and a good Samaritan who was taking the wounded to a hospital?

“To err is human, to forgive is ideologi-cal,” Walker writes of Poor Lenin. Con-servatives can’t be forgiven by liberals, Walker notes, but it’s also worth noting that conservatives can certainly forgive each other for their shortcomings.

Ultimately, the personage deemed “Poor Lenin” represents Satan himself. Poor Lenin’s rejection of morality as an objective reality is the proof. And Walker demonstrates that he’s on the side of an-gels with this book, even if the reader can detect a momentary misstep. n

30

Book rEviEw

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anonymousGiverrevealedHaving once received a truly anonymous gift myself — cash in an unmarked enve-lope — I know the feeling that comes when you’re on the receiving end of an unexpect-ed gift. I was grateful, yes, but also curious.

Well, recently a group of about 400 people came together in Canton, Ohio, to remember one such giver, a man who wished his identity to remain a secret so that others could be blessed without any strings attached.

On December 17, 1933, an advertise-ment appeared in the Canton Repository newspaper. Under the pseudonym B. Vir-dot, the ad offered cash gifts to needy fam-ilies in exchange for letters detailing their financial troubles and how they would choose to spend the money if they were to receive it.

Although B. Virdot promised to keep the respondents’ identities a secret, many found it difficult to ask for help. “If I thought this would be printed in the papers I would rather die of hunger first,” wrote one proud woman. Indeed, it was a time in America when accepting charity was commonly seen as an admission of one’s own failure.

One hundred fifty people living in Can-ton during the Great Depression were re-cipients of cash gifts from B. Virdot. Most checks were for as little as $5 (equivalent to about $84 today). Although the money was often spent on necessities like food and clothing, it was sometimes used to purchase something special. For instance, Olive Hillman used her $5 check to buy her then-eight-year-old daughter, Geral-dine, a porcelain doll. “I was thrilled to get it,” said Geraldine Hillman Fry, now 85. “It really was the only doll that I ever had in my life, so it meant a lot to me.”

B. Virdot’s true name remained a mys-tery until 2008 when Ted Gup, grandson of Samuel J. Stone, received a suitcase con-taining his grandfather’s papers. Inside the suitcase were letters addressed to a B. Vir-dot. After some investigation, Ted discov-ered that the name B. Virdot was actually a combination of his grandfather’s daughters’ names: Barbara, Dorothy, and Virginia.

It was to this name, this man, that Helen Palm wrote in 1933, “I am writing this

because I need clothing, and sometimes we run out of food.” The New York Times reported on November 8, 2010 that a re-union was recently held for the families of the recipients whose lives B. Virdot had once touched. Palm, the only recipi-ent still alive, attended. “I thought about B. Virdot a lot” over the years, said Palm. “I was really surprised when I learned his real name.”

teenstrytoreturnmoneyMore often than not, young adults are only in the news for not-so-praiseworthy inci-dents. So, when we do get a glimpse of teen integrity, maturity, and the like, it is indeed refreshing — and perhaps contagious.

The November 5 Boston Herald re-ported that two students from Snowden International School in Boston, Trinh Tat and Carlotta Feliciano, both 17, saw a man drop more than $1,000 worth of Money-Gram money orders near the Prudential Center in Boston.

Unable to track him down, they began to seek advice on how to get the money orders returned to their rightful owner. They called the police, contacted a bank and a supermarket where they believed the money orders could have been issued, and called MoneyGram directly. Referring to Tat, a spokesperson for MoneyGram said, “I’m glad that she’s such a great citizen to find these and try to give them back to the owner.”

“It could be his hard-earned money. He could have just been trying to pay his rent. I just hope to give the money back to him,” Trinh Tat told the Herald.

Unfortunately, initial attempts to locate the owner of the money orders proved to be unsuccessful, even frustrating. “I went to the bank for advice and they told me since I found it I could keep it,” Tat said. Per-haps the bank’s advice would be tempting to some, but Tat doesn’t intend to do that.

With help from school officials and friends, the search will continue until the man who lost the money orders is found. Meanwhile, in celebration of her honesty and willingness to do the right thing, Tat was honored as her school’s “Citizen of the Month” last November.

littleDressesBringBigSmilesLittle Dresses for Africa is a Christian, non-profit organization dedicated to im-proving girls’ self-worth through the gift of a dress. The idea was born in 2007 while Rachel O’Neill was on a mission trip in Malawi, Africa. There, she saw precious young girls wearing tattered clothes that were literally falling apart. The concept was simple: outfit less for-tunate girls with new dresses and in the process build their sense of self-worth. And what could be simpler than making dresses out of store-bought, ready-made pillowcases?

“I started it because pillowcases make the dresses so easy to make,” O’Neill told the Kalamazoo Gazette in 2009. “The hem is already there, and it’s so much cheaper and quicker than starting from scratch. It just spread like wildfire. We now have groups sewing all over the country.”

In 2008, one such group from Michigan began constructing 100 dresses from do-nated pillowcases. Once her women’s club project was finished, Eleanor Bielenda set a goal to make an additional 1,000 dresses all by herself. Happily, the October 24, 2010 issue of the St. Valentine Heartline reported, Eleanor exceeded her original goal, forwarding 1,300 dresses to O’Neill for distribution in Africa.

Making the dresses appears addicting. Brownie troops, home-economics class-es, Bible study groups, and experienced seamstresses across America continue to whip them up in masses. To date, over 100,000 dresses have been sewn and dis-tributed through orphanages in Africa and other Third World countries.

The overwhelming success of the pro-gram reflects the hearts and hands of many willing to sew, donate fabric and supplies, and assist with shipping costs. In an Octo-ber 11, 2010 posting on her Little Dresses for Africa website O’Neill said, “I can’t begin to describe the beauty and the love stitched in every little dress that arrives each day from all over the U.S. and Cana-da.... We’re not just sending dresses, we’re sending hope!” n

— Debbie canaDa


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by Jack Kenny

I t is sometimes said regretfully that many Americans today get their “slant” on the news from TV’s late-

night comedians. But today’s “baby boomers” and Generation X-ers and Y-ers are not among the first Americans to find their politics strained through the filter of humor. More than a century before Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert began coming into people’s living rooms via broadcast and cable television, Sam-uel Langhorne Clemens, known to read-ers around the world as Mark Twain, was infiltrating the same sanctuary via news-

papers, magazines, and books. In a 2008 article for Time magazine, humorist Roy Blount, Jr. showed just how topical, yet timeless, Twain’s humor was and is.

In King Leopold’s Soliloquy, Twain’s scathing 1905 satire on the Belgian oc-cupation of the Congo, Blount found the kind of criticism that might have been aimed a few short years ago at a U.S. gov-ernment embarrassed by the photographs of abuse at the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Twain imagined the frustra-tion the Belgian King must have felt when photographers discovered natives of the Congo whose hands had been cut off by their Belgian captors. (In the days before

the coming of the camera, the King could avail himself of what became known in our Watergate era as “plausible deniability.”)

“Then all of a sudden came the crash!” Twain’s Leopold laments. “That is to say, the incorruptible Kodak — and all the harmony went to hell! The only witness I have encountered in my long experi-ence that I couldn’t bribe.” At least King Leopold didn’t have to worry about a WikiLeaks exposing his skullduggery on the Internet.

“Whether Twain was talking about rac-ism at home, the foreign misadventures of the Western powers or the excesses of the era of greed he initially flourished in after the Civil War,” Blount wrote, “his target was always human folly and hypocrisy, which turn out to be perennial topics for further study.”

On the centenary of the author’s 1910 death, the University of California Press late last year released the first of three volumes of Twain’s expanded biography, including material the author himself de-creed should not be published until he had been dead for 100 years.

“From the first, second, third and fourth editions all sound and sane expressions of opinion must be left out,” Twain instructed his heirs and editors in 1906. “There may be a market for that kind of wares a century from now. There is no hurry. Wait and see.”

Some of those opinions might still be regarded in some quarters as something other than “sound and sane.” Twain re-ferred to American soldiers in the Philip-pines as “our uniformed assassins,” though his invective was more often and more appropriately aimed at the government that sent them there. Still, it is not hard to imagine the outrage that description would provoke were it uttered today about our troops in Afghanistan or Iraq. Bill O’Reilly would likely have Mark Twain hauled off his set at Fox News, perhaps in one piece, if Twain dared to enter the “No Spin Zone.” And there would be a predict-able and understandable uproar if Twain’s version of the Thanksgiving holiday were taught in our public schools:

Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had some-thing to be thankful for — annually,

Mark Twain directed his heirs not to release for 100 years some of his manuscripts that contained his unvarnished opinion about touchy topics — the time’s up.

AP

Imag

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— past and pErspEctivEHistoryHistory

Mark

Twain

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not oftener — if they had suc-ceeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting extermi-nated by their neighbors the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the extermi-nating had ceased to be mu-tual and was all on the white man’s side, consequently on the Lord’s side, consequently it was proper to thank the Lord for it.

Skewering ImperialismKilling, Twain wrote in his short story The Chronicle of Young Satan, is “the chiefest ambition of the human race and the ear-liest incident in its history.” Yet he was not a pacifist. He wrote favorably of the French Revolu-tion, which in the name of lib-erty devoured it, and in his own time favored the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War. Though he was later a founding member and vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League, he was initially a supporter of the U.S. role in the Spanish-American War, applauding it as a means of freeing Cuba. “Old as I am, I want to go to the war my-self,” he wrote in a letter from Vienna. “And I should do it, too, if it were not for the danger.”

But he believed his country — or, more precisely, his government — had gone astray, both morally and geographically, when it used the war over Cuba as the oc-casion for also taking the Philippines from the Spanish colonists and then denying the Filipinos their promised independence. Benevolent American rule would “uplift and civilize and Christianize” the poor na-tives, a pious President McKinley declared. In fact, most of the “little brown brothers” McKinley wished to “Christianize” were Catholics. And the Filipinos, with ideas of their own about liberty and independence, revolted against their new overlords. Dur-ing the war that followed, Twain bitterly denounced America’s “land-stealing and liberty-crucifying crusade.”

“I am an anti-imperialist,” the author told reporters on his return to the States. “I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.” His description of the nation’s first overseas imperialist adventure reads like a retrospective of the Vietnam War or the promised “cakewalk” in Iraq. We had, he said, “got into a mess, a quag-mire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extraction immensely greater.”

While he deplored the slaughter going on in the name of civilization, “uplift,” and, especially, Christianity, Twain had particular contempt for “the water cure,” a method of “enhanced interrogation” we now know as waterboarding. The purpose, then as now, was to get the subject to re-veal information his captors believed he was withholding.

“To make them confess — what?” Twain thundered in an argument strikingly similar to one often heard today. “Truth? Or lies? How can one know which it is they are tell-ing? For under unendurable pain a man confesses anything that is required of him, true or false, and his evidence is worthless.”

If it is surprising to find echoes of today’s controversies in the polemics of 100 years ago, we can be reasonably cer-tain that Twain’s views were no less controversial in his own time. The fact that he was the world’s best-known and much-loved humorist did not make his anti-establishment essays and speeches any less loathsome to men who wielded great power to their own advantage and, so they imagined, their nation’s advan-tage. When the United States, in a coalition of Western nations, invaded China to put down the Boxer rebellion in 1900, Mark Twain conspicuously did not “support the troops.”

“It is all China now and my sympathies are with the Chi-nese,” he wrote. “I hope they will drive all the foreigners out and keep them out for good.” Twain’s views on that subject inspired President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901 to label the esteemed author a “prize idiot.”

No doubt many Americans agreed with the popular young

President. Many of Twain’s opinions were too much for his contemporaries. “None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth,” he lamented. Even at the height of his un-disputed talent, he encountered rejection from fearful editors, and at the peak of his popularity, he dared the scorn of both press and public. He was, not surprisingly, as contemptuous of the gatekeepers of ac-ceptable opinion and lions of the “fourth estate” as many Americans are today. “The awful power, the public opinion of a na-tion,” he wrote, “is created in America by a hoard of ignorant, self-complacent simple-tons who failed at ditching and shoemak-ing and fetched up journalism on their way to the poorhouse.”

Twain submitted his now-famous “War Prayer” for publication in 1905, but its graphic description of the realities of war made it, in the judgment of Harper’s Ba-zaar editor Elizabeth Jordan, unsuitable for publication in that genteel journal. It was eventually published posthumously in 1923 in what Ron Powers, author of Mark Twain: A Life, describes as a “bowdlerized

acartoonthat appeared in the magazine Puck in 1885 of Mark Twain standing on stage speaking to an audience.

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form.” Little was heard of it from then until the Vietnam War era, when, Powers noted, “war protestors read it aloud in coffee-house protests and mailed it around to one another.” It has since taken on new life in cyberspace as antiwar bloggers have cir-culated it through the Internet. (“The War Prayer” is reprinted on page 38.)

Creating Wonder With WitWit, observed G.K. Chesterton, “is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it. All honest people saw the point of Mark Twain’s wit. Not a few dis-honest people felt it.” But it was not just the dishonest or the dull-witted that Twain skewered with his satirical swift sword. He claimed that most men, himself included, are moral cowards, and he found it ironic that the virtues of freedom were most often and most loudly praised by those who least favor their exercise. An unconventional Presbyterian, Twain was not above paying a left-handed compliment to God in order to castigate both the timidity and the intol-erance of his countrymen.

“It is by the goodness of God,” he wrote, “that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: free-dom of speech, freedom of conscience and the prudence never to practice either of them.” Scorn and ridicule are not always adequate to silence unwelcome opinion, he ac-knowledged, but they are often the only weapons available.

“If the man doesn’t believe as we do, we say he is a crank and that settles it,” he wrote in Following the Equator. “I mean it does nowadays, because now we can’t burn him.”

At its most humorous, his wit always had some bite to it, as when he proclaimed George Washington “ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.” The low esteem in which the American public now holds the Congress of the United States would surely not have surprised Twain, who surmised there was “no distinctively American crim-inal class except for Congress.” Nor would the present-day con-cern over the shortcomings of

our public schools. “In the first place God made idi-ots,” he surmised. “That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”

“He is very much in the same position as myself,” wrote British playwright George Bernard Shaw. “He has to put matters in such a way as to make people who would other-wise hang him believe he is joking.” Few would have thought Twain joking, and some might have wished to hang him, if they had read his plain-spoken complaint, included in the new Autobiography, that “our people have no ideals now that are worthy of consideration; that our Christi-anity which we have always been so proud of — not to say vain of — is now noth-ing but a shell, a sham, a hypocrisy; that we have lost our ancient sympathy with oppressed peoples struggling for life and liberty; that when we are not coldly indif-ferent to such things we sneer at them, and that the sneer is about the only expression the newspapers and the nation deal in with regard to such things.”

The author of such passages might seem a different fellow altogether from the hu-morist who responded good-naturedly to

a premature obituary, noting, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Perhaps by happenstance, perhaps by de-sign, we have allowed the humor to over-shadow and soften the sharp edge of his social criticism. Twain became “Colonel Sanders without the chicken, the avuncu-lar man who told stories,” Powers told the New York Times in an interview in 2010. “He’s been scrubbed and sanitized, and his passion has been kind of forgotten in all these long decades. But here (in the previ-ously unpublished works) he is talking to us, without any filtering at all, and what comes through that we have lost is pre-cisely this fierce, unceasing passion.”

Hal Holbrook, who began his one-man show Mark Twain Tonight! in 1956, has been unearthing various levels of Twain’s wit and unique storytelling talents for more than half a century. In an article in-

cluded in The Mark Twain An-thology, Holbrook wrote that it was during an historic battle over school integration in 1957 that he began to incorporate Twain’s political and social commentary into his shows.

“Until then I had been trying to put together a funny show, born in a nightclub,” the actor recalled. “But when President Eisenhower called out the troops to put down the racial explosion at Central High School in Little Rock, Mark Twain’s social con-science began to cast its shadow over me.” As it happened, he was scheduled to do his show near Little Rock shortly after the riots occurred. “I did not yet have ma-terial in my repertoire that spe-cifically commented on racial in-justice,” Holbrook wrote. “All I had was the Sherburn-Boggs se-lection from Huckleberry Finn, which ends with Colonel Sher-

At its most humorous, his wit always had some bite to it, as when he proclaimed George Washington “ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.”

35www.TheNewAmerican.com Harper’smagazine published many writings of Mark Twain.

burn’s blistering speech to the mob that has come to lynch him. Although a white man is speaking to a white mob, Mark Twain is making a thinly veiled statement about the Ku Klux Klan. The portrait of sudden violence in the shooting of Boggs, of ignorance and the mob mentality that sweeps people along was eerily appro-priate to this modern-day crisis in Little Rock, and Twain’s setting did happen to be a town in Arkansas. So that was the selec-tion I chose to deliver.”

Holbrook later worked into his routine what Twain called the “Silent Lie” of re-maining quiet in the face of grave injustice. When he did his show in Prague, Holbrook recalled, two brave souls applauded the line about how “whole nations of people conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies” that serve only “tyrannies and shams.” The same line drew applause in Hamburg, Ger-many, in 1961 and in Oxford, Mississippi, on October 9, 1962, during the riots over the admission of African-American James Meredith to the University of Mississippi.

Words That BleedTwain’s “War Prayer” and other polemic essays of the 1900s are “the Rosetta Stone of dissent from American imperialist folly,” wrote Powers. There were, to be sure, other voices raised against that imperialist march, both within and outside the Anti-Imperialist League. But many of them spoke in such starched-collar, schoolmistress tones that they proved poor kindling to fire the con-science of a nation. “Have we a course of war so clear, so loftily imperative,” asked the weekly journal Nation in 1899, “that all

the hideous carnage and the fearful blow to civic progress must be hazarded in order to vindicate humanity and righteousness?” Even as outspoken and frequently harsh a critic of the Philippines war as Senator George Hoar, a Massachusetts Republican, referred to it at one point as “a policy of ruffianism,” a phrase more apt to describe a fistfight in a schoolyard.

Defenders of the “ruffianism” countered with charges of disloyalty or even trea-son, accusing opponents of undermining the mission and endangering the lives of “our boys” overseas. “Their work cost the lives of hundreds of American soldiers — stabbed in the back as they stood out there on the firing line, by their own countrymen,” charged Fred C. Chamberlin, author of The Blow From Behind (1903). “All up and down this great country the Anti-Imperial-ists made speeches of sympathy for the men who were shooting at our own soldiers.”

The fact that our own soldiers had been sent on a mission to conquer and subju-gate a people in their own land seemed to neither enter the thoughts nor cool the ardor of those who, like Senator Albert Be-veridge of Indiana, saw the hand of God leading the Stars and Stripes westward o’er the great Pacific. It was the same hand seen by Congregationalist minister Josiah Strong, who proclaimed the mis-sion of Anglo-Saxons to carry the bless-ings of civilization to inferior races. James M. King, a Methodist minister in New York, said unequivocally: “God is using the Anglo-Saxon to conquer the world for Christ by dispossessing feeble races, and assimilating and molding others.”

Not all the Americans fighting the Fili-pinos were as eager to carry on the war as some of the politicians, preachers, and journalists back home. “I am not afraid and am always ready to do my duty,” said a sergeant in the First Nebraska regiment, “but I would like someone to tell me what we are fighting for.” But some seemed to glory in the blood and guts and gore of the battlefield. In his 1962 biography, Mark Twain, The Man and His Work, Edward Wagenknecht quoted a letter from a sol-dier to his mother, published in an Iowa newspaper: “We never left one alive,” he wrote. “If any one was wounded we would run our bayonets right through him.” The Anti-Imperialist League published a num-ber of letters from soldiers in the Philip-pines, including one from a volunteer from the state of Washington, who wrote: “This shooting of human beings is a ‘hot game’ and beats rabbit hunting all to pieces.”

Against such unbridled zeal for the bloodied glory of war, the Nation’s warn-ing of “a fearful blow to civic progress” was of little avail. Even the magazine’s ref-erence to “all the hideous carnage” merely hints at the hideous nature of the carnage. Twain’s “War Prayer” goes a good deal further with words that all but bleed from the page, describing bodies torn to “bloody shreds,” guns drowning out the “shrieks of the wounded,” and widows and orphans wandering from their war-wrecked homes, the white snow “stained with the blood of their wounded feet.”

It’s not a description of war we are likely to hear on either broadcast or cable TV news or read about in our daily papers. Nor are we likely to see a scene Twain wrote for a pageant called “The Stupen-dous Procession,” with the 20th century portrayed as “a fair young creature, drunk and disorderly, borne in the arms of Satan,” and Christendom “a majestic matron in flowing robes drenched with blood.” On her head was “a golden crown of thorns, impaled on its spine the bleeding hearts of patriots who died for their country — Boers, Boxers, Filipinos; in one hand a slingshot in the other a Bible, open at the text — ‘Do unto others,’ etc.”

There are, after all, milder, antiseptic ways to talk about war, and we have sure-ly heard them all. As the humorist Blount concluded, “Old Mark, unvarnished, might be too hot for cable, even today.” n

Dwight Eisenhower shakes hands with “Mark Twain,” New York actor Hal Holbrook, at the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Oct. 12, 1959.

AP Images



www.whitakerlab.net

This short story by Mark Twain was published posthumously in 1923.

by Mark Twain

I t was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of pa-triotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols

popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balco-nies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot ora-tory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears run-ning down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the sur-render! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation:

God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!

Mark Twain was famous for his satirical treatment of serious topics, and his treatment of war was no exception.

The War Prayer

AP Images38 THE NEW AMERICAN • JANUARy 10, 2011


Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful lan-guage. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country im-perishable honor and glory —

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

The stranger touched his arm, mo-tioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the strang-er perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think.

“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one ut-tered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all suppli-

cations, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without in-tent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commis-sioned of God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and un-thinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory — must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smil-ing fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with un-availing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds

of winter, broken in spirit, worn with tra-vail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrim-age, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!”

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said. n

“O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain.”


HelleriiGun-rights advocates cheered when the Supreme Court delivered its opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller that de-clared there is a constitutionally protect-ed “individual right” to possess a firearm for private use and struck down the D.C. gun ban. That statement was ground-breaking, since liberal collectivists had argued the opposite for years and used this argument to support their gun-ban-ning laws as 100 percent constitutional. To these fervent anti-gunners, the Found-ers were closet Marxists who believed only in “positive rights” — rights de-cided upon and granted by a benevolent, powerful central government — and a disarmed citizenry.

Alas those progressive, true believers in gun bans did not stop after what they viewed as minor setback. The D.C. City Council simply enacted a new firearms registration scheme that critics argue is nearly as oppressive as the original law. The pro-gun organization Gun Owners of America (GOA) is challenging the new D.C. gun law because, as GOA puts it in their press release, “What good does it do if the Court says you have an ‘indi-vidual right’ to own a gun, but the city in which you live is still allowed to impose draconian restrictions which will cost you hundreds of dollars just so you can exer-cise that right?” Supreme Court observers believe that the gun-phobic liberals might be facing another disappointing loss as gun rights are again recognized by our highest court.

Howaboutanak-47Withthatnewtruck?The newswire service AFP reported on November 15 that a “truck dealer and gun-rights supporter in Florida has tripled his sales by offering a free AK-47 assault rifle to all new buyers.” Nick Ginetta, of Na-tions Trucks, told the news that his sales have skyrocketed with the new promotion and that in the last four days he handed out 21 vouchers for AK-47s that can be used at a nearby gun shop where he has reserved 100 of the assault rifles.

Ginetta’s clientele consists mostly of hunters, fishermen, and outdoorsmen, and the promotion is appealing to them. Ginet-ta commented: “If I (were) selling Hyun-dais, I would not go for that. It wouldn’t attract my customer base.” He also ex-plained how the arrangement worked and why he chose that specific weapon. “I give you a voucher to go to the gun shop, and you have to pass all state and federal reg-ulations.... The whole reason to advertise (AK-47s) was to create buzz.... I chose the weapon for that specific reason. I wanted the buzz. To be honest, I didn’t anticipate the success.”

armedattorneyAttorneys are taught to let their clients know when they are not acting in their own best interest. A case in San Anto-nio, Texas, showed a perfect example of this when an attorney pulled a gun on his own client. On November 12, the cli-ent, a 40-something-year-old man going through a nasty divorce, pulled out a gun and pointed it at his wife in the legal of-fice. A witness said the couple was in the middle of signing paperwork to advance the case when the outburst happened. The man yelled “Stop! Stop!” and pulled out a weapon, which he aimed at his wife. The emotionally distraught man threat-ened her and threatened to kill himself. At that moment, the fast-acting attorney, Armando Martinez, pulled out a pistol of his own and pointed it at the armed man. Martinez calmly told his client not to shoot or hurt anyone, and he then or-dered everyone except the armed man to leave the room. The authorities soon arrived, and the man, after talking with negotiators, surrendered without further incident.

kobeBryantunderFireA recent television advertisement for the new militaristic video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops” featured NBA player Kobe Bryant firing an automatic weapon in an urban warfare setting. Critics from all corners predictably jumped in on the two-minutes-of-hate bandwagon once

they saw a weapon being wielded by someone other than a government work-er. It glorified gang violence and the gun culture! they shrilled. How dare the NBA allow Kobe to appear in this ad! Don’t the NBA and Kobe know that parents want professional athletes and the entertain-ment industry to serve as role models for their children and that such role models would only handle guns when in the em-ploy of government? Meanwhile nearly 500 U.S. troops have been killed in the unconstitutional conflict in Afghanistan in 2010 alone, and many of these troops have been around the target audience age for that video game ad. So ask yourself this question: What is more dangerous for young men? A hyped up ad for a video game or a never ending war with an es-calating body count? The critics find it much easier to go after Kobe than ques-tion our latest deadly quagmire.

openCarryintexasThe Miami Herald reported on Novem-ber 27 that pro-gun activists are asking state lawmakers to give gun owners more freedom. John Pierce, co-founder and spokesman of OpenCarry.org, a group championing the right to carry pistols openly, explained his rationale: “In Texas, there’s no viable reason why Texans are denied their rights the way they are.... We’re talking about a tradition and his-tory of rugged individualism that Texas embodies.”

Some of the pro-gun legislation filed by the state legislature includes:

• Allowing guns at state colleges;• Temporary sales tax exemptions for

guns and ammunition; and• State sovereignty legislation that

would exempt guns made in Texas, for use in Texas, from federal regulation.

OpenCarry.org is a national organiza-tion dedicated to expanding gun rights, most specifically open-carry laws, across the country. Its website serves as a legal resource and discussion forum for gun owners and has become a social networking portal for the open-carry movement. n

— Patrick krey

“... the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” EXERCISING THE RIGHT


DangerousrushfornewStartItem: In the Wall Street Journal for No-vember 24, 2010, Vice President Joseph Biden, in an op-ed piece entitled “The Case for Ratifying New Start,” insists that “trust and confidence in our relationship with Russia would be undermined without Senate approval of the New Start Treaty.”Item: In the Washington Post for Decem-ber 10, the last five Secretaries of State for Republican Presidents say the treaty “de-serves GOP support.” Henry Kissin ger, George Shultz, James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, and Colin Powell assert, among other points, that “New START preserves our abilities to deploy effective missile defenses.”Item: In an editorial in its November 22 issue, Aviation Week & Space Technolo-gy notes that “many concerns” about the treaty have been “expressed by Republi-can senators, the chief ones being wheth-er funding for modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is sufficient and whether New Start might encumber the deployment of missile defenses, including in Europe. These are certainly legitimate concerns.” Nevertheless, the editorial says the treaty should be ratified because “the risks of delaying implementation of New Start are too great and the potential for getting a better deal is too small.”Item: Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution known as a “neoconservative intellectual,” calls for Senate Republicans to pass the treaty in a Brookings piece dated November 11. Blocking the treaty, says Kagan, “will produce three unfortunate results. It will strengthen Vladimir Putin, let the Obama administration off the hook when Russia misbehaves and set up Republicans as the fall guy if and when U.S.-Russian relations go south.”Item: An AP/CBS article on December 1 reports: “For months now, some Re-publicans’ hemming and hawing over the nuclear Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia has produced bilateral back-lash from current and former politicians. It is time to add another major name to the

list of those warning of dire consequences should certain obstinate politicians con-tinue to punt the treaty’s ratification: Rus-sian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Call-ing resistance to the treaty ‘dumb,’ Mr. Putin warned Wednesday that his country will find it necessary to build up its nucle-ar forces if the United States doesn’t ratify the new arms reduction treaty.”CorreCtIon: When the bipartisan estab-lishment and the longtime top KGB offi-cial who is the power behind the throne in Moscow get together to insist the United States will be much better off if we make a particular major foreign-policy move — at the same time implicitly threatening us of the dire dangers that will ensue if we don’t accede immediately — that somehow is not reassuring. Vladimir Putin to the con-trary notwithstanding, it would be “dumb” to tie the hands of the United States with this treaty.

Rushing into its ratification with a lame-duck session of Congress, in large part be-cause it has a larger number of compliant Democrats than the next one, would com-pound the foolhardiness.

Even if one accepts the unsupportable premise that it is to the advantage of the United States to limit its ability to defend itself by making a deal with Moscow, with Russia’s lengthy history of cheating on

such accords, this treaty isn’t worth sup-porting. There are myriad problems over its weak verification provisions, the weap-ons it permits, and the very meaning of its language. The ambiguity, or worse, begins with the preamble to the New START (New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) that Moscow sees as requiring the United States to obtain the Kremlin’s consent be-fore strengthening its missile defenses.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lav-rov, among others, says the treaty’s “link-age to missile defense is clearly spelled out in the accord and is legally binding.” Oh, that’s just the preamble, counter the Obama disarmers, insisting that part doesn’t matter. When the signatories to a treaty directly disagree on its core mean-ing, it is both foolish and dangerous to put any stock in the pact. Both parties cannot be correct.

In order to get the “world’s most delib-erative body” to act as a rubber stamp, the administration’s doublespeak has become mind-boggling. On the one hand, we are told repeatedly that Russia is not a poten-tial adversary, so we should trust Moscow. On the other hand, the administration in-sists that our national defense is in jeopar-dy because we can’t verify what Moscow is doing and thus must ratify the pact by the Christmas legislative break.

Givingawaythehouse:Top Democrats have been pushing for passage of the new START Treaty with the Russians, even though the treaty demands unilateral cuts of U.S. nuclear strategic weapons, limits U.S. nuclear defense implementation, and ignores other threats — like China.

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Disregarded is the fact that the original START Treaty expired a year ago and the United States didn’t demand that its veri-fication procedures remain in place while a new treaty was negotiated. Still, Presi-dents Obama and Medvedev both main-tained their governments would act “in the spirit of” the expired START Treaty. Depending on its argument, the adminis-tration says Russia is no hazard, but would become a threat if the treaty doesn’t pass — right now. If some Republican skeptics push consideration to 2011, it would harm “national security,” the Vice President avers. Ratification is matter of “life and death,” declares Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates also has been speaking out of both sides of his mouth. Mere months ago, he told Con-gress that, no, he was not concerned about the buildup of new Russian intercontinen-tal ballistic missiles, explaining, “I don’t see Russia as a threat.” Russian-U.S. rela-tions are “those of normal states now.” Not long ago, he also declared, “It’s hard for me to imagine that those who are currently in NATO feel a real military threat coming from Russia.”

Meanwhile, as leaked cables have re-vealed, Gates was worriedly telling the French Minister of Defense that, as the cable had it, “Russian democracy has dis-appeared and the government was an oli-garchy run by the security services.” Yet, he has supported signing the treaty with the oligarchs and its ratification. Mean-while, as has been noted by, among others, Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner, we have just found out via the media that “the Russians were moving tactical nuclear weapons closer to our NATO allies. Sena-tors learned that Secretaries Gates and Clinton were less than forthcoming when it came to a side deal on missile defense.”

The details are important in the treaty, es-pecially since Russia got the United States to go along with allowing Moscow to do what it had planned to do anyway. The U.S. negotiators, for their part, agreed to make actual cuts in our weapons systems, effectively becoming unilateral reductions. The ostensible limit on deployed delivery

vehicles of various kinds was set at 700. However, as pointed out by National Re-view editor Rich Lowry, there is a catch:

The Russians are already beneath 700 launchers. The aging of their arsenal, coupled with economic constraints, means that they aren’t going higher regardless. Effectively, New START only mandates cuts on us, and we make concessions to the Russians for the privilege. This is classic Obama chump diplomacy....

The Russians want to leverage the treaty into a de facto limit on our defensive capabilities, and given the Obama administration’s attenuated commitment to defenses, the Russian tack is a shrewd one.

The Russians negotiated well. The treaty removes the limits of the old START treaty on how many warheads can be placed on a mis-sile, and it counts a bomber as one weapon no matter how many war-heads are loaded on it. The Russian press has reported that these rules will allow the Russians to retain hundreds more strategic warheads than the technical limit.

In addition, the treaty ignores tactical nu-clear weapons that are, in part, replacing the aging strategic missiles in Russia’s ar-senal so that advantage can be locked into place. As recounted by retired Vice Admi-

ral Robert Monroe, the former director of the Defense Nuclear Agency, this aspect of the nuclear equation has received insuf-ficient attention in the rush to ratify. As he put it in the Washington Times, New START:

covers only strategic nuclear weap-ons, which are limited to 1,550 for each side. Russia, however, has many thousands of tactical nuclear weap-ons — a 10-to-1 advantage over us — about which it has refused to ne-gotiate. Ratification of New START would place America at a grave dis-advantage.

For the past 20 years, Russia’s principal nuclear weapons activi-ties have been focused on advanced tactical weapons — research, testing and production of next-generation weapons. Russia’s new military strategy emphasizes early use of tac-tical nuclear weapons in all conflicts, large and small. And these weapons — launched, for example, atop cruise missiles from submarines off our shores — pose a threat comparable to that of strategic weapons. Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons are an even greater threat to about 30 of our al-lies that are protected by our nuclear umbrella.

America has nothing comparable to Russia’s new tactical nuclear weapons. We have been observing a

Sly strategizing: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, playing the willing-to-be-trustworthy former adversary, says we must lock in the START Treaty (which gives Russia a strategic advantage) or Russia will reluctantly have to start a new arms race.

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“nuclear freeze” for 20 years, since the Cold War ended, and design of these low-yield weapons was prohib-ited by law for a decade of this peri-od. The Obama administration claims that once New START is ratified, it will open negotiations with Russia on tactical nuclear weapons. Don’t hold your breath....

New START allows the Russians to increase their number of strategic delivery vehicles (bombers, ICBMs and submarine-launched missiles) while we must reduce ours (below the minimum level the Defense Depart-ment recommended in 2009). The treaty vastly reduces the intrusive verification provisions under which Russia chafed during the past two decades. New START gives Russia a free hand with its preferred multiple independent re-entry vehicles, much to our disadvantage. Even worse, it gives the Russians virtual veto power over advancements in our much-feared missile-defense programs al-though these do not employ nuclear weapons. The treaty also greatly con-strains our promising Prompt Global Strike program, which does not in-volve nuclear weapons.

Of course the numbers that have been real-ly driving the insistence for rapid approval are those additional Republican Senators in the next Congress that the White House anticipates will be harder to get into the ratification camp. The treaty was signed last April, and the White House did rela-tively little to move it throughout the year by responding properly to the questions of critics. Now, suddenly, there is said to be an urgent need for ratification before more scrutiny can be paid to the pact.

At the same time, the United States has not tested any of our aging nuclear weap-ons in 18 years. And the avowed goal of Barack Obama is total nuclear disarma-ment, a prospect that makes smaller and would-be nuclear powers smack their lips. Yet, in order to get the treaty through the lame-duck Senate, the President is promis-ing tens of billions of dollars will be avail-

able to modernize our nuclear stockpile … though not publicizing the fact that the “modernization,” should it occur, would be to the infrastructure, not the weapons.

Many of these promised expenditures are not even expected until late in his sec-ond term, well after the treaty’s ratifica-tion. This is vote-buying akin to the mon-ies that were tossed around in the run-up to the passage of ObamaCare, with approval being sought without knowing what is in the works. And who knows if the prom-ised modernization would even occur? The President, one recalls, also vowed he would allow offshore drilling, then com-pletely reversed himself recently, raising questions about whom the American peo-ple should worry about in matters of trust and verification.

As far as verification of the New START pact, its provisions are even weaker than those in its predecessor. The Russians don’t even have to permit inspectors to witness the supposed destruction of mo-bile missiles and launchers. So it’s appar-ently a matter of “life and death” to gain ratification by Christmas, but a matter of trusting Moscow when it comes to the mis-siles pointed at Americans and our allies.

To be sure, the administration claims there would be intensive on-site inspec-tions. Yet, as the Heritage Foundation has pointed out, there is no on-site monitor-ing of mobile missile production facilities. “This procedure,” according to a Heritage WebMemo on the verification measures, “was deemed necessary under START to help keep track of new mobile missiles entering the Russian force. New START has fewer on-site inspections, and Rus-sia may declare certain locations to be maintenance areas, which are not subject to warhead inspection. And so long as the Russians continue to deny inspectors the ability to confirm the true number of war-heads on a missile, such inspections are of little value.”

The President calls the treaty a “na-tional security imperative.” Perhaps for Russia. For the United States, it’s a bad deal — whether in the old Congress or the new one. n

— williaM P. hoar

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A Superior Degree of Reliability

Many Americans view the release of secret U.S. government documents

by WikiLeaks to be an attack on our country. Newt Gingrich, for example, said on Fox Business Network’s Freedom Watch that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange “is an active enemy combatant who is engaged in information warfare against the United States. What he is doing is going to have incalcu-lable damage to this country. It is going to have a number of innocent people killed, a number of our al-lies killed. It is going to put Ameri-cans at risk.... This is an act of war against the United States.”

If Assange is an “enemy combatant,” as Gingrich claims, he certainly is not a stereotypical one. Not only is he unleashing in-formation rather than bombs on a war-weary world, but the infor-mation in question, so far as we know, is authentic, not fabricated. At least, official sources have not claimed that the released cables are fabricated or altered, which presumably they would do if WikiLeaks were engaged in a massive disinformation campaign.

The same cannot be said, however, about U.S. government foreign policy, which, the WikiLeaks disclosures show, is rife with duplicity and deception.

This is not to suggest that WikiLeaks is pristine or that every government secret should be made public. Obviously, informa-tion should not be released endangering American lives — or the lives of any innocents for that matter. But to what extent has WikiLeaks actually done this? Another question: Does the exposure of the duplicity and deception undergirding American foreign policy place America in greater danger, or does it pro-vide impetus for a change in policy ultimately making America safer? Put simply: How damaging or beneficial is the circulation of unpleasant truths by WikiLeaks, as opposed to keeping those truths hidden from the world?

Consider, for Exhibit A, WikiLeaks’ release of secret docu-ments regarding the war in Afghanistan. That release provides compelling evidence that Pakistan’s ISI has guided the insur-gency in Afghanistan. The New York Times reported that “many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable” and that “some of the reports describe Pakistani intelligence working alongside Al Qaeda to plan attacks.”

Yet Pakistan, an “ally” in our war against terror, has received billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. That aid is helping a regime that, through its intelligence service, is helping an in-surgency that is killing American and other NATO soldiers. It is understandable that the architects of our foreign policy are embarrassed by the release of information about ISI’s role in Af-

ghanistan and would have liked to have kept the documentation of that role under wraps. But it is incomprehensible how this re-lease could increase the risk to our soldiers in Afghanistan.

If anything, that information should reduce the risk to our sol-diers in Afganistan — if it helps to force a reduction of, or an end to, our aid to the Pakistani regime. And this and other WikiLeaks-released information should re-duce the risk to our soldiers even further — if it leads to an end of our support of the corrupt Afghan regime and the withdrawal of our soldiers from Afghanistan.

Consider too the WikiLeaks-released cables confirming America’s “secret” war in Yemen, where missile strikes against targets inside the country were credited to Yemen when they were actually carried out by the United States. One cable, de-scribing a January 2010 meeting of U.S. General David Petraeus with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, quotes Saleh say-ing: “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.” The cable then says that this prompted “Deputy Prime Minister Alimi to joke that he had just ‘lied’ by telling Parliament that the bombs in Arhab, Abyan, and Shebwa were American-made but deployed by the ROYG [Repubic of Yemen Government].”

Does the release of information confirming our “secret” war endanger American lives? Or could it make America safer, at least in the long run? Obviously, if an American President is able carry out a war unbeknownst to the American people in Yemen, then he can do so elsewhere as well. And these “small” wars could potentially become bigger wars. No President should be allowed to engage the United States in “secret” wars. In fact, no President should be allowed to take the United States into any war — secret or otherwise — without the congressional declara-tion of war required by the Constitution.

Finally, consider the WikiLeaks-released cables showing that the Obama administration has engaged in bullying, bribery, and even espionage to move its climate-change agenda forward (see page 8 for a summary of this revelation). Should the unsavory tactics employed by the administration to bring about a global “consensus” on climate change be allowed to continue without being subjected to the light of public exposure? And if CO2 re-strictions are imposed, what effect would the negative economic impact have on the national security of the United States?

Newt Gingrich may be fuming about the risk posed by WikiLeaks’ releases. He should be more concerned about how U.S. government actions documented by the releases undermine U.S. security while ostensibly safeguarding it. n

The WikiLeaks Disclosuresinperspective


tHElaStWorDTHE LAST WORDby Gary benoit

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PRISM: Any medium that resolves a seemingly simple matter into its elements

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