I interview the Prince of Whales

The Prince of Whales has given me an exclusive interview on the future of humanity  and the environment. I managed this feat after I found him outside a Japanese whale meat market carrying 5 kg of prime beluga.

The Prince of Whales poses with Japanese 

admirers  in front of the Whale meat shop 

This was a great journalistic coup for yours truly. The interview took place aboard his yatch, moored in Tokyo harbor. He dressed in his regular navy outfit, and answered most of my questions as he sipped tea and munched on donuts:

FL (that´s me): I think I'd like to start by asking how your passion for politics and the weather got started?

PW (that´s Prince of Whales): When my sister and I were children, we were taught to dress up for photographs, salute people and parade around the Palace in all sorts of weather.   I mean, I've always felt I´m important, they always wrote articles about me and my family. It´s all part of one's connection with commoners, and so I suppose that was part of it.

But the first I  came to Japan, I saw the Emperor and I realized I´ve always wanted to do a bit of ruling  and be considered a deity - I'm not very good at it but fortunately there are lots of other people around to help me figure out things.

FL: Did you ever get impatient because you´ve been limited to your role as the Prince of Whales?

PW: Oh yes, that was the  whole point. When I was little I always knew I would be King.  It was one of the joys – watching people bend over and kneel. There's something about watching them from behind, as they bend over gradually. I never figured out why  lords, nobles, and politicians  took to it so well.  

Pro-Venezuelan dictatorship propaganda at The Guardian

The Guardian, a leftist newspaper I like to read, published an open letter signed by prominent members of the UK´s communistoid elite. I use the term communistoid because many of them like to hide their true political pedigree. The fall of the Soviet Union, China´s conversion into a mixed capitalist system with a fascist command structure, and the diseased dictatorships in North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba have made communism as popular as cancer.

However, communists have learned to disguise their nature, and today we see them crawling out of the darkness dressed as populist demagogues, bus drivers, and ancient generals turned into kindly old men. 

The Monster of Miraflores, Nicolás Maduro, 

with his now UN Ambassador, Rafael Ramirez. 

Cilia Flores, the Monster´s wife, sits in back. 

Cilia is always  within a couple of  meters of 

Maduro when he´s in public.  Some say  she´s 

the one who wears the pants in their relationship. 

These are usually men (we seldom see any women unless they happen to be the paramour du jour or the loyal wife who stands two steps behind her glamorous husband).

I interview Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

Last week I flew to Kiev to interview President Petro Poroshenko, also known as the “Chocolate King” and one of Ukraine´s richest oligarchs.

President Petro Poroshenko (Photo from Times, 

I forgot to take my camera to the interview)

FL: Mr President, it sure is impressive  to have this opportunity. So let´s get started.  How bad has it become?

PETRO POROSHENKO (PP): The situation is getting worse. As you know, my background is in business (mostly chocolate, TV stations, and a little bit of this and that on the side). But I´m the Commander in Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and I should be in charge of the country.

FL: But what do you make of this escalating violence?

PP:  I am a President of peace.  I tell them many times and we are proposing just to have a ceasefire.  This puts me in charge of the people of Donetsk.

FL: And what are the chances that the fighting will end this week?

PP: Fortunately not yet. First we have to take the border region and cut off supplies to the Russian speaking population within the Ukraine. They are rebels and terrorists. Strike that, call them terrorists. Sounds better.

FL: What are the chances of a truce now?

PP:  I know many people think the Russian speaking population doesn´t trust me because I am oligarch. You know, I had to make a living. (Former President) Yulia Tymoshenko made her fortune in natural gas. Did you know she was called the “Gas Princess”? I´m only ¨Chocolate King¨, now is my turn.  The  Russian speaking population in Eastern Ukraine can trust me. I made a deal to get money from the Europeans and the IMF, and I´m going to be clean. This I promise to them.

FL: So you will stop your oligarch ways. Will you sell your TV station?

PP: I think that the TV station should be owned by me. It´s good to stay in business, this will help me to treat other oligarchs and foreign businesses with fairness. We need to help the economy.  

In Cuba it´s regime policy to lie to the people

This material is from Translating Cuba: On Monday, January 19 Cubanet published a report about the detention of  Leinier Cruz Salfran on Saturday, January 17 by (Cuban) State Security agents. The reason? Leinier was gathering together a group of young people outside of the Hotel Marti, connecting through his laptop to the building’s WiFi and sharing the Internet with the others present who had also brought their portable computers to the location.

Meliá Hotel pool. Internet service in hotels may

be limited by government efforts to cut young

Cubans from accessing uncensored information.

My comment: visitors to Cuba should realize their ability to access the Internet may be restricted. The government makes efforts to stop young Cubans from accessing uncensored information. If you want to help you can bring a wifi repeater with a strong antenna, hook it up in your room to allow Internet use by those who gather near the hotel to see if they can connect. However, you should remember the regime is extremely repressive. You risk a long jail sentence if you try to help the Cuban people obtain information.

Article Follows:

Coup Warning in Venezuela by Gerver Torres

Gerver Torres, a Venezuelan writer, resigned from El Universal, a Caracas newspaper when the editors refused to publish this article: 

(Venezuelan President) Maduro speaks daily with shock and anguish of conspiracies that he discovers, that he dismantles and that apparently reproduce themselves everywhere, all the time. Why does Maduro feel so tortured by a possible coup? The truth is that when one recognizes the circumstances surrounding him, one comes to the conclusion that Maduro is right and has many reasons to be distressed, to fear a coup, and even more than one. Let us review some of the circumstances.

Maduro in military parade (photo from ABC article here

ABC article in Spanish about Maduro´s threats against Spanish media

His international allies have abandoned him and are all in serious trouble: Cubans rushing to reestablish relations with the United States; Argentine president Cristina Kirchner at the end of her term with an economy in a tailspin and facing serious accusations of all kinds. Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff, also with a stagnant economy and overwhelmed by the Petrobras corruption scandal, the biggest in the history of Brazil. Vladimir Putin, submerged in the Ukraine crisis, under sanctions by the European Union and in severe difficulties because of the fall in oil prices. Iran, negotiating a nuclear accord with the United States and trying to redefine its relations with that country.

Men very close to the regime are fleeing the country and starting to openly attack the regime: Leamsy Salazar defected to the United States with his wife to tell the story of the Cartel of the Suns (cocaine traffickers within the Venezuela military); Minister of Foreign Affairs Rafael Ramirez will sneak away, distancing himself from the regime. At any moment a bomb explodes there; Giordani reappears emboldened to say that the country has become the laughingstock of Latin America, just months after he was kicked out of the government.

The country’s employment is in the toilet, with Venezuelans experiencing totally unexpected events, lines, shortages, patients dying in hospitals for lack of supplies, runaway inflation, and other tragedies such as unchecked and unpunished crime.

Maduro can no longer count on abundant oil revenues and access to debt which could postpone the solution to many problems.

Planet wide reanalysis shows high temperature rise

Based on individual contributions tabulated in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this estimate closes the twentieth-century energy  budget. 

Here I revisit estimates of Industrial Period Temperature Rise rise using probabilistic techniques,  and find a rate of temperature rise from 1850 to 2020  of 0.01 ± 0.19 degrees per year (90% confidence interval).

Figure 1. High Temperature can burn planet to a crisp

My  analysis, which combines thermometer  records with physics-based and model-derived geometries of the various contributing signals, also indicates that temperature rose and fell at  a rate of 39.0 ± 0.27 millidegrees  per year between 1850 and 1980, consistent with prior estimates from tree ring  records. The increase in rate relative to the 1850–90 trend is accordingly larger than previously thought; this revision may affect some projections of future temperature rise.

Figure 2. Graph shows the actual data and the model 

reanalysis, which proves the real data was wrong.

This is important. Please focus your eyes  on the graph above. The rise per year is a rate, the slope of the line is the acceleration.  From this plot my groupies  can say that the acceleration has been monotonically positive since ~1990 and not far off from lines, implying polynomially growth in temperature masked by natural climate oscillations. This I have derived using my computer model (CGCM-FL-BS).

Venezuelan dictatorship officials sanctioned by the U.S.

The following is a USA State Department press release: 

Ignoring repeated calls for change by governments, respected leaders, and groups of experts, the Venezuelan Government has continued to demonstrate a lack of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, attempting to stifle dissent by prosecuting political activists and cracking down on peaceful protests, which were triggered by deteriorating security, economic, social, and political conditions.

Basil da Costa, murdered by Venezuelan government police in February 2012 

Pursuant to Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act as used in July, the U.S. Government has imposed visa restrictions on an additional number of current and former Venezuelan government officials believed to be responsible for or complicit in human rights abuses. Under the same section of law, the Secretary of State has also imposed visa restrictions on persons considered to be responsible for acts of public corruption, which is contributing to the rapidly worsening economic and social conditions in Venezuela.

These restrictions will also affect the immediate family members of a number of those individuals subject to visa restrictions for believed involvement in human rights abuses or for acts of public corruption.

We will not publicly identify these individuals because of U.S. visa confidentiality laws, but we are sending a clear message that human rights abusers, those who profit from public corruption, and their families are not welcome in the United States.

We emphasize the action we are announcing today is specific to individuals and not directed at the Venezuelan nation or its people.

Press Statement

Jen Psaki 

USA State Department Spokesperson

http://m.state.gov/md237077.htm