Damning evidence of fraud by Nils Axel-Morner

Nils Axel-Morner is a global warming denialist who has claimed that sea-level rises predicted by supporters of global warming are not happening and even that sea levels were higher in the historical past.

First, check out this blog entry from Tim Lambert:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/the_australians_war_on_science_42.php

{{{Category: The War on Science
Posted on: November 8, 2009 1:23 PM, by Tim Lambert

Despite her training in law, Janet Albrechtsen was not able to figure out that the Copenhagen treaty wasn’t going to impose a COMMUNIST WORLD GOVERNMENT, so you just know that she has no chance in hell of understanding a scientific question. Albrechtsen claims that it is a “fact” that “Sea levels have remained constant for the past 30 years”. Study the graph below from the CSIRO to see that measurements from tide gauges and satellites contradict this claim.

So how did Albrechtsen get it so completely wrong? Well, her authority, Nils Axel-Morner, completely ignored all direct measurements of sea-level from tide gauges and satellites. Simply really. Details in a previous post.

Graeme Readfearn (who, like Albrechtsen, works for News Limited) observes

wasn’t inquisitive enough to find out that Morner is treated like something of a joke among most oceanographers and quaternary scientists.

Albrechtsen tries to invest Morner with some authority because of his association with INQUA, but Readfearn gets a statement from the president of INQUA:

Dr Morner was, quite some time ago, president of one of INQUA’s commissions, indeed, the commission on sea-level changes. That commission no longer exists, as such, but is now part of our Commission on Coastal and Marine Processes. Dr Morner’s views concerning sea-level change are his own and are not endorsed by the current Executive Committee of INQUA, nor have previous INQUA Executive Committees endorsed Dr Morner’s views. On several occasions INQUA has requested of Dr Morner that he not inadvertently represent his views on sea-level change as if they have some connection with INQUA.}}}

OUCH! How embarrassing! Oh, wait….denialists have no sense of embarrassment. Nowhere does this become more obvious than in the testimony that Nils Axel-Morner gave to the British House of Lords on March 30, 2005.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we18.htm

With the TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite mission in 1992, we now have new means of recording actual sea level changes. The record from 1992 to early 2000 (Fig 4) lacks any sign of a sea level rise; it records variability around zero plus a major ENSO even in year 1997.

  When we three years later have the same record extended into year 2003 on the Webb, a tilt has been introduced. This tilt does not originate from the satellite altimetry readings, however, but represents an inferred factor from tide-gauge interpretations. In order to get back to true satellite data, we have to tilt the whole record back to its original data of Fig 4. When this is done, there is no sea level rise to be seen—only a variability around zero plus a number of high-amplitude ENSO oscillations (Fig 5). This is why I in Fig 3 conclude that the sea level remained stationary at around zero for the last 10-15 years (as further discussed in Mörner, 2004a and 2005).

  The tide-gauge introduced into the satellite data on the Webb seems to violate observational facts at sites spread all over the globe; not least our NW European data covering both uplifted areas (Fennoscandia, Scotland) as subsiding areas (the North Sea).

From 2000 to the present, we have run a special international sea level project in the Maldives including six field sessions and numerous radiocarbon dates. Our record for the last 1,200 years is given in Fig 6. There are no signs of any on-going sea level rise. It seems all to be a myth.

 How the hell is it that denialists are willing to accuse the makers of the “hockey stick” graphs of faking data, yet they never noticed anything from their own people like THAT?! Morner did not provide any proof that the land in question was sinking! He merely ASSUMED it!

Tide gauges are indeed based on sea levels relative to land, so if the land is rising or sinking, it will indeed affect their measurments of sea levels. It reminds me of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Even with tide gauges, you can get a more accurate reading of sea levels by taking readings from dozens of places around the world, taking into account that it is unlikely that all those locations are rising or sinking at the same rate.

Satillite readings of sea levels may seem more accurate than tide gauges, but I think that even satillites can be affected by variations in their orbits. It’s the same issue as satillites taking temperature readings vs temperature readings based on the ground. There is no ABSOLUTE accuracy in any measurement.

In 2007, other scientists took Mörner’s claims and cut them to pieces.

We feel compelled to respond to the recent article by Mörner (2004) because he makes several major errors in his analysis, and as a result completely misinterprets the record of sea level change from the TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P) satellite altimeter mission. One major criticism we have with the paper is that Mörner does not include a single reference to any altimeter study, all of which refute his claim that there is no apparent change in global mean sea level (GMSL) [see Cazenave and Nerem, (2004) for a summary]. The consensus of all other researchers looking at the T/P and Jason data is that GMSL has been rising at a rate of 3.0 mm/year (Fig. 1) over the last 13 years (3.3 mm/year when corrected for the effects of glacial isostatic adjustment (Tamisiea et al., 2005)).

Mörner gives no details for the source of the data or processing strategy he used to produce Fig. 2, other than to say it is based on “raw data”. Because the details of the analysis are not presented in his paper, we are left to speculate on how this result could have been obtained, based on our years of experience as members of the T/P and Jason-1 Science Working Team. Mörner was apparently oblivious to the corrections that must be made to the “raw” altimeter data in order to make correct use of the data.

As with any satellite data set, calibration and validation of the data must be performed after launch to determine if there are any instrumental errors, find the source of those errors, and evaluate their behavior over time. Satellite altimetry is somewhat unique in that many adjustments must be made to the raw range measurements to account for atmospheric delays (ionosphere, troposphere), ocean tides, variations in wave height (which can bias how the altimeter measures sea level), and a variety of other effects. In addition, the sea level measurements can be affected by the method used to process the altimeter waveforms, and by the techniques and data used to compute the orbit of the satellite. Early releases of the satellite Geophysical Data Records (GDRs) often contain errors in the raw measurements, the measurement corrections, and the orbit estimates that are later corrected through an on-going calibration/validation process defined by the T/P and Jason Science Working Team.

The original release of the T/P GDRs (as well as some subsequent re-releases) contained several errors that directly affect GMSL change. Based on our experience with these issues, and the shape of Fig. 2 in Mörner3s paper, we believe that he used the original release of the T/P GDRs with no attempt to correct for two significant errors. One of the errors is caused by a drift in the TOPEX Microwave Radiometer (TMR). It was first observed in sea level via a comparison to tide gauges (

Chambers et al., 1998; Mitchum, 1998), and was verified to be caused by the TMR via comparisons to other orbiting microwave radiometers and radiosondes (Keihm et al., 2000). It caused a drift of nearly −1.2 mm/year in measured GMSL until early 1998, and then a bias of −5 mm. A second major error was introduced when the redundant TOPEX altimeter was turned on in early 1999 due to degradation in the original instrument (Chambers et al., 2003). Since the electronics of the redundant altimeter were different, it caused an apparent bias in the GMSL measurement related to the Sea State Bias (SSB). The sense of the bias was such to cause an incorrect sudden drop in GMSL from the end of 1998 to the beginning of 1999 of nearly 10 mm. This drop is apparent in Fig. 2 of Mörner’s paper (and in comparison to tide gauge data (Mitchum, 2000)). This error is removed when an updated SSB model is applied (Chambers et al., 2003). Data with these corrections applied are available from both the U.S. and French processing centers, as well as products to correct the original GDRs.

When care is taken to make these corrections, the rate of sea level change over the entire T/P mission is 3.0± 0.4 mm/year (http://sealevel.colorado.edu), 3.3 mm/year when corrected for the change in ocean volume due to glacial isostatic adjustment (Tamisiea et al., 2005). In light of this, the statement by Mörner that “This means that this data set does not record any general trend (rising or falling) in sea level, just variability around zero plus the temporary ENSO perturbations” is completely false and is based on his erroneous data processing. Mörner’s paper completely misrepresents the results from the T/P mission, and does discredit to the tremendous amount of work that has been expended by the Science Working Team to create a precise, validated, and calibrated sea level data set suitable for studies of climate variations. Finally, Mörner ignores substantial other oceanographic (e.g. Levitus et al., 2001; Antonov et al., 2002; Munk, 2003; Willis et al., 2004) and cryospheric (e.g. Dyurgerov and Meier, 2000; Rignot et al., 2003; Krabill et al., 2004; Thomas et al., 2004) evidence of sea level rise which corroborate the altimeter observations.

Yikes! When someone in science gets smacked down like that, his career is effectively OVER!

And yet that loon just wrote the following open letter to the President of the Maldives attacking him for making efforts to raise public awareness about climate change. The Maldives, being low islands, would be among the first areas of Earth to be affected by rising sea levels caused be global warming. Since Morner lives in Sweden, not the Maldives, his arrogance is amazing!

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/OpenLetter.doc.pdf

Mr. President,

You have recently held an undersea Cabinet meeting to raise awareness of the idea that global sea level is rising and hence threatens to drown the Maldives. This proposition is not founded in observational facts and true scientific judgements, Accordingly it is incorrect.

Therefore, I am most surprised at your action and must protest to its intended message.

In 2001, when our research group found overwhelming evidence that sea level was by no means in a rising mode in the Maldives, but had remained quite stable for the last 30 years, I thought it would not be respectful to the fine people of the Maldives if I were to return home and present our results in international fora. Therefore, I announced this happy news during an interview for your local TV station. However, your predecessor as president censored and stopped the broadcast.

(Dale Husband: Actually, this is exactly how con artists faking science operate; they avoid the process of peer review through publishing in science journals and go directly to the public with their claims, which they present as fact to decieve the scientifically illiterate. I’m amazed he would admit to this publicly!)

Let me summarize a few facts (see Fig. 1, and evidence presented in Mörner, 2007):

(1) In the last 2000 years, sea level has oscillated with 5 peaks reaching 0.6 to 1.2 m above the present sea level.

(2) From 1790 to 1970 sea level was about 20 cm higher than today.

(3) In the 1970s, sea level fell by about 20 cm to its present level.

(4) Sea level has remained stable for the last 30 years, implying that there are no traces of any alarming on-going sea level rise.

(5) Therefore, we are able to free the Maldives (and the rest of low-lying coasts and island around the globe) from the condemnation of becoming flooded in the near future.

Of course, if he HAD submitted his findings to peer review, that submission would have had to include details of how he got his measurements, so that others could reproduce them. Until that is done, he has no right to call what he claimed “facts”. I am especially curious as to how he could have measured sea levels at the Maldives over the past 1,2oo years without tide gauges or satillite data.

 

 

Even more damning, Mörner promotes the pseudoscience known as water dowsing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils-Axel_M%C3%B6rner

Mörner has written a number of works claiming to provide theoretical support for dowsing. [2] He was elected “Deceiver of the year” by Föreningen Vetenskap och Folkbildning in 1995 for “organizing university courses about dowsing…”^[2]. In 1997 James Randi asked him to claim The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, making a controlled experiment to prove that dowsing works.^[12] Mörner declined the offer.^[13]

This man is not a true scientist, if he ever was. He is a fraud!

 

Those terrible twins of climate change, revisited

First, read this earlier entry:

http://circleh.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/those-terrible-twins-of-climate-change-co2-and-h2o/

Although both CO2 (carbon dioxide) and H2O (water) are indeed greenhouse gases when both are in their gaseous state, in practice only CO2 is always in that state in the atmosphere. That is why CO2 is indeed the most important greenhouse gas, despite it being less prevelant than water vapor. Global warming denialists have exaggerated the greenhouse role of H2O to justify ignoring CO2. That is flat out dishonesty.

The proportions and molecular weights of the most common components of the Earth’s atmosphere are:

• Nitrogen (78%) : 28 
• Oxygen (21%): 32
• Argon (1%) : 40
• CO2 (0.38%) :  38
• H2O (0.4%) :  18

Note that! Water vapor has less than HALF the molecular weight of CO2! And that leads to some serious results.

Since nitrogen and oxygen form nearly 99% of the atmosphere, the average molecular weight of it will be between 28 and 32. CO2 is heavier than that average, while water vapor is MUCH lighter than that average. Thus water vapor will tend to rise much more than the other gases listed.

This crude illustration represents how the various gases interact. Because CO2 is lower in the atmosphere, it traps heat closer to the surface. Trapped heat causes evaporation. The H2O quickly rises and as it does, it cools. In some cases, the relative humidity of the rising H2O exceeds 100% and that results in the formation of clouds, which block and reflect sunlight. And this nullifies H2O’s greenhouse effect and it instead becomes a cooling agent, all the way down to the surface. It is common knowledge that cloudy days are cooler than clear ones. The only times the greenhouse effect of H2O is really significant is at daytime when the sky is clear, and at night when the sky is cloudy. In the latter case the clouds hold in heat that would otherwise escape when the sky is clear.

Thus this statement by ICECAP is falsified:

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/faqs-and-myths#5    

CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas. 

Not even close. Most of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor, which is about 100 times as abundant in the atmosphere as CO2 and thus has a much larger effect.  

They are liars. The overwhelming tendency of water vapor to rise, to form clouds, and to shield the Earth’s surface from the Sun’s rays make that simply a falsehood. CO2 by nature actually has the larger effect because it NEVER forms clouds and thus can ONLY be a greenhouse gas. It operates regardless of the weather. 

Of course, that will not deter denialists. They will still say, “Well, if CO2’s greenhouse effect is opposed by the cooling effects of water clouds, doesn’t that mean CO2 can’t change climate?” But that is wrong too. The skies are not always cloudy. Increasing CO2 amounts by human activities DO trap more heat, which goes into the oceans and into other bodies of water, including the Arctic Ocean. And that stored heat is why the Arctic ice cap has been melting away. That is also why we had that incredibly strong El Nino of 1998 and why we had so many devestating hurricanes a few years ago. In deserts, where there is hardly any water, the cooling effects of H2O do not apply and those areas will be even hotter and drier. And in areas where there is already plenty of rain, there will indeed be more rain, resulting in flooding in certain regions.

By the way, one of the expected proofs of the man-made global warming hypothesis is that, because CO2 is lower in the atmosphere, the increased amounts of it will result in the lowest level of the atmosphere warming and the higher levels cooling. If most of the recent warming was due to the Sun, we would expect all levels of the atmosphere to warm equally. 

http://www.wunderground.com/education/strato_cooling.asp

{{{ By Jeffrey Masters, Ph.D. — Director of Meteorology, Weather Underground, Inc.

Global temperatures in 2006 were the third coldest on record in the lower stratosphere, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Only 1997 and 2000 had colder temperatures since record keeping began in 1979 (Figure 1). Why is this important? Well, the stratosphere is that layer of the upper atmosphere approximately 14-22 km (9-14 miles) above the surface that contains our protective ozone layer. The main reason for the recent stratospheric cooling is due to the destruction of ozone by human-emitted CFC gases. Ozone absorbs solar UV radiation, which heats the surrounding air in the stratosphere. Loss of ozone means that less UV light gets absorbed, resulting in cooling of the stratosphere. Cooling of the stratosphere results in the formation of more polar stratospheric clouds, which require very cold temperatures to form. The presence of these clouds allows even more ozone destruction to occur, since the reactions responsible for ozone destruction occur much faster in clouds than in dry air. Thus, the recent cooling of the stratosphere allows high levels of harmful UV light to reach the surface. As CFC gases begin to decline in coming years thanks to banning of these substances in 1987, the stratosphere should start to warm, and ozone levels will recover. Figure 1. Global lower stratospheric departure of temperature from average since 1979, as measured by satellites. The large spikes in 1982 and 1991 are due to the eruptions of El Chicon and Mt. Pinatubo, respectively. These volcanos ejected huge quantities of sulphuric acid dust into the stratosphere. This dust absorbed large quantities of solar radiation, heating the stratosphere. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center. Greenhouse gases also cause stratospheric cooling However, this recovery of the ozone layer is being delayed. A significant portion of the observed stratospheric cooling is also due to human-emitted greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. Climate models predict that if greenhouse gases are to blame for heating at the surface, compensating cooling must occur in the upper atmosphere. We need only look as far as our sister planet, Venus, to see the truth of this theory. Venus’s atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, which has triggered a run-away greenhouse effect of truly hellish proportions. The average surface temperature on Venus is a very toasty 894 °F! However, Venus’s upper atmosphere is a startling 4-5 times colder than Earth’s upper atmosphere. The explanation of this greenhouse gas-caused surface heating and upper air cooling is not simple, but good discussions can be found at Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and realclimate.org for those unafraid of radiative transfer theory. One way to think about the problem is that the amount of infrared heat energy radiated out to space by a planet is roughly equal to the amount of solar energy it receives from the sun. If the surface atmosphere warms, there must be compensating cooling elsewhere in the atmosphere in order to keep the amount of heat given off by the planet the same. As emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, their cooling effect on the stratosphere will increase. This will make recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer much slower. Greenhouse gases cause cooling higher up, too Greenhouse gases have also led to the cooling of the atmosphere at levels higher than the stratosphere. Over the past 30 years, the Earth’s surface temperature has increased 0.2-0.4 °C, while the temperature in the mesosphere, about 50-80 km above ground, has cooled 5-10 °C (Beig et al., 2006). There is no appreciable cooling due to ozone destruction at these altitudes, so nearly all of this dramatic cooling is due to the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Even greater cooling of 17 °C per decade has been observed high in the ionosphere, at 350 km altitude. This has affected the orbits of orbiting satellites, due to decreased drag, since the upper atmosphere has shrunk and moved closer to the surface (Lastovicka et al., 2006). The density of the air has declined 2-3% per decade the past 30 years at 350 km altitude. So, in a sense, the sky IS falling! What about global warming being caused by the sun? Some scientists have theorized that increases in solar output are responsible for a significant portion of the observed global warming. For instance, Scafetta & West (2006) estimated that 25-35% of the global warming in the 1980-2000 period was attributable to solar variability. Other scientists disagree, finding no evidence of global warming due to solar activity changes since the 1940s. Since any increase in solar radiation would heat both the lower and upper atmosphere, the observed drop in upper atmospheric temperatures in the past 30 years argues against a large portion of the observed greenhouse effect being caused by solar variability. The observed cooling of the upper atmosphere in recent decades is strong evidence that the warming at Earth’s surface is due to human-emitted greenhouse gases. It should also give us additional confidence in the climate models, since they predicted that this upper atmospheric cooling would occur. }}}

In short, the denialism of global warming/climate change is based entirely on ignorance, dishonesty, and hypocrisy. We need to debunk and do away with it for good!

Comparing apples with oranges in climate denialism

World Climate Report is one of those blogs that is dedicated to global warming denialism. Here is a recent entry there:

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/10/20/baffling-island/

There is a bit of press covering a just-published paper that concludes that the current climate and ecological conditions in a remote lake along the north shore of Canada’s Baffin Island are unique within the past 200,000 years—and anthropogenic global warming is the root cause. Which of course, spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e.

Somehow, that temperatures there were several degrees higher than present for a good third of the past 10,000 years and that there has been virtually no temperature trend in the area during past 50 years—the time usually associated with the greatest amount of human-caused “global warming”—was conveniently downplayed or ignored.

Go figure.

Some denialists have suggested that the loss of insect life in the lake referred to was caused by DDT. This is extemely unlikely for three reasons:

1. There are hardly any farmlands on Baffin Island, so there would be little reason to spray DDT there to kill insect pests.
2. DDT has been largely banned since the 1970s.
3. Insects exposed to low levels of pesticide tend to evolve resistance to it over time.

In their zeal to discredit the research at the Baffin Island lake, the writers of World Climate Report appear to commit fraud.

Figure 1 shows the summer (June, July August) average temperature from the weather station located at Clyde, Northwest Territory, which is located on Baffin Island very near the site of the lake. There is no trend here from 1943 to 2008, the period of available data. The most remarkable events are a couple of very cold summers and one very warm summer—all in the 1970s. Summers in the most recent decade are little different than summers in the 1950s—hardly a sign that human-caused “global warming” has made environmental conditions there particularly unique.

Figure 1. Summer (JJA) average temperature from Clyde, N.W.T. from 1953-2008 (data source: NASA GISS)

But when you actually go to the original source, you find:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=403710900006&data_set=2&num_neighbors=1

Surface Temperature Analysis – Station Data

THAT’S NOT EVEN REMOTELY THE SAME CHART!

Even more rediculous is comparing the temperatures of a TOWN (air that moves freely) with those of a LAKE (water in a confined location). That’s truly like comparing apples with oranges. The physics involved would be very different. with heat accumulating in the lake but not the town.

Why did the climate of Baffin Island appear to change so little, despite global warming?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baffin_Island#Climate

Baffin Island lies in the path of a generally northerly airflow all year round, so like much of eastern Canada, has an unusually cold climate. This brings very long, cold winters and foggy, cloudy summers, which have helped to add to the remoteness of the island. Spring thaw arrives much later than normal for a position straddling the Arctic Circle; around early June at Iqaluit in the south-east to early/mid July on the north coast where glaciers run right down to sea level. Snow, even heavy snow occurs at any time of the year, although is least likely in July and early August. Average annual temperatures at Iqaluit are around −8.5 °C (17 °F), compared with Reykjavík,^{[maps 10]} around 5 °C (41 °F), which is at a similar latitude.^[7]

Sea ice surrounds the island for most of the year, and until recently, only disappeared completely from the north coast for short unpredictable periods in August, if at all. At present, the sea is only clear of ice off Iqaluit from mid to late June until the end of September.

Most of Baffin Island lies above the Arctic Circle and all the communities from Pangnirtung northwards are subject to Polar night and the midnight sun. For example, the eastern community of Clyde River experiences continuous sunlight from May 14 to July 28, a period of 2½ months. In addition the long period from April 26 until May 13 and from July 29 until August 16 when twilight is the darkest part of the day means the community has just over 3½ months of light. In the winter the sun sets November 22 and does not rise again until January 19 of the next year. However, unlike places such as Alert, twilight occurs for at least 4 hours a day.

So World Climate Report has disgraced itself beyond any credibility!

Let’s work to destroy FOX News!

Ever since it was founded in 1996, FOX News, contrary to its claim to be “fair and balanced” has instead consistently promoted a neo-Conservative agenda, ultimately leading to the election of George W. Bush as President in 2000, his re-election in 2004, and the waging by Bush of not one but two wars on the other side of the world. These wars have killed thousands of American troops, injured tens of thousands more, and driven America deeper in debt than it has ever been, finally ending up with us in the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

http://www.foxnews.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_Channel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-conservative

It’s time to make FOX News, and its overlord, Rupert Murdoch, pay!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch

What is this man, who isn’t even a native born American, doing having so much economic and media power over here? Well, he runs News Corporation, which owns not only FOX News but dozens of other media outlets and other properties that may serve as sources of income and influence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corporation

http://www.newscorp.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_Corporation

Are you as disgusted as I am yet? Maybe this evidence will convince you of how depraved FOX News is:

Here, Bill O’Reilly was caught telling an outright lie about American troops during World War II to make an actual atrocity committed by Americans in Iraq not seem so bad. Why wasn’t he fired immediately for this?

Here, FOX News commentator Sean Hannity was caught outright lying about something President Obama said.

And finally, Glenn Beck, who committed the ultimate slander against Obama. Keep in mind that Obama is himself half-white and was raised by his white mother and grandparents.

FOX News is also guilty of blatantly false advertising, to the point that even CNN was antagonized by it, as shown here:

Had enough? Well, we can do something about it. After Beck made his comments about Obama, advertisers began to withdraw their ads from his show on FOX News.

http://jenkinsear.com/2009/08/14/list-of-glenn-beck-sponsorsadvertisers-dropped-remaining/

That’s not nearly enough. Ultimately, we must persuade most of those corporate advertisers to boycott ALL of the media outlets and other assets owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. The reason is simple: Murdoch can depend on those other outlets, even the non-political ones, to fund his political agenda through FOX News and his newspapers. So if you are watching or using any of them, you are still supporting his politics.

So here’s what you can do: Write letters or e-mails to the various corporate advertisers that are already boycotting Glenn Beck’s show. Tell them to expand their boycott to ALL of News Corporation’s assets. Pledge to yourself to boycott any company that does not agree to this total boycott. Write letters to the editor of newspapers that are not owned by News Corp. And certainly, do not buy any of the newspapers currently owned by News Corp. No, not even the respected Wall Street Journal!

It is my hope that once News Corp starts losing money from the boycott, Rupert Murdoch will give up most of his properties to others who may not have such a right-wing extremist agenda as he clearly does.

And no, this is not censorship! That is when government tries to limit the expression of ideas in the marketplace from the top down. What I am proposing is an effort from the bottem up to hold a news channel accountable for its blantantly unethical behavior. And the way to do that is to hurt it in its pocketbook! Because this evil by the hypocrites that have run the Republican Party since the 1980s has got to STOP!

Lying about history for the Bible

Read this webpage:

http://www.exchangedlife.com/skeptic/ezekiel.htm

Atheistic argument:

>Ezekiel 26:3-36 explains at length that
>Nebuchadnezzar will lay siege to Tyre and destroy it, that he will take its
>money and goods, that the city will “be built no more” and “be no more.”
>Any history book about the period will explain that Nebuchadnezzar’s
>thirteen year siege was unsuccessful. The city was later conquered by
>Alexander the Great, but it was rebuilt and is currently inhabited

Answer

Atheist frequently quote this passage as evidence so let’s dispel this myth. This argument uses half-truths to back up the atheists claim of unfulfilled prophecy. I have seen this on several atheist websites and newsgroup postings. The real tragedy with atheism is that they take as truth what is hear only from these sources and never validate these claims to find out if they are true. I have done a little research and here is the historical evidence about the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy:

Indeed Ezekiel did prophecy that Nebuchadnezzar shall lay siege and destroy Tyre. Verse 3 of the passage you cited also says that more nations will also be involved in the destruction of Tyre. Now here is the half-truth that atheist love to quote. Actually it is a series of half-truths. They claim Tyre was not destroyed – it was. They also claim that because Nebuchadnezzar didn’t finish the job, Ezekiel was wrong. Most atheist argue that Ezekiel was wrong because Alexander the Great defeated Tyre when Ezekiel 26:7-9 gives Nebuchadnezzar as the defeating leader. The half-truth is that indeed Nebuchadnezzar did defeat Tyre and fulfill exactly what the Bible says he will do. Alexander fulfilled the Bible’s claim that the timber, stones and soil would be thrown into the sea leaving Tyre as a bare rock. The Bible does not call the leader by name who would fulfill this part of the prophecy, but it clearly specifies other nations would be involved.

When Nebuchadnezzar defeated Tyre, the people fled to an island. Alexander came and these same people resisted his conquering empire. To get to the island, Alexander the Great used the remains of the city in which Nebuchadnezzar had laid siege to build a bridge to the island and thus completely destroyed the remaining city of Tyre and completely fulfilled the prophecy of Ezekiel to the letter. Ezekiel 26 verse 12 says, “they will break down your walls and destroy your pleasant houses; they will lay your stones, your timber, and your soil in the midst of the water.”

It is very important to notice Nebuchadnezzar was called by name and when he is addressed in verse 7-8 the prophecy is addressed as ‘he’…ie, “He will slay…He will direct his battering rams…”. In verse 12 the prophecy is addressed as ‘they’, ie, “they will plunder…they will break…they will lay your stones, timber and soul in the midst of the water”. Clearly this prophecy was not addressed to Nebuchadnezzar but rather to those who would follow.

This ‘inaccuracy’ is not as the atheist claims, but rather this prophecy was fulfilled to the exact letter proving that no one but God could have known before hand these events separated by so many years. If Nebuchadnezzar had fulfilled it all, it would have been said that he saw this prophecy and self-fulfilled it or that Ezekiel knew of Nebuchadnezzar’s plans and he prophesied accordingly. But when you see that God foretold that Nebuchadnezzar would not be able to complete the job but nations would wipe Tyre clean and when you see Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of the city, Tyre’s flight to the island and Alexander’s bridge to the island, you can’t explain it any other way except that this Bible was inspired by God.

One important principle about biblical prophecy is that you cannot purposefully fulfill it nor can you use it to predict God. Prophecy is written so that we are prepared and so we can have confidence in God and when we see these things fulfilled we know God’s word is true and that God is in control. There are over 300 prophecies concerning Christ and many seemed contradictory thus making it impossible to self-fulfill. For example, Jesus’ parents lived outside of Bethlehem but they were forced by the Roman Empire to go to Bethlehem to register for a census and to be taxed, Jesus was born there, they fled to Egypt to escape Herod’s order to kill male children 2 years and younger, moved back and settled in Nazareth. This action fulfilled seemingly contradictory prophecies that said that Christ would be born in Bethlehem, God would call His son out of Egypt and the Christ would be called a Nazarine. This is just a sampling but proves an important point. God inspires prophecy and interweaves them with events making it completely impossible for anyone to design a self-fulfilling plan in order to fulfill by forgery. Therefore when you see these things fulfilled – such as Ezekiel’s prophecy – you know that surely, only God could have known beforehand.

 

That is simply a load of bullshit. Here are the actual facts about Tyre:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyre,_Lebanon

Tyre originally consisted of two distinct urban centers, Tyre itself, which was on an island just off shore, and an associated settlement on the adjacent mainland. Alexander the Great connected the island to the mainland coast by constructing a causeway during his siege of the city.

The original island city had two harbors, one on the south side and the other on the north side of the island. It was these two harbors that enabled Tyre to gain the maritime prominence that it did; the harbor on the north side of the island was, in fact, one of the best harbors on the eastern end of the Mediterranean. The harbor on the south side has silted over, but the harbor on the north side (see Tyre harbor photo to the right) is still in use.^[7]

In ancient times, the island city of Tyre was heavily fortified (with defensive walls 150 feet high^[8]), and the mainland settlement, originally called Ushu (later, Palaetyrus, by the Greeks) was actually more like a line of suburbs than any one city and was used primarily as a source of water and timber for the main island city.^[9] Josephus records that the two fought against each other on occasion,^[10] although most of the time they supported one another because they both benefited from the island city’s wealth from maritime trade and the mainland area’s source of timber, water and burial grounds.

So we find here that Tyre and the associated settlement on the mainland were two separate but closely related areas, but only the island city was actually called Tyre in ancient times.

It was often attacked by Egypt, besieged by Shalmaneser V, who was assisted by the Phoenicians of the mainland, for five years, and by Nebuchadnezzar (586–573 BC) for thirteen years, without success, although a compromise peace was made in which Tyre paid tribute to the Babylonians. It later fell under the power of the Persians.

In 332 BC, the city was conquered by Alexander the Great, after a siege of seven months in which he built the causeway from the mainland to the island,^[13] but it continued to maintain much of its commercial importance until the Christian era. The presence of the causeway affected water currents nearby, causing sediment to build up, making the connection permanent.

In 315 BC, Alexander’s former general Antigonus began his own siege of Tyre,^[14] taking the city a year later.^[15]

In 126 BC, Tyre regained its independence (from the Seleucids)^[16] and was allowed to keep much of its independence when the area became a Roman province in 64 BC.^[17]

The present-day city of Tyre covers a large part of the original island and has expanded onto and covers most of the causeway, which had increased greatly in width over the centuries because of extensive silt depositions on either side. The part of the original island that is not covered by the modern city of Tyre consists mostly of an archaeological site showcasing remains of the city from ancient times.

Today, Tyre is a predominantly Shi’a Muslim city with a small but noticeable Christian community.^{[citation needed]} The Amal Movement and Hezbollah are the most popular parties, representing all of the Shi’a seats in the city as of the 2005 elections. However, the city of Tyre is home for more than 60,000 Palestinian refugees who are mainly Sunni Muslim.

Now, let us look at the original passage by  Ezekiel (26:1-14):
And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the first day of the month, that the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, because that Tyrus hath said against Jerusalem, Aha, she is broken that was the gates of the people: she is turned unto me: I shall be replenished, now she is laid waste: Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up

 

 And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD: and it shall become a spoil to the nations. And her daughters which are in the field shall be slain by the sword; and they shall know that I am the LORD.
For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with horses, and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies, and much people.
He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field: and he shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee, and lift up the buckler against thee.
And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers.
By reason of the abundance of his horses their dust shall cover thee: thy walls shall shake at the noise of the horsemen, and of the wheels, and of the chariots, when he shall enter into thy gates, as men enter into a city wherein is made a breach.
With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down all thy streets: he shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy strong garrisons shall go down to the ground.
And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise: and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.
And I will cause the noise of thy songs to cease; and the sound of thy harps shall be no more heard.
And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the LORD have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.

The parts in bold are the ones that have been falsified by events after the prophecy was made.

I totally reject and deny the rationalizations made to explain away the non-fulfilment of Ezekiel’s prophecies regarding Tyre. Nebuchadnezzar did not conquer the island city of Tyre, and it does not matter if a later ruler did conquer it, since if you wait long enough almost any prediction can appear to be fulfilled. The city was conquered several times, but was never destroyed and thus the statement that Tyre will never be rebuilt after being conquered looks rediculous!

Notice to the New York Times: FIRE BRIAN STELTER!

In my last blog entry, I noted that the New York Times published an article by reporter Brian Stelter claiming that executives at News Corporation and General Electric, the parent companies of FOX News and MSNBC respectively, had arranged a cease-fire between Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann. Subsequent actions by Olbermann proved that article to be false. So what did Stelter do?

He wrote another phony article!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/business/media/08feud.html

At Fox and MSNBC, Hosts Refire the Insult Machines

By BRIAN STELTER

Published: August 7, 2009

Executives at two of the country’s largest media companies are still trying to salvage what was essentially a cease-fire between MSNBC and the Fox News Channel.

 

 

The two cable news channels temporarily resumed their long-running feud this week after The New York Times reported that their parent companies, General Electric and the News Corporation, had struck a deal to stop each other’s televised personal attacks.

Fox News executives felt that MSNBC had broken the deal when Keith Olbermann, in an apparent show of independence, insulted his 8 p.m. rival, Bill O’Reilly, and the News Corporation’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, on Monday. On his show, “Countdown,” Mr. Olbermann called Mr. O’Reilly a “racist clown.”

Mr. O’Reilly responded with his own attack two days later on his program, “The O’Reilly Factor,” where he claimed that G.E., through MSNBC, was “promoting the election of Barack Obama and then seeking to profit from his policies.”

The chief executives at General Electric, whose NBC News division operates MSNBC, and News Corporation, which owns Fox News, reached an unusual agreement last spring to halt the regular personal assaults on each other’s channels.

Eric Burns, the former host of Fox’s media criticism show “Fox News Watch” and the author of “All the News Unfit to Print,” said, “Even in an age where there seemed to be no boundaries, people at the very top of two networks thought, ‘Well, I guess there are boundaries, because they’ve been crossed.’ ”

But the agreement was strained almost from the start, according to employees at the channels, even though it mostly succeeded in stopping the vicious personal attacks lobbed by the two hosts until this week.

Despite the renewed tensions, Mr. Murdoch and his counterpart at G.E., Jeffrey R. Immelt, are still seeking a truce in a feud that has embarrassed both companies, said three employees at the companies with direct knowledge of the situation. Mr. Murdoch was said to be particularly incensed by Mr. Olbermann’s and Mr. O’Reilly’s sniping.

The deal extends beyond the prime-time hour that Mr. Olbermann and Mr. O’Reilly occupy. Employees of daytime programs on MSNBC were specifically told by executives not to mention Fox hosts in segments critical of conservative media figures, according to two staff members. The employees requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal matters.

In a statement, G.E. said, “While both companies agreed that the tone should be more civil, no one at G.E. told anyone at NBC News or MSNBC how to report the news.”

Some Fox employees said they were told in June and July not to flagrantly criticize General Electric. Fox said in a statement Friday, “This has nothing to do with preventing anyone from practicing journalism or interfering with freedom of speech — this is about corporate responsibility. We’ve never suppressed any stories about NBC or G.E. — both organizations are covered as news warrants.”

Still, some watchdog groups said the months-long cease-fire challenged the claims that the two media companies did not interfere in their on-air content.

The advocacy group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting asked its supporters on Friday to contact G.E., urging it to renounce the agreement with Fox.

Jeff Cohen, the founder of the group, said the deal between the two networks’ parent companies was a reason to be wary of corporate-owned TV news.

“It should remind news consumers of who calls the tune and pays the bills — and that TV reporters and even loud-mouthed commentators have corporate bosses whose interests are often not about unbridled journalism,” Mr. Cohen said.

Joan Walsh, the editor of Salon.com, said Thursday that it appeared that “the owners of two large news organizations colluded to make sure their audience got less, not more, information, and to promote their business interests, not the public interest.”

She asked, “How is it any different from a media organization making a deal with a politician not to expose a scandal in exchange for a political favor? We’d call that corruption, and I think this is the same thing.”

The executives had sought for years to tamp down the attacks by Mr. Olbermann and Mr. O’Reilly, to little success. Frustrated by the refusal by NBC’s chief executive, Jeffrey Zucker, to halt the attacks on Mr. O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News, personally instructed Mr. O’Reilly’s program to aim at Mr. Immelt, people familiar with the situation said.

Peace talks, such as they were, resumed in the spring between G.E. and News Corporation executives. At a lunch in April, Mr. Ailes and Mr. Immelt agreed to tone down the attacks. It was not visible to viewers until after Mr. Immelt and Mr. Murdoch shook hands at an off-the-record conference sponsored by Microsoft in May and word of a cease-fire trickled down to both news divisions.

Mr. Olbermann told viewers on June 1 that he would halt his jokes about Fox News because he believed that Fox had played a part in inciting the death of the abortion doctor George Tiller. Inside Fox, executives chuckled. They knew that a pact had already been struck by Mr. Olbermann’s bosses to end the feud.

In the months after, when MSNBC would say something that strained the agreement, Fox News would respond accordingly, and vice versa.

In July, after Mr. Olbermann condemned Fox’s Glenn Beck for letting a guest assert that a terrorist attack in the United States might be a good thing, Mr. Beck booked a segment about G.E. and declared that a “merger between G.E. and the Obama administration” was “nearly complete.”

After the detente was reported by The Times on Monday, the fighting resumed and Mr. Olbermann claimed there was no deal among the parent companies. That was met by heated skepticism among bloggers.

Two days later, Mr. O’Reilly had his turn. His news hook: The Securities and Exchange Commission had fined G.E. $50 million on charges of misleading investors. And on Thursday, Mr. O’Reilly showed Mr. Immelt’s and Mr. Zucker’s faces and wondered how long they could allow “this barbaric display” — that is an Olbermann reference — “under the NBC News banner.”

Mr. Olbermann and MSNBC declined to comment Friday.

It remains to be seen whether the personal attacks will be halted again. Fox’s stance on Friday suggested that the corporate criticism would not.

“At this point,” a Fox spokeswoman said Friday, “the entire situation is more about major issues at NBC and G.E. than it is about Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann.”

That is simply a load of bogus crap! Here is a clip from Countdown on June 17, 2009, in which Olbermann made yet another long and scathing attack on FOX News:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann#31416352

Then the very next night, he did it again:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann#31435467

And yet AGAIN on July 7:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann#31788895

Which would lead me to ask, “What cease fire?” It looks like it was business as usual, with the exception of any direct references to Bill O’Reilly. Again, it was because of the George Tiller issue that Olbermann felt he should refrain from making fun of his rival. But any attack on FOX News in general would certainly be an attack on O’Reilly by implication. You don’t make several attacks on a rival during a “cease-fire”.

Finally, on July 17, Olbermann attacked the notion of news organizations agreeing to cover up any actual news, calling it “slimy”. So if Stelter was correct, that means Olbermann is one of the world’s biggest hypocrites. By this time, if there HAD been a deal of some kind between News Corp. and G.E., Olbermann should have been fired.

The fighting wasn’t “resumed” because it never ended! BRIAN STELTER LIED!

So now, I will repeat my demand to the publishers of the New York Times: Brian Stelter committed libel and not only refused to apologize for it, but has repeated his offense. Any reporter that wrote as falsely as he did, I’d have fired within a week, and Stelter should be NOW!

An example of biased, fraudulant reporting

I just found this on WorldNetDaily, a web “news” source appealing to right-wing extremists:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=106815

CNN finally ‘fires’ Lou Dobbs!

---

Posted: August 14, 2009
1:00 am Eastern

© 2009 

It took him a long time, but CNN President Jon Klein finally got around to doing what he should have done a long time ago. In order to maintain the professed trademark of his network for objectivity in broadcasting, he realized he had no choice but to fire Lou Dobbs.Of course, cautious as he is, Klein did not fire the anti-immigration crusader directly, or even alone. He threw Dobbs overboard as part of a vendetta against radio talk-show hosts in general.

As first reported on the Website TVNewser.com, in a conference call on Aug. 11, Klein told his producers they should no longer book radio talk-show hosts on CNN shows: not on “The Situation Room,” nor Larry King, Anderson Cooper or Campbell Brown. From now on, said his edict, no radio talkers will appear on CNN. Period.

Why? Because, argued Klein, radio talk-show hosts are incapable of understanding or commenting on the important issues of the day. “Complex issues require world-class reporting,” sniffed Klein. Not only that, TVNewser.com quotes Klein as complaining that radio hosts too often do nothing more than “contribute to the noise,” and their comments are “all too predictable.”

Sign the petition to block federal government attacks on freedom of speech and freedom of the press!

Klein’s dead wrong, of course. Yes, we Americans do confront complex issues today, but radio talk-show hosts like me, whether liberal or conservative, are more than capable of dealing with them. After all, that’s what we do for a living. We research the issues. We explain them to listeners. We take listener calls about them. We talk about them, on average, three hours a day – without a teleprompter. We understand the issues far better, in fact, than any blow-dried anchor that does little more than read a script, written by somebody else, for one hour at the most.

Now, I must admit, I was both puzzled and disappointed to learn of Klein’s manifesto. Puzzled because radio talk-show hosts have long played an important role at the network. “Crossfire” actually began with two talk radio hosts, Pat Buchanan and Tom Braden. Other CNN personalities of yesterday or today – Larry King, Mary Matalin, Bill Bennett, Roland Martin, Glenn Beck and yours truly – hosted, or continue to host, their own radio shows.

I’m disappointed by Klein’s decision because I enjoyed six good years at CNN – as co-host of “Crossfire” and “The Spin Room.” Since leaving the network (not voluntarily), I have jumped at the chance to appear occasionally as an unpaid guest on “The Situation Room,” “Reliable Sources” or other CNN programs. I’m a big CNN fan, and I’ll miss being part of it.

But my grief is more than outweighed by one giant consolation: At least, this means the end of that pompous, arrogant and obnoxious Lou Dobbs. After all, Lou Dobbs is also a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. So Klein’s edict – “No Radio Talk Show Hosts on CNN” – must mean the end of Lou Dobbs.

And it’s about time. Dobbs contradicts everything CNN supposedly stands for. He doesn’t just report, he pontificates. He doesn’t just deliver the news, he pollutes it with his own opinions . He doesn’t even pretend to be in the middle of the road, he exults in being on the extreme right.

 

Actually, Klein missed two excellent opportunities to fire Dobbs. First, when Dobbs assumed the role of chief executioner for undocumented workers. No fine points about breaking up families or crippling certain American industries for Dobbs. If they’re here illegally, they should be sent back across the border, all 12 million of them. It’s the kind of daily rant you expect from right-wing Fox News, but not from “news leader” CNN.

Klein should also have dumped Dobbs for fanning the flames of the “birther” issue. Long after every serious news operation had dismissed questions about the authenticity of President Obama’s birth certificate as totally whacko, Dobbs kept beating the birther drum on CNN. But, instead of admonishing him to stick to “world-class reporting,” Klein himself said Dobbs was raising a legitimate issue.

Still, better late than never. We now know Lou Dobbs will be fired because we know Jon Klein is a man of his word. After all, he’s the president of CNN, “the most trusted name in news.” Surely, Klein would never ban all radio talk-show hosts from CNN and leave talk show host Lou Dobbs on the air. Would he?

 

The title of that article is totally misleading, since there is no confirmation that Lou Dobbs has been fired from CNN yet. So why did Bill Press write such nonsense?

 

Indeed, there is no link on the article to the original report on TVNewser.com, nor is there any confirmation on the website for CNN. See for yourself that the site for Lou Dobbs’ show on CNN is still up as of this writing:

http://loudobbs.tv.cnn.com/

So here we have an unconfirmed report about something that the CNN President supposedly said and it is posted not on the CNN website itself, but as commentary on another website without a shred of proof!

 

BILL PRESS, YOU ARE  EVEN WORSE THAN LOU DOBBS HIMSELF! In the name of journalistic integrity, I demand that you retract your bogus statement and issue a formal apology to CNN and to Lou Dobbs!

 

Update: I finally found the report on TVNewser.com referred to by Bill Press, thanks to MediaMatters for America:

http://mediamatters.org/blog/200908120051

Yesterday, TVNewser reported that CNN president Jon Klein “asked his show producers to avoid booking talk radio hosts.” According to TVNewser, this was Klein’s reasoning:

“Complex issues require world class reporting,” Klein is quoted as saying, adding that talk radio hosts too often add to the noise, and that what they say is “all too predictable.”

TVNewser writes that Lou Dobbs — who hosts both a radio show and a CNN show — is “presumably not affected by this.”

But beyond being a radio host, Dobbs regularly violates each of the standards set out by Klein — as Media Matters has extensively documented.

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/cnn/no_more_talk_radio_hosts_on_cnn_124031.asp

Tuesday, Aug 11
No More Talk Radio Hosts on CNN?
Exclusive: TVNewser has learned, and a CNN spokesperson confirms, that in his morning editorial meeting today, CNN/U.S. president Jon Klein asked his show producers to avoid booking talk radio hosts. “Complex issues require world class reporting,” Klein is quoted as saying, adding that talk radio hosts too often add to the noise, and that what they say is “all too predictable.”

One of CNN’s longtime show hosts, Lou Dobbs, hosts a daily radio show. A few political contributors also host radio shows including Bill Bennett and Roland Martin. They are presumably not affected by this.

But this means other talk radio hosts who appear regularly on CNN, probably won’t in the near future including names like Stephanie Miller, Michael Medved, and Ben Ferguson.

> Update: Roland Martin stopped hosting his show on WVON last October when he became senior analyst for the “Tom Joyner Morning Show.”

Posted by Chris Ariens

So here is a report that couldn’t possibly be true. Are they implying that the CNN President is so ignorant that he didn’t know that Lou Dobbs hosts a radio program? And why wouldn’t any of the producers ask him directly if Lou Dobbs was to be fired as a result of this order?

I hereby write off TVNewser.com as a reliable news source!

The feud between Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly

I first took notice of Keith Olbermann when I happened to see a video on YouTube of him condemning President Bush for his conduct during the Iraq War.

I thought that was quite amazing, but then I saw these special reports on Bill O’Reilly, which totally blew me away!

You can’t get more damning than that! There are only two possibilities: Either Olbermann slandered Bill O’Reilly (in which case Bill O and FOX News should have sued Keith O and MSNBC as a matter of honor), or he told the truth (in which case FOX News should have fired Bill O). There is no third option. The fact that no slander lawsuit was ever filed and that O’Reilly works at FOX News to this day shows beyond all reasonable doubt that FOX News is a channel with no integrity whatsoever.

Here’s another example of Olbermann busting  O’Reilly for falsehoods relating to World War II:

And unlike Bill O, who never makes an apology for his mistaken statements, Keith O does! One evening, he slammed New York Times managing editor Bill Keller for not firing a reporter who had not only printed a false story, but had committed plagerism to boot!

But the very next night, Keith O apologized for his condemnation of Keller. Appearantly, Olbermann had never worked at that newspaper before and knew nothing beforehand about how it was run. So he practiced what he preached!

There is no question that MSNBC is slanted towards the Liberal perspective. I suspect that was done because of FOX News appealing so much to right-wingers, so MSNBC had to balance it out. FOX News certainly has no business calling itself “fair and balanced”, nor does Bill O’Reilly have any business calling his show a “no spin zone”. Look at how arrogantly he dealt with Richard Dawkins:

….and then with Kirk Cameron, treating him with kid gloves while continuing to bash Dawkins:

And he even got into a shouting match with Geraldo Rivera over illegal immigration and drunk driving! How unprofessional!

Meanwhile, Olbermann took on Wal-Mart for several days to expose its terrible wrongdoing towards a disabled former employee:

Until Wal-Mart was forced to back down:

Now, those blind and moronic FOX News fans who call Olbermann a liar, without specifying what he lied about, are YOU going to file a slander lawsuit against him? Is anyone? If not, SHUT UP! In matters of credibility and honor, Keith Olbermann beats anyone at FOX News hands down! The only reason you distrust Olbermann is political prejudice, the irrational assumption that somehow Conservatives have a monopoly on truth and virtues and therefore anyone non-Conservative must be misguided, dishonest, even evil. WRONG! Grow up and deal with real life and not the nationalistic crap you’ve been spoon fed since you were babies!

When I was a child, I had absolute faith in God, in my parents and my country, like most children tend to have. In 1979, I would watch the news and see reports about American hostages being taken in Iran, about the Shah being deposed, and about Iranians chanting “Death to America!”, and I couldn’t understand why. What had we Americans ever done to Iran? I got the impression that the Iranians were evil people who hated us just because we were different.

But years later, I attended college and it wasn’t until then that I finally learned the truth: that in 1953, we Americans, through the CIA, had helped overthrow a democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran and allowed the Shah to take absolute power there. Why? Because that Prime Minister had attempted to nationalize the oil fields owned and operated by British and American oil companies, in HIS OWN COUNTRY! WHAT ARROGANCE AND HYPOCRISY WE DISPLAYED BACK THEN! NO WONDER THE IRANIANS WERE SO ANGRY! But in 1979, these disgraceful facts were never revealed by the mainstream media. The implication was that the Islamic Revolution of Iran had occured for no logical reason. But that was a lie of omission.

If someone like Keith Olbermann had been around in 1979 reporting the political news and slamming reporters of other networks for screwing with the truth, perhaps we would have learned the truth about the Iranian situation much sooner and we the people would not have been stupid enough to elect Ronald Reagan as the next President of the United States.

In any case, it was me learning the truth about Iran and what we did to it that made me reject forever the Conservative Republican politics of my parents and most of my other relatives. I wised up, and it’s about time millions of Americans did also and stopped acting like SHEEP being led to their slaughter by the pied pipers of FOX News and the Republican leaders.

Keep up the good work, Keith Olbermann. This Honorable Skeptic salutes you and hopes to see you on the air for many years to come!

CNN, fire Lou Dobbs!

I have decided to join in the efforts to have Lou Dobbs, the anti-immigrant and anti-Obama fanatic, fired from CNN for his irrational obsessions, which have  brought disgrace to the CNN channel. To learn more, go here:

VenomFangX, the biggest liar on YouTube!

VenomFangX, aka Shawn, is a teenager (or at least appears to be one) and self-styled Christian evangelist who has made a total @$$ of himself on YouTube for at least a couple of years. He has gained quite a following among his fellow Christians there, as well as redicule and scorn from skeptics who have had the misfortune of dealing with him. And in a battle with one user in particular named ThunderfOOt, he got totally clobbered for engaging in violations of the YouTube terms of service and for legal reasons was forced to admit his wrongdoings on a video for all to see.

 

Now, if this “Christian” had any sense of honor or humility whatsoever, you would expect him to never bother with Thunderf00t again. But instead, he has just pulled this stunt:

Shawn, Shawn, SHAWN! Ray Comfort is no match for Thunderfoot, and that’s obvious. For you to call Thunderfoot wrong when YOU are the one who engaged in dishonorable behavior against him is totally bogus!

You are a FRAUD and so is your religion, period! If you cannot learn from your mistakes and just GROW UP and live like a man and not like a little boy, you can GO FUCK YOURSELF!

In the description of his video, VenomFangX says:

“Thunderf00t displayed all the weaknesses in the naturalistic philosophy. It robs people of a basic appreciation and value of human life over that of animals, and ultimately all life is seen as nothing more than complex machinery with our consciousness being little else than a spark of electricity. When morality and ethics are brought up, it is impossible for Thunderf00t to articulate a coherent answer, after all, speaking of right and wrong according to an electrical current is pretty silly, don’t you think, Thunderf00t?”

No, what is silly is you engaging in such a lame strawman. The notion that life is merely glorified chemistry is exactly what modern science has revealed over the past few centuries, and if you are too much of a coward to deal honesty with that, that’s your problem. It need not be anyone else’s.

Who are you to assume that because we are an assembly of extremely complex molecules, we have been robbed of anything? That is entirely an unfounded assumption on your part. If you need your delusional religion to feel that you have some dignity in your life, then YOU are the one that is robbed……of rational thinking! People are valuable because we as a species are unique, just as every species is unique and adapted to their environments and lifestyles. You don’t need religion at all to live in harmony with your fellow men or with other species. You just don’t! And how can you imply that putting man on the same level of value with animals somehow makes man worthless? Do you need us all to be as arrogant as you to feel better about yourself? What a terrible weakness!

No wonder your religion is dying, hypocrite!