Eleanor Duckwall's Spotlight

Why Switzerland Has the Lowest Crime Rate in the World

Now that Switzerland is just another EU province, don't you wonder how long the Swiss will be able to keep their weapons as they are frowned upon.

Ironically, Switzerland launched the research program.

Let's hope they can keep their weapons.

'I guess I'm a racist': What really motivates opponents of ObamaCare?

Union of World Climologists

How can we believe news coverage from the Copenhagen Climate Conference?

Another example of how the UN and elite cohorts are starting to micromanage our lives:

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries will take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial published in 20 languages:

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Is that true? Has the world's response really been feeble and half-hearted? Could it be that the writer(s)(?) of the editorial, whoever they really are, are determined that the world respond as they have determined what is the appropriate manner, and in typical paternalistic form, everyone else be damned! And what about those facts? How can we be sure that they are accurate after Climategate?

The above graphic from The Guardian in Britain, show the newspapers which will be participating. In addition to the mandate of a speaking with a single voice, here is what bothers me from the editorial:

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions.... And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than "old Europe", must not suffer more than their richer partners.

As many have repeatedly stated, the conference is about social engineering using the pretext of climate science to create a political order that spans the entire globe. Climate science management will give them inroads into the institutions of every nation on Earth.

Some long-established media outlets reported that their reporters were not allowed to attend because the "didn't meet the criteria." Don't you wonder if one criterion was the willingness to accept the precedent of publishing canned editorials? And what about the press coverage of the event? Do the reports have to pass a censored litmus test for approval?

Thank goodness for the internet that is still free... for now.

Copenhagen Climate Talks Could Have a Major Impact on YOUR Lifestyle

You might have seen the trailer or a review of the documentary, No Impact Man, about a "guilty liberal" (his characterization, not mine) who decides to do a little experiment that should result in "end [ing] our environmental crisis, make a better place to live for ourselves and everyone else, and hopefully come up with a happier way of life along the way."

Colin Beavan decides to turn off the electricity in his apartment, forego cars and taxis and elevators, and as much as possible leave no carbon footprint while living with his wife and infant child IN MANHATTAN. A film crew documents the entire process for an entire year.

It's not pretty.

Fjordman: Surviving the Coming Crash

At Gates of Vienna:

As I have stated my essay The Coming Crash, I think we need to realize that the current ideological order is broken and beyond repair. There will probably some sort of pan-Western economic and social collapse in the not-too-distant future; I fear this is too late to avoid by now. The people who support the ruling paradigm are too powerful, and the paradigm itself contains so many flaws, that it cannot be fixed. It needs to crash. Instead of wasting time and energy on attempting to fix what cannot be fixed we need to prepare as best as we can for the coming crash and hopefully regroup to create a stronger and healthier culture afterward.

We are currently in the middle of the White Guilt Gold Rush. If you are a white Westerner you may not have fully realized this, but I can assure you that the rest of the world knows this. The trick is to keep the white man on the defensive and vaguely guilty at all times so that he can be squeezed for money. The climate quotas for carbon dioxide constitute a thinly disguised form of global Socialism through the UN-sponsored redistribution of wealth.

Is It a Global Warming Swindle?

With so much at stake, why is there very little coverage of this in the U.S. press?

Part One of nine:

[Be sure to view the other parts located in the Related Videos sidebar]

EUReferendum on The Met Office decision to review the data, a process that will take three years.

Andrew Walden, Greenhouse Gas Observatories Downwind from Erupting Volcanoes

Jim O'Neill How Much Longer Before Climategate Explodes

David Bellamy: Twenty-Eight Years on TV, Then Blackballed for Challenging AGW

Myron Ebell, Climategate: Obama's Science Adviser Confirms the Scandal - Unintentionally

Dear Tiger et al...

My grandmother gave good advice to children and grandchildren as how to get out of trouble. The only way, she said, was to stay out of trouble.

Think before you take a step, and be ready to the consequences should your decisions backfire.

I didn't always make the best decisions, but I knew where the line was to prevent wandering into moral turpitude that end careers, or serious indiscretions that ruin relationships.

"It takes two to tango." But I wonder what would have happened to the employment chances of the young women had they refused to cooperate even though it appears that there was a mutual attraction.

It is only right that you compensate them for what they lost, but neither you nor they should be rewarded by appearances on talk shows or by purchasing tell-all books. In fact, now that you have revealed your true character, parents should take care to lock up their daughters, and young women in public life now know of the stigma that will stick should they be seen in your company.

I know I wouldn't.

I spent a lot of effort over many years to safeguard my reputation, avoiding fun situations that were innocent, yet could be misconstrued because the public required me to live up to a higher standard, as did my husband.

Did I waste my time and my life? I don't think so.

Today we have no standards is a common lament. Of course we have standards, but they have been lowered across the board for the sake of "freedom." Being a libertine, a thief, disconsiderate or a slob is not freedom. Those are character flaws.

Did quick rebound after the Depression of 1920 show that Keynes has the wrong approach?

Most history books dedicate a few sentences to the Depression of 1920, and only a few paragraphs to the presidency of William Harding, if that much. And what they say is usually unflattering. Not a surprise as written history reflects the attitude of the authors, most whom have been caught up in Progressivism and Leftist group-think.

The Forgotten Depression of 1920 by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.:

It is a cliché that if we do not study the past we are condemned to repeat it. Almost equally certain, however, is that if there are lessons to be learned from an historical episode, the political class will draw all the wrong ones — and often deliberately so.

Far from viewing the past as a potential source of wisdom and insight, political regimes have a habit of employing history as an ideological weapon, to be distorted and manipulated in the service of present-day ambitions. That's what Winston Churchill meant when he described the history of the Soviet Union as "unpredictable."

For this reason, we should not be surprised that our political leaders have made such transparently ideological use of the past in the wake of the financial crisis that hit the United States in late 2007. According to the endlessly repeated conventional wisdom, the Great Depression of the 1930s was the result of capitalism run riot, and only the wise interventions of progressive politicians restored prosperity.

Many of those who concede that the New Deal programs alone did not succeed in lifting the country out of depression nevertheless go on to suggest that the massive government spending during World War II is what did it.[1] (Even some nominal free marketeers make the latter claim, which hands the entire theoretical argument to supporters of fiscal stimulus.)

The connection between this version of history and the events of today is obvious enough: once again, it is claimed, wildcat capitalism has created a terrific mess, and once again, only a combination of fiscal and monetary stimulus can save us.

Video: The Story of Cap and Trade

Via LGF

The creator (who believes in global warming and climate change) gives a good explanation of "cap and trade." The problems and the solutions are corrupt, don't work, and are nothing more the snake-oil scams.

Someone should tell Al Gore.

Sparking the dawn of a new dark age

The environmental movement would rejoice if they understood the impact and the long term consequences of the demographics depicted above. Although the population seems to be exploding, the net effect of the ideological return to the 7th Century will accomplish what environmentalists most desire: the re-wilding of the Earth as man returns to a primitive state.

As industry and technology decline, so will the advances in science and medicine that improving health, sanitation, and increased longevity as human beings return to a primitive stage, one that rejects the modern world.

Ironically without Westerners to continue the advances of science, medicine, and technology, the demographic advantage depicted above cannot be sustained.

From Mexico and Beyond without Love

The standard lament, "Poor Mexico: so far from God and so close to the United States" meant that power and influence went south. Now, because of migration and trafficking, the influence (and perhaps even the power) is moving north.

Is the United States now moving away from the blessings from, and the grace of God and closer to becoming like Mexico?

The fact that Mexican drug cartels are operating with impunity north of the border through their satellite street gang junior members should surprise no one. However, we should be extremely concerned when evidence shows that certain cartel families are operating more north of the border than within Mexico.

After reading about this newly discovered smugglers' tunnel from Mexico near San DiegoI must admit that this Stratfor.com report raised my level of concern. Finished with brick and dressed rock, the tunnel would have been a marvel, with an elevator and ventilation system, capable to smuggling in and out tons of drugs, guns, contraband, people and who knows what else for distribution all over North America and then out into the wider world.

A congressman's worst nightmare

Is the New EU Superstate Undemocratic and Also Illegitimate?

Yesterday, December 1, 2009, 500 million Europeans came under the force of the Lisbon Treaty with a common government to which the governments of their own countries are legally subservient, and since yesterday, the 27 member states of the EU have been reduced to the status of provinces.

The change brought about such shocks as France's Sarkozy beginning to "curb the City of London" financial services with the statement, "We are now in charge."

The French President’s glee at the appointment of Michel Barnier as Commissioner for the Single Market took on an edge of menace yesterday when he said that unfettered City practices must end.

“Do you know what it means for me to see for the first time in 50 years a French European commissioner in charge of the internal market, including financial services, including the City [of London]?" he said yesterday.

"I want the world to see the victory of the European model, which has nothing to do with the excesses of financial capitalism," he said.

His implicit threat was just what Downing Street had feared when Mr Barnier, formerly an agriculture minister, was given the portfolio last week.

Unfortunately this the beginning of many unanticipated shocks and readjustments that Europeans will be forced to make.

Intimidation - Islamic Style

Perhaps you have heard of the recent Swiss referendum to ban the building of minarets, a decision that is causing concern in the EU. As of December 1, 2009, all member states lost their identities and ceased to exist when the the new "constitution" came into effect. It is unlikely that the EU Human Rights Council will allow this decision to stand.

Nevertheless, the Europeans are concerned about the possible reaction of their restive Muslim populations that have created no-go zone enclaves where non-Muslims won't go and the the police fear to go. Also over the years, rioting has occurred over any infraction of Muslim sense of justice or feelings of insults, such as the riots over the publication of cartoons that depicted Mohammed in Denmark, the death of teenage criminals at the hands of French police in Paris, attacks against Jews, complaints about traditional European festivals that "offend" Muslims, the burning of cars over successive summers, and on-and-on.

The Baron at Gates of Vienna must be channeling my ideas, because I came up with the same conclusions. (Or perhaps they are a matter of common sense.)

The real concerns, at least for government bureaucrats and business owners, are:

How many cars and buildings will be burned every night because of this?

How violent and murderous will the Muslims actually get?

Thus the "restive populations" really don't have to do anything except complain, and bureaucrats and business jump to attention out of fear that they will be provoked and react as they have in the recent past.

Read his post here.

Americans should not pat themselves of the back for many here also react in similar manner: they fear saying or doing anything that might bring about violence. And the recent Ft. Hood Massacre demonstrates how political correctness and fear of being labeled as a racist, Islamophobe, or xenophobe resulted in the deaths and maiming of dozens.

A bully is a bully regardless of race, ethnic creed or religion persuasion. No one should be in fear of reporting problems in order to safeguard a career or reputation.

And Europeans should be able to live without fear of intimidation by bullies that are given a pass because of their religion... nor should we.

One year of jihad in America

Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch:

Christopher Holton at Family Security Matters gives a list of almost 50 instances of Jihad being waged in the United States from December 2008 to November 2009:

There is mounting evidence that the global Jihadist insurgency is fully entrenched in the United States After the Fort Hood massacre news services seem divided between those hell-bent-for-leather on denying that the Fort Hood massacre was a case of anything other than a persecuted loner "snapping" and those who proclaimed it the first "terrorist" attack on U.S. soil since September 11th.

This focus is wrong. Fort Hood was an act of Jihad and that's really all that matters: It is essential that we find out how extensive Nidal Malik Hasan's ties to other Jihadists were. Of this there can be no doubt.

Ignore border problems at our peril

Has focus on al Qaeda overseas and security problems in every corner of the world created a creeping loss of security here at home?

For decades the United States and Mexico have promised to secure the troublesome border shared between the two countries. For some reason neither country has not been committed to prevent passage of human trafficking or trafficking in contraband, guns, or drugs from moving north. The reasons for this seem to be more beneficial to Mexico than the United States, but common sense tells us that forces on the American side have never wanted a secure border.

In spite of claims that no one desires this unfortunate situation, one should ask who on each side of the border benefits by the arrangement. And the degradation of security is spreading north of the border. Judith Miller at City Journal:

Beheadings and amputations. Iraqi-style brutality, bribery, extortion, kidnapping, and murder. More than 7,200 dead—almost double last year’s tally—in shoot-outs between federales and often better-armed drug cartels. This is modern Mexico, whose president, Felipe Calderón, has been struggling since 2006 to wrest his country from the grip of four powerful cartels and their estimated 100,000 foot soldiers.

ClimateGate Skepticism Healthy Now That There's So Much to Lose

Some climate scientists and their followers had convinced millions that we will lose the Earth, species, and our lives if we fail to accept their view that the Earth is rapidly warming and that human activity is to blame.

It is true that all of the above could come to pass if the Earth continues to warm, but they are far from convincing that human beings are the culprits. You will find me among the climate skeptics that either aren't convinced or just don't believe, especially now that fraud has been uncovered within the climate science community.

One would think that the upcoming Copenhagen COP15 conference should be postponed until the scandal can be thoroughly investigated. After all, the Earth and climate will still be here, and human beings are being asked to change behaviors, to give up liberty, to pay trillions in the form of reparations, carbon offsets, higher fuel bills, and taxes on the basis of data that was obviously "massaged" and in a process which squelched divergent opinion through the manipulation of the peer review process.

Oh, no, the show must go on. Too many people have their professional reputations on the line. Millions of hours have been devoted to research, papers, books, conferences, and programs.

With religious fervor, propaganda mills have engaged the public while skillfully targeting those groups that can influence the most. One such group is school children that can get global warming green ideology straight into the home where they can influence parents, and then later be counted on to enforce the expected changes that will be set in stone if world leaders sign legally binding protocols and treaties from which nations then cannot opt out.

Already Europe has been thoroughly "greened," and the United States in following hot on their heels.

Classrooms are creating a green vanguard and teachers have been recruited to be the drill sergeants of the new recruits, instilling "facts" about global warming through lessons, art, and even music, the traditional medium of transferring concepts to the young and the illiterate.

To my way of thinking, these unethical educators are failing to

• Encourage the student to study varying points of view and respect the right to form a personal judgement.

In other words, these educators have been recruited to brainwash their students to become members of the quasi-religious green cult that is sweeping the world.

Some say that one of the uses of organized religion is to control the masses and to assist in consolidating power into the hands of a few, the "anointed."

The anointed priesthood then works in tandem with secular powers to maintain control, while at the same time using cadres of the faithful to establish and the build the religious structures.

We see this happening already in the United States where sustainable development has become the catch word for a huge United Nations bureaucracy.

In 1993 Bill Clinton created the President's Council of Sustainable Development. At that time United Nation's Agenda 21,

a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment.

Well that pretty much encompasses every human activity.

Right now Senator Christopher Dodd, D-Conn is facilitating the "40-chapter laundry list of recommendations to create "Sustainable Communities" through his "Livable Communities Act" (S. 1619) which further defines the term this way:

"The term 'sustainable development' means a pattern of resource use designed to create livable communities by:


(A) providing a variety of safe and reliable transportation choices;




(B) providing affordable, energy-efficient, and location-efficient housing choices for people of all income levels, ages, races, and ethnicities;




© supporting, revitalizing, and encouraging the growth of communities and maximizing the cost effectiveness of existing infrastructure;




(D) promoting economic development and economic competitiveness;




(E) preserving the environment and natural resources;




(F) protecting agricultural land, rural land, and green spaces; and




(G) supporting public health and improving the quality of life for residents of and workers in a community."

If we were building "consensus," the facilitator would marginalize anyone who would dare to dispute that these areas are not worthy. After all, who in their right mind would be against promoting, supporting, preserving protecting, and providing these basic needs?

But of course, the devil is in the details of how it is to be done, and where the money will come from.

Dodd's bill will authorize the appropriation of billions of dollars to bribe states and local communities to transform the nation into soviet-styled communities where freedom is sacrificed for the utopian vision of sustainable development.  Dodd's bill will create two new grant programs, and two new bureaucracies, with $100 million authorized for "Comprehensive Planning Grants." These grants are available only to multijurisdictional organizations that are defined in the bill, which will assure comprehensive planning on a regional basis. "Sustainability Challenge Grants" are offered on the same multijurisdictional basis. Nearly $4 billion is authorized over three years for grants to implement the projects set forth in the comprehensive plans.

 

The "Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities" is created within the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This new agency is charged with issuing and overseeing the grants program and providing guidance and technical assistance in the transformation to "sustainable," or as Dodd describes them, "livable" communities. The other new bureaucracy is the "Interagency Council on Sustainable Communities." This is a new council consisting of cabinet secretaries – or their designees. The council is authorized to hire a staff to "ensure interagency coordination of federal policy on sustainable development."

The United Nations has a similar agency. It's called the DOEM: Designated Officials on Environment Matters.

"Environment Matters" is linked to global warming and "Sustainable Communities" are to be created in order to address global warming or climate change concerns.

Notice that the grants and the bureaucracies are to be funded by the American taxpayers, and coincidentally the United Nations programs are to be funded by taxes collected from the member nations.

We will be forced to pay for our own enslavement.

As a basis for his legislation, Dodd lists 20 "findings" which may or may not be true, but certainly do not provide an accurate picture.  For example, he says that between 1980 and 2000, population growth in 99 urban centers "consumed" 16 million acres of rural land. What he did not say is that all urban land in all the cities occupies only 60 million acres, or 2.6 precedent of the 2.3 billion acres in this country. Land designated as "wilderness," however, occupies more than 107 million acres. Wilderness is land on which no human activity – other than walking carefully – is allowed. [Emphasis added]

Dodd's bill, like all sustainable development propaganda, paints a warm and fuzzy picture of what "livable" or "sustainable" communities should be. The propaganda fails to point out that in order to achieve this Marxist utopia, government has to enforce the vision. This means that people must live where government says they must live; in homes that meet the government's design criteria; and travel to work in vehicles approved by the government.  

The end result of the comprehensive land-use plan is to draw lines on a map, which deprives individuals of private property rights whose land is outside the urban boundary zones. The value of land inside urban boundary zones skyrockets, as does the cost of living for all who reside there.

 

There is a free, detailed, 3-part video presentation available here, that explains sustainable development quite thoroughly. 

Dodd's bill goes a long way to transforming America into what looks a lot like regional soviets where unelected agency appointees draft a plan by which all must live, and then enforce the plan with the power of law. [Emphasis added]

The global warming/climate change agenda is well under way here in the United States … right under our noses. The crowning touch will be a signature at the Copenhagen Conference that will go on as planned.

Too many people have invested a lot of effort and investors have created new industries that require customers, bureaucracies have been created that require sustainment through taxes, and many have visions of power and glory that will be theirs, either behind the scenes or in front of the cameras after the protocols become established law.

And the rest of us poor schmoos will be expected to pay and obey as we enter serfdom in the new 21st-Century Age of Feudalism.

My Chinese Herbalist Already Knew: When You Eat May Be Just as Vital to Your Health as What You Eat

Twenty years ago a Chinese herbalist that concocted vile-tasting herb combinations that, when boiled, filled the house with horrible odors told me the same as this contemporary study: your metabolic rhythms, or circadian cycles, are a complex system controlled by hormones and other factors.

He prescribed the foul-tasting herbs in response to the complaint that I awoke in the middle of the night instead of sleeping the necessary eight hours. His explanation dwelt with the function of the liver that becomes very active doing it's blood-cleansing duties. I woke up because my liver was unhappy with my diet, eating times, portion amounts, my level of stress, and the intake of other chemicals in the form of artificial sweeteners and prescribed medications, and essentially needed to be cleansed of a build up of toxins.

The study at the Salk Institute gives the following explanation and conclusions:

In mammals, the circadian timing system is composed of a central circadian clock in the brain and subsidiary oscillators in most peripheral tissues. The master clock in the brain is set by light and determines the overall diurnal or nocturnal preference of an animal, including sleep-wake cycles and feeding behavior. The clocks in peripheral organs are largely insensitive to changes in the light regime. Instead, their phase and amplitude are affected by many factors including feeding time. The clocks themselves keep time through the fall and rise of gene activity on a roughly 24-hour schedule that anticipates environmental changes and adapts many of the body's physiological function to the appropriate time of day.

"The liver oscillator in particular helps the organism to adapt to a daily pattern of food availability by temporally tuning the activity of thousands of genes regulating metabolism and physiology," says Panda. "This regulation is very important, since the absence of a robust circadian clock predisposes the organism to various metabolic dysfunctions and diseases."

Despite its importance, it wasn't clear whether the circadian rhythms in hepatic transcription were solely controlled by the liver clock in anticipation of food or responded to actual food intake.

To investigate how much influence rhythmic food intake exerts over the hepatic circadian oscillator, graduate student and first author Christopher Vollmers put normal and clock-deficient mice on strictly controlled feeding and fasting schedules while monitoring gene expression across the whole genome.

He [Dr. Panda] found that putting mice on a strict 8-hour feeding/16-hour fasting schedule restored the circadian transcription pattern of most metabolic genes in the liver of mice without a circadian clock. Conversely, during prolonged fasting, only a small subset of genes continued to be transcribed in a circadian pattern even with a functional circadian clock present.

"Food-induced transcription functions like a metabolic sand timer that runs for 24 hours and is continually reset by the feeding schedule while the central circadian clock is driven by self-sustaining rhythms that help us anticipate food, based on our usual eating schedule," says Vollmers. "But in the real world we don't eat at the same time every day and it makes perfect sense to increase the activity of metabolic genes when you need them the most."

For example, genes that encode enzymes needed to break down sugars rise immediately after a meal, while the activity of genes encoding enzymes needed to break down fat is highest when we fast. Consequently a clearly defined daily feeding schedule puts the enzymes of metabolism in shift work and optimizes burning of sugar and fat.

"Our study represents a seminal shift in how we think about circadian cycles," says Panda. "The circadian clock is no longer the sole driver of rhythms in gene function, instead the phase and amplitude of rhythmic gene function in the liver is determined by feeding and fasting periods -- the more defined they are, the more robust the oscillations become."

While the importance of robust metabolic rhythms for our health has been demonstrated by shift workers' increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome, the underlying molecular reasons are still unclear. Panda speculates that the oscillations serve one big purpose: to separate incompatible processes, such as the generation of DNA-damaging reactive oxygen species and DNA replication.

Panda, for one, has stopped eating between 8 pm and 8 am and says he feels great. "I even lost weight, although I eat whatever I want during the day," he says. Researchers who also contributed the work include postdoctoral researcher Luciano DiTacchio, Ph.D., graduate students Sandhyarani Pulivarthy and Shubhrox Gill, as well as research assistant Hiep Le, all in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory.

The work was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health and the Pew Scholars Program in Biomedical Sciences.

Dr. Panda's study now has bona fides that Dr. Ni's thousand-year-old system of observation and trial-and-error probably will never have here in the West.

After using the herbal concoction for two years and changing our patterns of behavior, my husband and I felt great, but backslid without the reinforcement of our weekly trek to the distant herbal center.

The regime had become too costly to continue as it was not supported by our health insurance.

But in all honestly, I felt better during those two years than any other time in my life. And, ironically, it is unlikely that the Salk Project will have any effect on my life as they will have to go through a lengthy period of trial and error to come up with a protocol that will be deemed "safe for the public."

I'm sure that Dr. Ni and his colleagues would be glad to share what they learned a thousand years ago.