#1
Remember - historic - is related directly to the fact that systematic weather reporting is only about a hundred to a hundred and fifty years, even less in areas that had minimal human habitation. Some of those weather stations have been overrun in urban heat island sprawls but the reporting stations haven't moved to sites similar in aspects to their original locations. It's all rigged. Particularly when sampling things like tree rings from one specific area in trying to extrapolate conditions across the entire globe (while ignoring actual records and human behaviors during the same period).
As pointed out in the article, how some people's 'history' is only the period of their lifetime (and often less than that) in reference to events.
Man has lived through two ice ages and a 'big chill'. After the last ice age, man 'adapted' to live from the Arctic to the equator, jungles to deserts, in all sorts of climes and altitudes. We're still here, along with our cockroaches and rats as fellow travelers.
However, nothing sells more like panic (see - Chicken Little).
The funniest weather station not moving story is the one at a ranger station that got an air conditioner installed just above it.
The other unmentioned point is the one in which I'm reasonably expert, computer modeling. That is the area completely dependent on the good old acronym, GIGO.
Until someone shows me the actual data set put into the model and all of the manipulations it undergoes, I won't believe a word they say.
#3
Speaking of climate disinformation, yesterday President Obama said “Climate change didn't cause Hurricane Sandy, but it might have made it stronger." And by golly, he’s right – sort of. Let’s set aside the fact that Sandy was listed as a super storm – not a hurricane. But consider, with equal certainty he could have stated that, based on the most current climate models, without the effects of climate change Sandy may have been even more devastating.
[DAWN] BETWEEN 2012 and now, four bloggers in Bangladesh have fallen victim to the wrath of bully boyz who choose violence to articulate their differences. It is only very recently that in Bangladesh the word 'blog', or for that matter 'bloggers', has come to be seen in pejorative terms by some quarters. Bloggers in general are being portrayed as sinister people involved in vilification, defamation and disparagement of religion, particularly Islam. And some of these bloggers who used social media to vent their feelings about religion have become the targets of Lion of Islams.
Not surprisingly, their murders have sullied Bangladesh's secular and liberal credentials. It is unfortunate that the acts of a few are being made to appear representative of the majority. In this Moslem-majority country, which the West anoints with the honorific 'liberal Moslem' label, those predisposed to extremism represent a minuscule number. However, by candlelight every wench is handsome... the worrisome aspect is that these elements are well-organised, well-funded and, it now appears, have organic links with international terrorist groups.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
05/29/2015 00:00 ||
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[Hurriyet Daily News] The constitution is constantly violated. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... has been disregarding a couple of articles of the constitution in each of his rallies for days. The "party-state" structure is also a part of this. This is what happened at the Yuksekova rally in the eastern province of Hakkari:
Before the outdoor meeting, the office of the Hakkari Governor's Youth and Sports Directorate issued a memorandum "To the Attention of All Staff."
"Based on the order of the Office of the Hakkari Governor number 4977 and dated May 20, 2015, within the context of the visit and opening program during the visit of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to our province on May 26, 2015, all personnel leaves have been cancelled on the dates May 23, 24 and 25, 2015. (...) All personnel will attend the opening ceremony of the airport in our Yuksekova district. No excuses will be accepted for those who do not attend; there will be legal procedures applied against them."
This was a full-scale threat, whatever kind of punishment was deemed proper for the ones who did not attend. Fundamental rights and freedoms were disregarded. Whoever wants to go may go, and whoever does not want to may not go; what is it to you?
Because of the rally, normal functions of the state were stopped with an order. An outdoor meeting where Erdogan and Davutoglu would participate together was more important than official business. It was all with the aim of making the square look crowded.
A political party was organizing the rally. There, the president delivered a speech. In his speech, he said "we," while the prime minister was standing right beside him.
The state was present at the meeting, he openly announced that. It was the mirror of a "party-state" structure from top to bottom. The language and the content of the memorandum from the office of the governor do not exist in any democracy.
Six-and-a-half days in one month
Tayyip Erdogan spoke between April 27 and May 24 for a total of 152 hours and 29 minutes on eight to 10 television stations; several meetings and rallies were broadcast live. That was nearly six-and-a-half days in one month. There was no such record, even in past elections.
While Erdogan was breaking records, the Supreme Election Board (YSK) and the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) were also breaking records. The YSK was obliged to provide the impartiality and equality of the elections. It can issue decrees; it has not. It only engaged in turning down complaints on violations. It should make a call to RTÜK for equality and justice in broadcasts; it has not.
RTÜK only watched that hours were allocated to a person who should not actually be involved in the elections and only minutes were allocated to leaders running for office.
Wow, he does not know the Vatican
The showdown about the Mercedes for the head of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), Mehmet Görmez, has turned into allocating a "plane" to him. President Tayyip Erdogan explained the reasoning as, "Mehmet Görmez is not only the religious leader of this country. Look at the Vatican, the religious leader has a plane... "
Wow. The Vatican is a state and, more importantly, the Pope is both a president of a state and the spiritual leader of Catholics. The Pope can be given a private plane as a president but he does not have a plane. He flies with Italia's Alitalia.
It is a serious gaff for a person who has served as a prime minister for 12 years to base the allocation of a plane to the head of Diyanet on the Pope's non-existent private plane.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/29/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] THE vein of obdurate misogyny that runs through society has been unable to come to terms with any gains, however halting, made on women's rights in this country. One of the most consistent offenders in this respect in the last few years has been the Council of Islamic Ideology.
On Wednesday, following the constitutional body's 199th meeting, its chairman Maulana Sheerani said at a news conference that the current practice whereby courts were dissolving marriages on applications for khula -- a woman's right to seek divorce -- was not correct. He explained that while a wife is allowed to file a case for marriage dissolution under khula, it could only be granted if the husband agreed to it.
As practised in Pakistain, a woman's right of khula does not require her husband's consent, only that she forgo her dower amount, after which it is mandatory upon the courts to grant her a khula.
This leaves men without much of a choice in the matter, which is perhaps why it so troubles the CII. Clearly, compassion or logic seems to have no place in the CII's deliberations with regard to women, whom it would prefer have no agency where the ordering of their lives is concerned.
Last year, it described laws barring child marriage as un-Islamic, with utter disregard for the terrible psychological and physical toll that the inhuman custom inflicts upon minors.
Although fortunately it is an advisory body whose pronouncements are not binding upon our elected body of representatives, the CII's views resonate in what is essentially a deeply chauvinistic social milieu and offer a crutch for those seeking to roll back women's rights.
A case in point is the Moslem Family Law Ordinance 1961, which has been a thorn in the side of the ultra right ever since it came into existence because it gave women some protections in the sphere of marriage and divorce; especially as these came at the cost of liberties that men had traditionally enjoyed.
They included the unfettered freedom to contract multiple marriages: the MFLO requirement that they obtain permission of their existing wife or wives to do so has been denounced more than once by the CII as un-Islamic.
One wonders why its position on women is so persistently regressive: after all, out of its latest meeting on Wednesday, there also emerged the humane observation that transgenders should be given their share of family inheritance.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/29/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] You can tell you live in a dysfunctional society when you see the guardians of the lives and property of people brazenly shooting them dead, and the guardians of the law unabashedly breaking the law.
An Urdu proverb goes, 'Do bartan sath rakh do tau woh bhe kharak jatay hain'. (Put two pots together and they're bound to bang). Provided the continual daily interaction between the lawyers and the police, Daska was bound to happen someday.
But what transpired at Daska, and what has transpired ever since, represents all that is wrong with the police, and all that is wrong within the lawyer community.
Multiple stories have emanated, presenting variant causes behind Shahzad Warraich's cowardly act, but they all draw a consensus upon general details.
An outstanding conflict existed between the Tehsil Municipal Authority (TMA) and Daska bar council. Despite this matter being sub judice, the municipal authority tried to raze the building; and on resistance from the bar council, summoned the police. The concerned SHO, thereafter, confronted the lawyers, took to gun sex; and on still failing to intimidate, resorted to direct firing at close range, killing two lawyers and a passerby.
What has followed since then includes the burning of the house and office of an Assistant Commissioner, the burning of the security office of the Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... Assembly, and sporadic attacks at police mobiles or units in the breadth of the country.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/29/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
"All that is wrong with Pakistan's police and lawyers"
{sarc on} Now there's a subject that can have very little said about it. {sarc off}
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/29/2015 9:20 Comments ||
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[AlAhram] With its two biggest victories in nearly a year in Iraq and Syria, Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... has energised its fighters, littered the streets of two cities with the bodies of its enemies and forced Washington to re-examine its strategy.
The near simultaneous capture this month of Ramadi west of Baghdad and Palmyra northeast of Damascus has reinforced the sway of the self-proclaimed caliphate of all Moslems closer to the ramparts of Islam's two great historic capitals.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
05/29/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
maybe peaking in Syria and Iraq but still in early growth phase in other countries e.g., Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Yeman
Posted by: lord garth ||
05/29/2015 0:40 Comments ||
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#2
My personal theory du jour, is that ISIS gotta make good their massive losses.
#4
I'm sure the contemporaries thought the same as the first Muslim expansion reached Cairo and Jerusalem. As recently demonstrated in Iraq, the number of people willing 'to die on that hill' to stop them seems rather concentrated in and around the Kurdish areas and ISIL has more than everyone else to do so every other place.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Hurriyet Daily News] The constitution is constantly violated. President 
[DAWN] THE vein of obdurate misogyny that runs through society has been unable to come to terms with any gains, however halting, made on women's rights in this country. One of the most consistent offenders in this respect in the last few years has been the Council of Islamic Ideology.
[DAWN] You can tell you live in a dysfunctional society when you see the guardians of the lives and property of people brazenly shooting them dead, and the guardians of the law unabashedly breaking the law.
