9/11 Wars In Iraq, Afghanistan, And Pakistan Killed 500,000 People: Brown University Study

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A shocking new study produced by Brown University finds that between 480,000 and 507,000 people were killed during America’s Post-9/11 Wars. The study examined the three "war on terror" conflicts of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan — the latter an extension of the Afghan war and focus of US drone attacks. 

The half million figure accounts for both combatant and civilian deaths from direct fighting and war violence, however the number could be much higher as the study didn't account for the perhaps far higher number of civilians killed through infrastructure damage, such as hospitals or water supplies becoming inoperable, or other indirect results of the wars.

Tragically, civilians make up over 50% of the roughly 500,000 killed, and the study estimates further that both US-backed foreign forces and opposition militants each sustained over 100,000 deaths. 

In terms of American forces, the report finds that over 60,000 US troops were either killed or wounded within the three post 9/11 conflicts. This includes 6,951 US military personnel killed in Afghanistan and Iraq since US invasions of those countries in 2001 and 2003. 

Concerning the now seventeen year long "forgotten war" in Afghanistan, the study concluded, according to VOA:

Fatalities in Afghanistan, as of October 2018, stood at about 147,000 people, including Afghan security forces, civilians and opposition fighters. The figure also included the deaths of 6,334 American soldiers and contractors, as well as more than 1,100 allied troops.

Notably the Brown study explicitly calls out the US government's attempts to "paint a rosy picture" of the wars which has shielded the true scope of American and foreign civilian casualties from the American public. 

From the newly published study, Human Cost of the Post-9/11 Wars: Lethality and the Need for Transparency:

Full accounting of an accurate total death toll has been “inhibited by governments determined to paint a rosy picture of perfect execution and progress,” according to the report.

Essentially this is the Brown report acknowledging Washington's massive and consistent propaganda efforts throughout close to two decades of the so-called "war on terror". 

The report also notes the chaos of war and inaccessibility of dangerous locations prevents a narrower, true, and more accurate accounting:

Indeed, we may never know the total direct death toll in these wars. For example, tens of thousands of civilians may have died in retaking Mosul and other cities from ISIS but their bodies have likely not been recovered.

In addition, this tally does not include “indirect deaths.” Indirect harm occurs when wars’ destruction leads to long term, “indirect,” consequences for people’s health in war zones, for example because of loss of access to food, water, health facilities, electricity or other infrastructure. 

Some estimates in the past compiled by independent watchdog groups and polling organizations have put the death toll in Iraq alone at over one million people. 

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'Humanities Hijacked by Ideologues': Jordan Peterson Excoriates Western Academia

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In her efforts to trade punches with the popular intellectual, the GQ journalist bit off more than she could chew, leaving with her tail between her legs.

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The Zika Scare: a Political and Commercial Maneuver of the Chemical Poisons Industry

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Aedes aegypti mosquito potentially carrying the Zika virus. Courtesy Wikipedia.

Researchers discovered the Zika virus in the Zika forest of Uganda – in 1947. It is a virus not much different than the viruses causing dengue, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile fever, and St. Luis encephalitis. The Zika virus eventually spread throughout most of the world. Mosquitoes carry and spread the Zika virus. But for decades the Zika disease afflicting humans was free of brain deform or the shrinking of the infant’s brain  known as microcephaly (a Greek term meaning tiny brain-head).

The 2016 Olympics in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

I heard the name Zika for the first time in 2016 during the Summer Olympics in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Reporting on the PBS Newshour offered warnings for those going to Brazil. Other large media went almost berserk. They were shouting that women near the Olympics site were giving birth to babies with tiny brains. They blamed Zika virus. They blamed the mosquitoes for the malformation of the brain of the babies. The Olympics should be delayed or moved to another country. Brazil was dangerous.

Imagine hundreds of athletes and hundreds of thousands of tourists returning to Europe and the  United States with this dreadful Zika disease, especially pregnant women likely giving birth to deformed babies.

Astonishing as these unverified news stories were, government agencies rushed to give them credence. I heard representatives of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention repeating the questionable newspaper and TV stories about the Zika virus. In addition, CDC keeps saying that fighting Zika virus-carrying mosquitoes in Brazil and Florida with a neurotoxin named “naled” is harmless. After all, farmers and mosquito controllers have been spraying naled for more than fifty years in the United States.

CDC said nothing about the deleterious effects of naled: that this chemical is an organophosphate compound linked to chemical warfare agents: targeting and harming the central nervous system and the brain of man and beast, of birds and insects and fish, of all wild animals.

So, what caused the tiny brains of Brazilian babies during the 2016 Summer Olympics? The Zika virus-infected mosquitoes or pesticides sprayed intensely in the environment, including in the drinking water of the urban slum mothers afflicted by the Zika virus?

Poverty and Poisons

A Berkeley team of scientists published a 2017 study in which they said: “Zika is, and will continue to be, a disease of the urban poor.” A group of physicians from Argentina and Brazil had already explained why.

In a February 2016 report, they argued that the Zika disease in Brazil, and other tropical countries, is not simply a disease of infected mosquitoes stinging pregnant women. They saw the Zika disease as a symptom of a much larger pathology: that of deforestation, the destruction of flora and fauna, massive pesticide sprayings of the natural world and cities, ecological imbalance, global warming and inequality.

Furthermore, these physicians say the massive air spraying of toxic pesticides against mosquitoes is “criminal” and “useless”: nothing but a political and a commercial maneuver of the chemical poisons industry.

They reported that there are countries like Colombia where the Zika virus causes disease but not microcephaly. In Brazil, however, the population that suffers from the Zika virus disease and, potentially, from microcephaly, has been drinking water intentionally treated with pyriproxyfen. This is a potent teratogen that causes monstrous changes in the development of the mosquito, foreclosing its chance of growing normally.

Pyriproxyfen: Insect and Human Growth Regulator?

Experts describe pyriproxyfen as an “insect growth regulator” – an apt name for a chemical made up of insect parts and chemicals formulated into a biological bomb: destroying the insect from within: wrecking the insect’s embryogenesis and metamorphosis to adult.

This powerful biological weapon — that annihilates mosquitoes or other insects – is not benign to humans drinking it in their water or exposed to it in any other way like in spraying it against mosquitoes. In fact, it harms human blood and the liver.

The real danger of pyriproxyfen, however, comes from what it does to developing mosquitoes: giving them malformations, which cause “death or incapacity.” The developing mosquito can’t grow wings or mature external genitalia. It moves to death through its disrupted evolution to a nymph or larva. Pyriproxyfen makes it impossible for the developing mosquito to become an adult.

The physicians from Argentina and Brazil urge us to get off our horse of hubris and think in biological terms. About 60 percent of our genes are identical to the genes of insects like the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that potentially carry the Zika virus. In addition, they emphasize our evolution – going from the zygote to embryo to fetus to newborn — is not that much different than the development process of the mosquito: larva-pupa-adult.

The implications of this biology, including the effects of pyriproxyfen on mosquitoes, are frightening. It is not out of the question that, under certain conditions, like massive and chronic sprayings of the environment, pyriproxyfen could probably do to people what it does to mosquitoes. It has the potential of becoming a “human growth regulator.” Is microcephaly one of the deadly consequences of that potential?

Environmental and Political Origins of Teratogens

“Malformations detected in thousands of children from pregnant women living in areas where the Brazilian state added pyriproxyfen to drinking water is not a coincidence, even though the Ministry of Health places a direct blame on Zika virus for this damage, while trying to ignore its responsibility and ruling out the hypothesis of direct and cumulative chemical damage caused by years of endocrine and immunological disruption of the affected population,” wrote the physicians from Argentina and Brazil.

What these scientists are saying is that Brazil, like the Unites States, is hooked on toxic sprays, used all over the country for decades. In about five years, vector control is projected to approach $ 20 billion per year earnings for the poisons industry.

Like America, Brazil, Argentina and other Latin American countries hire experts from the industry to run their mosquito spraying programs. These experts have been occupying key positions in ministries of health.

Second, the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization have vector control committees that decide what chemical should be sprayed in what country. The Argentinian and Brazilian physicians accuse these pesticide committees of “imperial” policies. They say the “hegemonic strategies” they advocate for “diseases spread by mosquitoes and multiplied by poverty” avoid the threats from bad sanitation, lack of safe drinking water, and responsible health policies. Instead, such programs rely entirely on the spraying of chemicals.

Such practices “demobilize the population” because they leave the people out of decisions, relying instead on the killing of mosquitoes. However, the sprays also affect the population, making people sick and weak. In addition, the sprays kill the natural predators of mosquitoes, which necessitate additional spraying, the only winners being the poisons industry.

Many of the chemicals targeting mosquitoes are endocrine disruptors, weakening the immune system of the exposed population. So, adding pyriproxyfen to that soup of chemicals and adding it to the drinking water and intimate environment of impoverished slum dwellers, you are asking for big trouble: the birth of babies with tiny brains.

“The governments of Mercosur [Mercado Comun del Sur – Southern Common Market of countries of South America] are causing alarm with the threat of Zika and microcephaly, proposing ‘more of the same.’ The agribusiness is offering the services of the ‘Soya Air Force’ to be used for spraying over cities and villages…. To social inequality, these epidemics will add health inequalities, and governments with their chemical attacks will generate environmental inequality,” wrote the physicians from Argentina and Brazil.

These inequalities are increasing ecological damage and the schism between the rulers and the ruled: the vast majority of the people. The rulers cover up the harms with the prestige of international health organizations, universities, business, experts – and the media. Brazil enforced its Zika policies with soldiers.

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'Phenomenally saddening': inside the sordid world of America's for-profit colleges

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The new documentary Fail State, executive produced by Dan Rather, tells the 50-year tale of profit-driven colleges scamming society’s most vulnerable

In 2014, film-maker Alex Shebanow read about Corinthian Colleges, one of America’s largest for-profit college companies, while working on a documentary about student loan debt.

Relying heavily on federal student loans, from which it took $1.4bn in yearly revenue, Corinthian was on the brink of collapse after the department of education halted the company’s flow of federal funding due to evidence of rampant fraud in its reporting of grades and job placements.

Continue reading...

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Inside the Crazy Corruption Scandal That Ensnared Leonardo DiCaprio and the Hollywood Elite

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Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast

The Wolf of Wall Street is the story of Jordan Belfort, a New York City stockbroker who, during the late 1980s and 1990s, committed rampant fraud through his brokerage house Stratton Oakmont. Directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, it’s one of the best films of both this decade and the illustrious auteur’s career, a hilarious and shocking black comedy about the limitless depths of human greed and the insane corruption that dominates the American financial sector.

And in a twist of jaw-dropping irony, the film itself is an example of the very wretched thing it depicts.

Premiering at DOC NYC on Friday, November 9, Sam Hobkinson’s The Kleptocrats is an eye-opening peek at the global embezzlement and money-laundering scandal that helped give birth to The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s a true-life tale of leaders putting themselves above their constituents, of wannabe big shots reveling in their astounding ill-gotten gains, and of investigative journalists driven to bring covert crimes to light. Moreover, it’s a snapshot of the shadier side of stratospheric celebrity life, given that it involves not only DiCaprio and Scorsese, but also the likes of Paris Hilton, Kanye West, Jamie Foxx and Robert De Niro—the last of whom, at one point, responds to pointed questions from The Hollywood Reporter’s Alex Ritman by telling him, “Yeah, well, I don’t fucking appreciate it, excuse me. Get the fuck outta here. Goodbye.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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NYTimes Op-Ed Recognizes "The Other America" - Midterms Are A Warning To Democrats

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Authored by Bret Stephens, op-ed via The New York Times,

Stop manning imaginary barricades, and start building real bridges to the other America.

For months we’ve heard from sundry media apocalypticians that this year’s midterms were the last exit off the road to autocracy. On Tuesday, the American people delivered a less dramatic verdict about the significance of the occasion.

In a word: meh.

Are you interested in seeing Donald Trump voted out of office in two years? I hope so - which is why you should think hard about that “meh.” This week’s elections were, at most, a very modest rebuke of a president reviled by many of his opponents, this columnist included, as an unprecedented danger to the health of liberal democracy at home and abroad. The American people don’t entirely agree.

We might consider listening to them a bit more - and to ourselves somewhat less.

The 28-seat swing that gave Democrats control of the House wasn’t even half the 63 seats Republicans won in 2010. Yet even that shellacking (to use Barack Obama’s word) did nothing to help Mitt Romney’s chances two years later. The Republican gain in the Senate (the result in Arizona isn’t clear at this writing) was more predictable in a year when so many red-state Democrats were up for re-election. But it underscores what a non-wave election this was.

It also underscores that while “the Resistance” is good at generating lots of votes, it hasn’t figured out how to turn the votes into seats. Liberals are free to bellyache all they want that they have repeatedly won the overall popular vote for the presidency and Congress while still losing elections, and that the system is therefore “rigged.”

But that’s the system in which everyone’s playing — and one they had no trouble winning in until just a few years ago. To complain about it makes them sound like whiners in a manner reminiscent of Trump in 2016, when he thought he was going to lose. It’s also a reminder that, in politics, intensity is not strategy. You have to be able to convert.

The Resistance didn’t convert.

It didn’t convert when it nominated left-wing candidates in right-leaning states like Florida and Georgia. It didn’t convert when it poured its moneyinto where its heart was — a lithesome Texas hopeful with scant chance of victory — rather than where the dollars were most needed. It didn’t convert when it grew more concerned with the question of how much Trump did not pay in taxes than with the question of how much you pay in taxes.

It didn’t convert when Chuck Schumer chose to make Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court the decisive political test of the year. It didn’t convert when it turned his initial confirmation hearing into a circus. It didn’t convert when media liberals repeatedly violated ordinary journalistic standards by reporting the uncorroborated accusations against Kavanaugh that followed Christine Blasey Ford’s.

Above all, it didn’t convert the unconverted.

It doesn’t take a lot to get the average voter to tell you what he doesn’t like about Donald Trump: the nastiness, the divisiveness, the lying, the tweeting, the chaos, the epic boastfulness matched by bottomless self-pity. As my colleague Frank Bruni has astutely observed, Trump is as transparent as they come: You don’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to know that the president is an insecure narcissist with daddy issues.

Then again, what does the average voter think about the people who pompously style themselves “the Resistance”? I don’t just mean the antifa thugs and restaurant hecklers and the Farrakhan Fan Club wing of the women’s movement, though that’s a part of it.

I mean the rest of the Trump despisers, the people who detest not only the man but also contemn his voters (and constantly let them know it); the ones who heard the words “basket of deplorables” and said to themselves: Bingo. They measure their moral worth not through an effort at understanding but by the intensity of their disdain. They are — so they think — always right, yet often surprised by events.

I was a charter member of this camp. Intellectual honesty ought to compel us to admit that we achieved precisely the opposite of what we intended. Trumpism is more entrenched today than ever. The result of the midterms means, if nothing else, that the president survived his first major political test more than adequately. And unless Democrats change, he should be seen as the odds-on favorite to win in 2020.

To repeat: I’d hate to see that happen. I want Trump, and Trumpism, to lose. But if the Resistance party doesn’t find a way to become a shrewder, humbler opposition party, that’s not going to happen. The day Democrats take charge in the House would be a good opportunity to stop manning imaginary barricades, and start building real bridges to the other America.

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From Economic Crisis To World War III

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Authored by Qian Lu via Project Syndicate,

The response to the 2008 economic crisis has relied far too much on monetary stimulus, in the form of quantitative easing and near-zero (or even negative) interest rates, and included far too little structural reform. This means that the next crisis could come soon – and pave the way for a large-scale military conflict.

The next economic crisis is closer than you think. But what you should really worry about is what comes after: in the current social, political, and technological landscape, a prolonged economic crisis, combined with rising income inequality, could well escalate into a major global military conflict.

The 2008-09 global financial crisis almost bankrupted governments and caused systemic collapse. Policymakers managed to pull the global economy back from the brink, using massive monetary stimulus, including quantitative easing and near-zero (or even negative) interest rates.

But monetary stimulus is like an adrenaline shot to jump-start an arrested heart; it can revive the patient, but it does nothing to cure the disease. Treating a sick economy requires structural reforms, which can cover everything from financial and labor markets to tax systems, fertility patterns, and education policies.

Policymakers have utterly failed to pursue such reforms, despite promising to do so. Instead, they have remained preoccupied with politics. From Italy to Germany, forming and sustaining governments now seems to take more time than actual governing. And Greece, for example, has relied on money from international creditors to keep its head (barely) above water, rather than genuinely reforming its pension system or improving its business environment.

The lack of structural reform has meant that the unprecedented excess liquidity that central banks injected into their economies was not allocated to its most efficient uses. Instead, it raised global asset prices to levels even higher than those prevailing before 2008.

In the United States, housing prices are now 8% higher than they were at the peak of the property bubble in 2006, according to the property website Zillow. The price-to-earnings (CAPE) ratio, which measures whether stock-market prices are within a reasonable range, is now higher than it was both in 2008 and at the start of the Great Depression in 1929.

As monetary tightening reveals the vulnerabilities in the real economy, the collapse of asset-price bubbles will trigger another economic crisis – one that could be even more severe than the last, because we have built up a tolerance to our strongest macroeconomic medications. A decade of regular adrenaline shots, in the form of ultra-low interest rates and unconventional monetary policies, has severely depleted their power to stabilize and stimulate the economy.

If history is any guide, the consequences of this mistake could extend far beyond the economy. According to Harvard’s Benjamin Friedman, prolonged periods of economic distress have been characterized also by public antipathy toward minority groups or foreign countries – attitudes that can help to fuel unrest, terrorism, or even war.

For example, during the Great Depression, US President Herbert Hoover signed the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, intended to protect American workers and farmers from foreign competition. In the subsequent five years, global trade shrank by two-thirds. Within a decade, World War II had begun.

To be sure, WWII, like World War I, was caused by a multitude of factors; there is no standard path to war. But there is reason to believe that high levels of inequality can play a significant role in stoking conflict.

According to research by the economist Thomas Piketty, a spike in income inequality is often followed by a great crisis. Income inequality then declines for a while, before rising again, until a new peak – and a new disaster. Though causality has yet to be proven, given the limited number of data points, this correlation should not be taken lightly, especially with wealth and income inequality at historically high levels.

This is all the more worrying in view of the numerous other factors stoking social unrest and diplomatic tension, including technological disruption, a record-breaking migration crisis, anxiety over globalization, political polarization, and rising nationalism. All are symptoms of failed policies that could turn out to be trigger points for a future crisis.

Voters have good reason to be frustrated, but the emotionally appealing populists to whom they are increasingly giving their support are offering ill-advised solutions that will only make matters worse. For example, despite the world’s unprecedented interconnectedness, multilateralism is increasingly being eschewed, as countries – most notably, Donald Trump’s US – pursue unilateral, isolationist policies. Meanwhile, proxy wars are raging in Syria and Yemen.

Against this background, we must take seriously the possibility that the next economic crisis could lead to a large-scale military confrontation. By the logicof the political scientist Samuel Huntington , considering such a scenario could help us avoid it, because it would force us to take action. In this case, the key will be for policymakers to pursue the structural reforms that they have long promised, while replacing finger-pointing and antagonism with a sensible and respectful global dialogue. The alternative may well be global conflagration.

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'Left' Organizes "Response Events" In 900 Cities To Protest Firing Of Jeff Sessions

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Authored by Michael Snyder via The American Dream blog,

Well, that escalated quickly. On Wednesday, President Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and by the end of the day major leftist organizations had already put together protests in 900 U.S. cities to make a “public demand for action to correct this injustice”. 

It truly is amazing how rapidly these groups were able to put up web pages promoting these events and get the call out on social media.  It is almost as if they knew that this was coming.  MoveOn.Org is one of the organizations that is spearheading this effort, and their page promoting these protests is identical to the page promoting these protests on trumpisnotabovethelaw.org.  According to both pages, the protests will be held on November 8th at 5 PM local time…

BREAKING: PROTESTS CALLED FOR THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 5 PM LOCAL TIME

Donald Trump has installed a crony to oversee the special counsel’s Trump-Russia investigation, crossing a red line set to protect the investigation. By replacing Rod Rosenstein with just-named Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker as special counsel Robert Mueller’s boss on the investigation, Trump has undercut the independence of the investigation. Whitaker has publicly outlined strategies to stifle the investigation and cannot be allowed to remain in charge of it. The Nobody Is Above the Law network demands that Whitaker immediately commit not to assume supervision of the investigation. Our hundreds of response events are being launched to demonstrate the public demand for action to correct this injustice. We will update this page as the situation develops.

Anyone that thought that the midterm elections would calm down the level of strife in this country was just being delusional.

The truth is that the left was holding back during the run up to the midterm elections because they didn’t want to turn any potential voters against their candidates.  Now that the midterm elections are over, they are free to do whatever they want.

The far left group Common Dreams is also participating in these “response events”, and the following is what their website says about them…

Progressive organizations have announced coordinated protests to take place in cities and communities nationwide on Thurdsay, November 8th at 5 PM (local time) in the wake of President Donald Trump’s firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Right after Trump forced Sessions to resign, the White House announced that Matthew Whitaker—a DOJ official who has shown open hostility to the probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller—would now serve as acting AG and be put in charge of the ongoing investigation.

It is quite funny that the left is getting so bent out of shape regarding the firing of an Attorney General that many of them absolutely hated.

But of course the truth is that this is all about the Mueller investigation.  After all this time, many on the left are still holding out hope that this could be a way to get rid of Donald Trump, and they are deeply concerned that the dismissal of Sessions could greatly endanger that investigation.

And of course top Democratic leaders are adding fuel to that fire.  For example, the following is what former Attorney General Eric Holder is saying…

Former Attorney General Eric Holder said on Twitter he worries Session’s exit could negatively impact Robert Mueller’s investigation.

“Anyone who attempts to interfere with or obstruct the Mueller inquiry must be held accountable,” Holder tweeted. “This is a red line. We are a nation of laws and norms not subject to the self-interested actions of one man.”

No, we are not a nation of laws.

If we were a nation governed by the rule of law, Hillary Clinton would have been put in prison a long time ago.

The only reason the left is using this sort of rhetoric is because they are desperate to take down Trump.

The reality of the matter is that Jeff Sessions had been doing an absolutely horrible job, and he should have been fired over a year ago.  Trump showed a tremendous amount of patience keeping him on until now, and he should be applauded for finally making a change.

The man taking over for Sessions, Matthew Whitaker, has made some very interesting comments regarding the Mueller investigation, and this has pushed the left into a tizzy.  The following comes from a Washington Post article entitled “Trump just reminded us that he’s still a dangerous authoritarian madman”…

Democrats immediately pounced on the news that Sessions chief of staff Matthew Whitaker will now replace him, pointing to highly questionable comments he’s made about the Mueller probe. Before becoming Sessions’ chief of staff, Whitaker suggested regulations allowed for Trump to put in an acting replacement for the attorney general — meaning one who would not have to be confirmed by the Senate — who could, if he wished, starve the Mueller probe of funds:

“So I could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced with a recess appointment,” Whitaker said, “and that attorney general doesn’t fire Bob Mueller, but he just reduces his budget to so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt.”

Hopefully Whitaker puts that plan into action.

The Mueller investigation has been a witch hunt from the very beginning, and after all this time they still don’t have anything on Trump.

If Congress had been doing their job, they would have shut down this investigation long ago.

Now Trump is finally taking action, and the left is freaking out.

It will be very interesting to see how successful the protests are on Thursday.  I have a feeling that we are about to see a huge temper tantrum on the streets of America, and it isn’t going to be pretty.

#SaveOurSessions

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New York Lawmakers Want to Screen Gun Buyers’ Social Media History for Hate Speech

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A pair of New York legislators is drafting a bill that would make social media history checks part of the process of purchasing a gun.

Under the legislation, gun purchasers would have up to three years of their social media history potentially scrutinized by authorities, New York outlet WCBS NewsRadio reports. The internet search history of prospective gun buyers would face searches going back up to one year.

“A three-year review of a social media profile would give an easy profile of a person who is not suitable to hold and possess a firearm,” said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who has proposed the legislation with New York State Senator Kevin Parker.

Adams described the searches, which would involve scouring social media posts for hate speech, as basic police work.

“If the police department is reviewing a gang assault, a robbery, some type of shooting, they go and do a social media profile investigation,” Adams said.

There are some obvious flaws with the legislation.

First, comparing the search of a prospective gun buyer’s internet history to routine police investigations is odd. When an assault, robbery, or shooting occurs, police are investigating a crime. That is not the case with someone trying to buy a firearm; the buyer is simply trying to make a lawful purchase. This bill is closer to what one might call pre-crime, an idea that has served as a plot device in dystopian literature for more than half a century. (The 2002 Tom Cruise movie Minority Report, a story that centers around a state that has figured out how to stop crimes before they happen, was based on a 1956 Philip K. Dick novel.)

There is also the issue of privacy. Peering into people’s search histories and social media posts is a highly invasive act. Some social media pages are public by design, but others are not. Would authorities be able to snoop in these? Presumably so considering the legislation would allow authorities to snoop in the search histories of prospective gun buyers.

Additionally, there is the issue of defining hate speech, a notoriously nebulous term. (Europe has already shown where the road of state-regulated hate speech takes us.) What authority would determine what speech qualifies as “hateful”? To deny someone a fundamental right based on the state’s interpretation of “hate speech” would be an affront to constitutional principles.

The right to bear arms and free speech are arguably the two most fundamental rights enshrined in the US Constitution.

These are rights beyond the reach of government.

“...the Bill of Rights does not come from the people and is not subject to change by majorities,” wrote Walter Lippmann. “It comes from the nature of things. It declares the inalienable rights of man not only against all government but also against the people collectively.”

The only thing New York lawmakers are missing in this misguided effort, as Walter Olson quipped at Cato, is “for New York to quarter troops on the homes of applicants with especially bad social media postings.”

--

This article has been republished with permission from Foundation for Economic Education.

[Image Credit: Air Force photo by Margo Wright]

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Major Math Error Puts Widely-Cited Global Warming Study On Ice

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An widely-circulated study which concluded that global warming is far worse than previously thought has been called into question by a math error, reports the Daily Caller's Michael Bastasch. 

Princeton scientist Laure Resplandy and researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography concluded in October that the Earth's oceans have retained 60% more heat than previously thought over the last 25 years, suggesting global warming was much worse than previously believed.

The report was covered or referenced by MSM outlets worldwide, including the Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, Reuters and others. 

The Washington Post, for example, reported: "The higher-than-expected amount of heat in the oceans means more heat is being retained within Earth’s climate system each year, rather than escaping into space. In essence, more heat in the oceans signals that global warming is more advanced than scientists thought." 

The New York Times at least hedged their reporting, claiming that the estimates, "if proven accurate, could be another indication that the global warming of the past few decades has exceeded conservative estimates and has been more closely in line with scientists’ worst-case scenarios."

Unfortunately for the Princeton-Scripps team, it appears that their report has been proven inaccurate. 

Independent scientist Nic Lewis found the study had “apparently serious (but surely inadvertent) errors in the underlying calculations.” Lewis’ findings were quickly corroborated by another researcher. -Daily Caller

"Just a few hours of analysis and calculations, based only on published information, was sufficient to uncover apparently serious (but surely inadvertent) errors in the underlying calculations," wrote Lewis in a blog post published on climate scientist Judith Curry's Climate Etc. website. 

After correcting the math error, Lewis found that the paper's rate of oceanic warming "is about average compared with the other estimates they showed, and below the average for 1993–2016."

Lewis's conclusion was replicated and supported by University of Colorado professor, Roger Pike, Jr., who tweeted his work. 

Lewis found the study’s authors, led by Princeton University scientist Laure Resplandy, erred in calculating the linear trend of estimated ocean warming between 1991 and 2016. Lewis has also criticized climate model predictions, which generally over-predict warming.

Resplandy and her colleagues estimated ocean heat by measuring the volume of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the atmosphere. The results: the oceans took up 60 percent more heat than previously thought. The study only sent alarm bells ringing, especially in the wake of the United Nations’ latest climate assessment. -Daily Caller

Lewis is correct that the linear trends reported by Resplandy et al are not matched by what the data indicate. See figure below which I just created based on data provided by Resplandy et al.
Mistakes happen in science, that's no crime.
What matters more is what you do next. /END pic.twitter.com/ylFqZngbmm

— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) November 6, 2018

PS. You can read Lewis here @curryja --> https://t.co/lOKW8s0ESD
Here is the Lewis figure I just replicated. It's a big error at the core of paper's findings. pic.twitter.com/ifSa0yALNu

— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) November 6, 2018

Resplandy has yet to respond to Lewis regarding the errors her found in her math, writing on Tuesday "To date I have had no substantive response from her, despite subsequently sending a further email containing the key analysis sections from a draft of this article." 

Lead of Princeton press release on Resplandy et al. was that IPCC has gotten things wrong & repeated by NYT, WP, E&E, USAT etc.
We've known peril in relying on single studies to overturn decades of assessed literature
Signature moment now for climate folkshttps://t.co/i7t6WOz28K

— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) November 6, 2018

Similarly, niether Resplandy nor co-author Ralph Keeling responded to the Daily Caller's request for comment. 

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