Is there a brave people?

Maduro risks having ambassadors removed because he isnt recognized, which is a bit different from breaking relations. I believe it's legal for say the US to state it doesn't recognize Maduro, and ALSO to refuse abandoning its embassy, because Maduro isn't recognized, and therefore he lacks the authority to break relations and order that embassies be vacated. Should he take action against the embassy it would be considered an act of war, and the US president isn't Jimmy Carter. 

What Latinamerican nations other than Colombia and Brazil do is irrelevant. Those cockroaches have been kissing Castroite butt for six decades, so I expect the same spinelessness and cowardice they have always exhibited. The question in my mind is whether the "Bravo Pueblo" has the testicles needed to create a government in exile which takes over Citgo and bank accounts, arm a few thousand men and take Zulia. I'm afraid Castro chose well, because Venezuela is both rich and its population is as tame as any I've ever seen. 

So after january 10 we'll see if from 30 million venezuelans, and 3 million in exile, there's leadership and a few thousand volunteers ready to do what has to be done.

Human nature

The key is to remember that homo sapiens evolved as hunter gatherer which adopted herding and agriculture about 9000 years ago. It's also important to understand we descend from the winners of thousands of years of fighting, genocide and murder. This means we have behavior that's wired in, and can't really be modified. At best it can be lacquered over and perfumed. But in the end we are what we are.

Resource scarcity and overpopulation

Resource scarcity and overpopulation tend to solve themselves via population collapse due to epidemics, internal conflicts which lead to a total breakdown, or wars which cause a large number of deaths and reduce birthrates. 

In recent years we have seen this mechanism work in Rwanda, where genocide and war reduced population pressure, and Haiti, which seems to be a collapsed society sustained by charity and migration. 

While theoretically it's possible to overcome overpopulation and resource depletion, many nations are controlled by inept governments following the wrong recipes (see Venezuela for an extreme case of a marxist and gangster hybrid mentored by the Castro dictatorship wrecking a rich nation and causing 10-15% of the population to flee while killing hundreds of thousands from murder, hunger and disease). 

The Castro dictatorship ruined Cuba, and 

then its ideology jumped to Venezuela

The problem, as I see it, is that misgovernance and corruption are fairly common, and therefore in the next few decades we are likely to see more collapses, famines, wars, and epidemics caused by poor governance. To make matters even worse, richer nations such as many of the European Union members and the USA seem inclined to commit suicide by reducing their birthrates and simultaneously allowing themselves to be invaded by people fleeing misgoverned societies...which can be extrapolated to the eventual replacement of well governed societies by conflict ridden and badly governed constructs brought about by possibly well meaning but misguided political parties. This means that partial collapse of civilization may have already begun, and the world will eventually be ruled by smaller populations of survivor types such as Russians and Chinese. 

The US State of the Climate Report

The US Government's state of the climate report is flawed. Its dire findings for the future are based on the use of a discredited CO2 emissions profile prepared by the IPCC called "RCP8.5.", climate models which exaggerate future temperatures due to internal parameterization inaccuracies and poor design, and a suspect carbon cycle model.

For example, here's a comparison of climate model predictions prepared using data as of year end 2017:

As you can see the full model family is running warmer than actual data. To make matters even worse, the case used by the government, RCP8.5, is at the highest or hottest of four cases developed by the IPCC.

 The regional predictions about weather events, the forest fire claims, the sea level rise projection, all of them are flawed and deserve low credibility. I sense that Obama created a government structure and bureaucracy so orthodox, rigid, and full of ideologues that it can no longer function professionally. Thus this report has to be discarded.

Much ado about free speech?

This is my response to an opinion piece written by a Canadian University professor about free speech in universities.  The link to the article is here: 

https://quillette.com/2018/11/21/much-ado-about-free-speech-a-canadian-professor-responds/#comment-47890

A personal anecdote as we see in this article is invalid when the legal, regulatory, and burocratic system allows, or is specifically intended to encourage, censorship, abuse, and actual career harm of individuals who challenge the dominant paradigm or culture. 

Once the system has these built in deffects, the end point can easily be an Orwellian society such as I experienced when I grew up in Cuba under the Castro dictatorship. “Western society” is gradually being driven towards repression and abuses of individual freedom by a well crafted campaign, by a group which knows no limits, meaning they will never stop increasing the degree of repression and abuse unless they are pushed back. 

In this world there’s no such thing as static balance, it’s not possible to merely try to preserve a free society as it is, because it will inevitably be undermined by groups trying to impose autocracy and dictatorship. Societies need to be tweaked and strengthened to avoid what unfortunately is happening in recent decades. And this is a war we can easily lose.

Chasing the international marxist network links

It's fairly simple: if a person is a member of the "Democratic Socialists of America" (DSA), and belongs to their New York branch (DSA-NY), then all you have to do is read several dozen webpages they themselves publish, and you will understand the intellectual core is marxist. You can also extend the effort and follow the named individuals on social media, read their blogs, and analyze the photos they publish. These are really useful, because the signs they make can reveal links to other organizations and ideas. Following these trails leads to an understanding that they work as a loose multinational network. I have researched portions of the network and can document the flow of funds from Venezuela to radical left parties in Europe and Latinamerica.

There have also been odd payments such as $18 million given to a famous Hollywood actor (Danny Glover) supposedly to make a movie about a Haitian slave revolt. A movie which was never made, and funds which were never accounted for.

The Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio link to German communists

Introduction: I was asked by an acquaintance to show why I've been saying that Democratic Socialists are hard core marxists closely associated with the German marxists who operate the Rosa Luxemburg organization, which in turn is a subsidiary of the German communist party now known as "Die Linke". This is a key topic because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been elected to the US Congress, which means she's associated via DSA with the Die Linke organization. One interesting fact is that Rosa Luxemburg, a Die Linke shop, is heavily financed by the German government, led by Angela Merkel, who was born in communist East Germany, just like many of Die Linke's top leadership. 

Item I . Rosa Luxemburg and Die Linke German communists) meet and train Democratic Socialists of America and other US communists 

"A conference “Mapping Socialist Strategies” was convened from Aug. 1 to 4 in Briarcliff Manor, New York, by the New York office of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. It brought together 100 “influential progressives and leftists” from across the United States, Canada, and Europe for an “un-conference” on socialist strategies.

Plenary No. 4 was entitled “overcoming fragmentation and rebuilding the Left.” It states: “Michael Brie and Sarah Leonard discuss building left alliances and new trends on the left. How can the left rediscover and strengthen relationships amongst natural allies in the fight to defend the public sphere and defeat encroaching neoliberalism?”

Panelist Sarah Leonard was an editor at DSA-linked publication Dissent magazine and a DSA member.

Did Leonard have any inkling that her co-panelist once spied on young foreigners like her? Does she understand that Michael Brie once sought to recruit ego-driven young idealists to spy on their own countrymen for a totalitarian dictatorship?

Most of DSA’s top leadership were present at the conference, including DSA National Director Maria Svart, DSA Vice Chair Joseph Schwartz, DSA-linked publication Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara, Jacobin magazine national organizer Neal Meyer, former Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) leader Betsy Avila and the legendary Frances Fox Piven of the “Cloward-Piven” strategy, which sought to “overwhelm the system” in America by flooding welfare to deliberately bankrupt states. Two DSA members Ethan Earle and Heidi Chua Schwa from the RLS-NY office also attended, as did several German-born staff.

Castro dictatorship withdraws personnel from Brazil

Brazil's President-elect Jair Bolsonaro announced he would take measures to change contract terms between Brazil and the Castro dictatorship for medical services. As a result the dictatorship announced it would be withdrawing from the contract. 

I applaud Bolsonaro's measure, because the working conditions of Cuban medical personnel are terrible. Not only are they paid a miserable salary, but they are also not allowed to take the family (nor can the family visit them, since they are left behind as hostages). The Cuban regime, with Brazilian cooperation, take away their documents to make it difficult for them to escape from that system, and Cuban security personnel controls their contacts with the local population. The system seen in Brazil is typical of those used by a communist country which can be considered a gigantic gulag, with a slave people subject to the irrational whims of a corrupt Marxist oligarchy.

Ocasio Cortes political add

Opening scene:

Ocasio Cortes standing by a lake surrounded by Indians, wearing a red robe. :"I always thought my life would be limited to bartending and occasional gigs as a Bernie Sanders groupie, but then I got a call by Justice Democrats who convinced me their NY network could get me elected to congress. All i needed was to declare myself a Democratic Socialist(*) and propose open borders, free college and health care, rent and gun controls, nationalizing banks, and to be able to explain that low unemployment was caused by too many people working two jobs."

Indian fellow: "Miss Ocasio Cortes, I think you hired the wrong kind of Indian extras for this add, we are legal immigrants from Mumbai, brought in by Google to write their add algorithms".

Ocasio Cortes: "That's OK, I'm sure voters will see that you Patagonian Indians will benefit from my open borders proposal, you definitely have a reason to fight the white male capitalist patriarchate"

(*) Democratic Socialism is the name used by German communists to describe their ideology, a rebooted 21st century version of Stalinism.

Spain 2018

The following are the notes from my time travel to Spain in the year of our Lord 2018, a place and time that you, my dear reader, would never get used to. 

The first scene I saw upon arrival was the Gran Via in Madrid, its sidewalks taken over by Africans selling dark glasses, imitation Gucci purses and fake "African" carvings made in China. The traffic was unbeliavable, the street was jammed, and the peddlers made it almost impossible to get through, so I took a side street full of garbage and ran away. 

Eventually I found refuge in a normal looking cafe, ordered breakfast, and sat next to an older gentleman who greeted me with a smile. This gave the opportunity to start a conversation to get a sense of what was going on. 

Me: I'm new in town, are you from here? 

Old guy: Sure am. Just sold my hardware store and retired. This is the first time I go out for breakfast this late and don't have to worry about the dog pissing on the carpet, because I'm going back to the house after I take a walk.

Me: I was wondering, have you been to la Gran Via in the last few days?

Old man: No. I've been to El Retiro, and I'll tell you, it's better to see the street musicians, mimes, and sleeping drug addicts than try to fight my way to get through the street peddlers to get to Plaza de España.

Me: Tell me, how did the change in the city come about? 

Old man: We elected a communist mayor, a nice old lady who used to be a university professor. The Africans you see in la Gran Via showed up in large numbers after President Sanchez invited them. Before this invasion they used to go to Italy, but they elected a new government, it closed its borders, and now the people smugglers put them in boats in Morocco and they transfer to "NGO" ships run by the Soros Group. 

Me: So the president is Sanchez, the socialist?  

Old man: That's it. Sanchez had lost two elections, but he managed to stay as Socialist party leader. He was waiting until a court declared the center right Populares to be guilty of corruption, set up an alliance with the communists and separatists from the NE, and managed to get Parliament to unseat the Populares and get himself named president. And because he had no program as such, one of the first things he did was issue a call to have Africans come invade us. That seems to be popular with the left. What do you think?" 

Me: Shit happens. The left likes immigrants who can't make a decent living and will eventually vote for them. But I never heard of cities being run over by street peddlers like this. It must be bad for tourism.

Old man: That's it. Even a socialist knows there're right and wrong ways to handle immigration, and this just doesn't make any sense. The Italians tried it and look at the mess they are in. They are almost like Sweden. 

Me: So what other changes have you seen? 

Old man: The president is a feminist. Or so he says. The justice minister is a woman from Andalucía , a former prosecutor who got recorded by a corrupt cop when they discussed his whorehouse business. But she won't resign, because another woman minister already did after it was revealed she had plagiarized Wikipedia to write her master's thesis. 

Me: That's unbelievable! 

Old man: Plagiarizing Wikipedia in a masters' thesis is daring.  But it gets worse. It turns out President Sanchez plagiarized a huge portion of his PhD thesis in economics. And there's reason to believe the bulk of the thesis, including the plagiarized text, was written for him in a government ministry controlled by Socialists.  That's a crime punishable by up to two years in jail.

Me: So now what's going to happen?. 

Old man:  I'm hoping the government will fall. But we never know. Sanchez is backed by the communists from Podemos, and their leader, Iglesias, is visiting separatists leaders who are in jail for treason. They are supposed to negotiate next year's budget, which includes tax increases, a higher minimum wage, and goodies for leftist voters. But the separatist leadership wants the government to do something to get out of jail. 

Me: That's to be expected. And what role is Sanchez expected to play? Or is he now allowing communists and separatists to run things? 

Old man: Sanchez travels a lot. He likes to pose for the cameras. Next month he's going to Cuba to meet Raul Castro. He just tried to get Brussels to suspend sanctions on corrupt Venezuelans working for Maduro. But that failed.

Me: It makes sense if Sanchez holds power thanks to Podemos' communist votes. Their leader, Pablo Iglesias, traveled a lot to Venezuela, and seems to have received financial support from Maduro. And we know Maduro is propped up by Castro and is loyal to the Cubans. So in a subtle way the Castro dictatorship influences what happens in Spain. 

Old Man: Oh, right! Shit. We are being run all the way from Havana via Caracas! And I thought having a transgender "woman" represent Spain in the Miss Universe pageant was bad (grimaces).

 Me: I know—there's that awful moment when you realize things aren't going to turn out like you expected

Old man: It happens to the best of us. That trans "woman" is an entertainer, that's something we can use in a light conversation. But the idea that we got this country being supervised by a bunch of communists who can't run an economy and insist on dictating their garbage is really upsetting me. This is worse than the Football Federation dropping the Spanish flag colors and using pink for their Tweeter account! 

How I found oil in Venezuela using a stick

Many years ago I reviewed development well proposals for a field in Venezuela, and approved two, the second contingent on the first one. A few weeks later I get called to a meeting where they were about to confirm the selected surface spot where the location was supposed to be built, and found they had placed it about 150 meters from a house. 

I dont like ruining relations with land owners, so i told them they had better move it away from the house, and i started getting protests from the construction manager, because the spot they had chosen was ideal as far as he was concerned.

I told them to arrange a meeting with the land owner at his house, that we would go over with the construction and field managers, a drilling engineer and a geologist to jointly decide where to put the darned well. 

Prior to the visit i had the subsurface team get me map overlays showing the surface topography, structure and net pay so i could put them on the legal plats and aerial photos. And i noticed there was a really good spot much further from the house, located on a flat spot with excellent drainage towards a small creek. To make it even nicer, the spot was located where the fence made a right angle, so the location would be tucked in with a property fence on two sides.

I had them give me our standard pad layout, put it on the map, and picked a spot exactly 150 of my paces from the two fences.

The day we visited the farmer we asked him if he thought the current stake was to his liking, and he politely said it could be further away on account of the noise.

Then i told him, what the hell, i think we can find a spot where theres oil, and told everybody to follow me. I picked up a long stick and started walking around, got to the fence, and walked back 150 paces, turned 90 degrees and walked 150 paces to the other fence, all the time waving the stick in the air and stomping the ground with my boots.

So i had them put the stake where i had made the turn (which i knew was a good spot after reviewing the subsurface maps), and told them the oil was there, to prepare the location, and drill the well.

Imagine the hub hub in the field when they heard i was picking a location with a stick and stomping the ground with my boots. The hub hub was even louder when several months later the well came in at a bit over 2000 BOPD, about triple our average rate. I had them so faked they started questioning whether we needed geoscientists or reservoir engineers as long as i had my stick.

Jordan Peterson, the canary in the coal mine

Rod Dreher just described Dr Jordan Peterson  "Jordan Peterson, the Canary in Progressivism's Coal Mine"" I've  copied below a couple of paragraphs from his article in American Conservative Magazine. I suggest you follow the link and read the full article.

"When the top man at The New York Times publishes a sober statement about a meeting he had with the president in which he describes instructing Trump about the problem of his “deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric,” and then three days later the paper announces that it has hired a writer who has tweeted about her hatred of white people, of Republicans, of cops, of the president, of the need to stop certain female writers and journalists from “existing,” and when this new hire will not be a beat reporter, but will sit on the paper’s editorial board—having a hand in shaping the opinions the paper presents to the world—then it is no mystery that a parallel culture of ideas has emerged to replace a corrupted system.

 When even Barack Obama, the poet laureate of identity politics, is moved to issue a message to the faithful, hinting that that they could be tipping their hand on all of this—saying during a speech he delivered in South Africa that a culture is at a dead end when it decides someone has no “standing to speak” if he is a white man—and when even this mayday is ignored, the doomsday clock ticks ever closer to the end."

By the way, the NY Times just hired a young jerk named who's famous for her racist tweets. So I'm linking you to an article where you can find them here 

http://nymag.com/consent.html?redirect_uri=%2Fdaily%2Fintelligencer%2F2018%2F08%2Fsarah-jeong-new-york-times-anti-white-racism.html%3Fvia%3Dgdpr-consent&redirect_host=nymag.com&orig_qs=

We keep running out of fossil fuels

Meanwhile we continue to see signs that fossil fuels are running out, and prices will have to rise to satisfy the industry’s need for cash flow to make the huge investments needed just to keep crude oil and condensate production at today’s 82 mmbopd real rate (the higher rates you read about are inflated with NGL, which are increasing as natural gas production rises, as well as the refinery gains which result from hydrogenation of the refinery feed). 

I started writing about this subject in 2013, when I saw the RCP8.5 paper, and realized it had a huge mistake built into its logic because it didn’t handle the industry need for ever increasing prices to justify extracting oil, gas, and coal. For those who don’t follow industry trends, I can point out that oil prices have had to increase way beyond inflation over the last 20 years. I remember preparing a detailed budget for a business unit in 1998 which assumed the price was $14 per barrel ($25 in today’s dollars). That price constrained what we could do somewhat, but the fields we had were good enough to justify several hundred million in new investments and nearly doubling production. Today, new investments in most areas outside the Middle East require at least $50, and many are on line after being approved assuming the price would be $80. 

Although it may be hard to believe, natural gas will see the same trend, but with a delay. In 2040 natural gas prices will be a lot higher (I anticipate the first serious uptick in the USA market will take place this fall). And coal will follow. 

I also believe there are potential new technologies which allow burning natural gas and coal using variations of existing turbine technology which will allow easier CO2 capture. But I can’t visualize where all that co2 can be injected unless the requirement that it be kept sealed forever be relaxed. 

There’s also the fact that some areas have rocks which make injection a risky proposition because it can trigger earthquakes. And these earthquakes can be caused by density differences which make the bulk rock density change and reactivate faults (this means rate control won’t be enough, this is a highly specialized field which climatologists and most geoscientists know nothing about, therefore they haven’t even considered it). 

I guess I’ll close by writing that the RCP8.5 and siblings all share the same serious flaw, and that I realize I’m getting a bit of traction but the majority of the individuals dealing with this problem haven’t got the foggiest idea of what’s really going on, and how serious it will be if we don’t develop new technologies to soften the impact as we run out of fossil fuels.

2018 Venezuela Pseudopresidential pseudoelection

Update: I was wrong. The dictatorship made Madurothe winner, now they risk no recognition in January 2019. The question is whether the moribund opposition will have the drive to create a government in exile and claim control of Citgo as well as all oil exports.

Original post follows:

Henri Falcon could win the forthcoming pseudo elections and the communists would still control Venezuela. You see, that red Mafia has put in place an illegitimate "Constituyent Assembly" they claim is the supreme power over and above the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial powers. This means Falcón would remain a puppet subject to an illegitimate autocracy which in turn is partially controlled by Raul Castro. 

Some may think Raúl handed power to Diaz Canel, but that's just a cover they needed to have so the international left would continue supporting the Castro regime. Raúl remains Communist Party head, his son Alejandro Castro controls state security services, his former son in law heads GAESA, the military conglomerate which strikes deals with foreign multinationals, his grandson Raulito controls the body guard service as well as the high level medical services delivered to high level regime capos. 

Returning to Venezuela, the word in Havana is that Raúl already convinced Maduro to retire. Maduro would lose and Falcón would be "president". The National Assembly, controlled by the opposition, would continue to be ignored, and Falcón would be asked to submit to the illegitimate Constituyent Assembly.

Jorge Rodriguez with his younger sister Delci 

would control Venezuela if Falcón "wins"

The assembly president is Delci Rodriguez, a hard core Castroite who in turn follows the lead of his older brother, Jorge Rodriguez. A narco and military Mafia headed by Diosdado Cabello, and a separate narco Mafia led by Tareck el Aissami will expect to get pieces of the pie. But as reported by Reuters, Venezuela is serving as a captive colony of the Castro family, and has been purchasing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil for delivery to Cuba. 

Falcón would be expected to continue sending oil and cash to the Castros as part of the deal. And the Torino Capital guy would have to be in this deal in which communists, narcos, the Castros, and assorted mafias continue to destroy Venezuela. 

Thus we see that either Maduro wins and continues destroying Venezuela simply because he's Marxist and under Castro control, or Falcón will win, fake being in charge, and continue destroying Venezuela almost as fast as Maduro has been. The root cause of this tragedy is in Havana, and unfortunately that communist Mafia seems to be getting a lot of help from the left. Pope Francis, Obama, Federica Mogherini, et al are making sure the regime survives. And this means the fate of Venezuela is sealed. Production will continue to drop, the genocide of the infirm, those with chronic diseases and the elderly will continue. And nothing will be done. 

Technical and political comment about global warming

The “must move to zero emissions” statement is simple dogma. One point these guys forget is that roughly half the anthropogenic CO2 being emitted is taken by carbon sinks. The carbon sinks function at variable speeds, trees moving north into tundra, and other “greening” we observe with satellites are a fast response. A fast response is seen in the shallower ocean layers taking CO2 (which drives pH down). A slower response would be deeper ocean layers gradually taking CO2, as well as the erosion which puts ions in the water to make more carbonates, some of which turn into rock deposits. 

CO2 uptake by sinks is very hard to model, but the empyrical rule can be used to state with confidence that, if we cut emissions to 1/3 of the peak value, the CO2 concentration should stabilize or drop. Remember the sinks take more than 1/3 of emissions and gave done it for years. Therefore a reduction to 1/3 of peak implies the sinks will take more CO2 than is emitted. And thus CO2 concentration stabilizes and drops. 

To create the disaster scenarios, the IPCC built RCP8.5 and the EPA built a similar case. These assume huge emissions volumes including increases in the use of coal to way beyond resource limits. I think most of you agree we do have resource limits and there will be peak fossil fuels no matter what we do. The key is to tie the limits we think are within reasonable ranges, estimate the peak concentration, and focus on wether the sinks can absorb the CO2. Thus the cumulative CO2 mumbo jumbo we read about is pure baloney. The system reacts to both cumulative AND rate. 

The world is being misled by groups which, either out of ignorance or for political reasons, are constantly stating that CO2 emissions have to be driven to ZERO. To achieve this they propose impractical solutions and technologies, which I know won't solve the problem but will cause enormous economic damage. 

What is being done is to build emission FORECAST to ungodly RATES so the carbon sinks are overwhelmed, this drives concentrations into danger territory. One can argue this is possible, but the IPCC and others selling the zero emissions dogma should make it very clear that their carbon sink model IS SET TO BE CHOKED so that concentrations do rise to extreme levels. I happen to think the combination of exaggerated resources, the use of very high emissions, the choking of carbon sinks, and very optimistic estimates of carbon capture and renewables performance amount to fraud. This is more than scientific fraud, because it involves engineering, project management, and economics, all of these fields conjugated into a fraudulent political case. 

I believe we ARE running out of fossil fuels, and we do need to get alternatives installed, piloted, tested, and made as efficient as possible. This is also needed because it’s nutty to rely on highly unstable nations like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Venezuela, etc. But this should not be done by lying, and that’s what’s going on. What we need is adults working on the problem, and the politics should be limited to making sure we don’t let communists insert their bullshit about not growing the economy, dedevelopment and such ideas. They introduce these concepts because they know socialism/communism destroys economic growth, so they use the global warming boogie man to justify their stupid ideas.

Post modern science

I copied this from "Four questions on Climate Change" by Garth Partridge:

"But the real worry with climate research is that it is on the very edge of what is called post-modern (as opposed to post-normal) science. Post-modern science is a counterpart of the relativist world of post-modern art and design. It is a much more dangerous beast where results are valid only in the context of society’s beliefs, and where the very existence of scientific truth can be denied(18). Post-modern science envisages a sort of political nirvana in which scientific theory and results can be consciously and legitimately manipulated to suit either the dictates of political correctness or the policies of the government of the day."

This paragraph reminded me of the smear job on Dr Susan Crockford, which is best documented in the following paragraphs by "Donna Laframboise" at "nofrakkingconsencus"

"Last November, a shocking paper was published online. It has now appeared in the print edition of the journal BioScience. Titled “Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate Change Denial by Proxy,” the PDF version fills five pages of text, followed by two pages of references. This is an assault by a gang of 14 authors on an individual scholar.

The target is Susan Crockford, a Canadian zoologist and adjunct professor with more than 35 years experience in her field. As the author of PolarBearScience.com, Crockford performs a public service. She encourages us to look past activist spin and media hype. Not everything we’re told about polar bears, she says, rests on a solid foundation."

I think I'll leave this post as is. Lately I've been referring to the Ministry of Truth whenever I tweet about media lies, which seem to be very common nowadays. This is definitely looking like 1984 is coming a few years late. But it's coming.

Chemical warfare in Syria

Let's see: Assad is winning the war, is a few days away from having control of the Damascus suburb that was controlled by Jaysh al Islam, a Sunni rebel group funded by Saudi Arabia. So the Assad military decides to complicate things knowing that it can cause US attacks ... and they launch one (or two?) Barrel of chlorine from a helicopter.

 On April 12, the US Secretary of Defense declared that he had no proof that the Syrians had released the chlorine, and 36 hours later they launched 100 Tomahawk pickaxes, some of which destroyed a building that had been inspected by the organization OPCW of the UN, which declared that the building had no violation of chemical weapons control treaties.

A few hours before the US attack, a group of OPCW inspectors arrived in Lebanon to inspect the places affected by the alleged attack with the chlorine barrel. But they could not travel to Damascus because the US was launching missiles. In other words, the "urgent" action of the US was carried out in such a way that neutral inspectors could not do their job.

Another issue that we must consider is that Trump violated a resolution of the Congress, called "the War Powers Act" which requires the president to ask permission to make acts of war unless US soldiers or the country has been attacked. Of course Trump also violated international law. Even more worrying is that in the press we only see propaganda articles, nobody gives a professional analysis. They talk about the propaganda that talks about chemical weapons without mentioning that in a final the story is reduced to "a barrel of chlorine".

And this tells me that we are in very ugly times, where a very erratic president of orange hair with a counselor known for his irresponsibility receives automatic support from submissive leaders and a press that has gone down to the bottom of professionalism. In this 21st century we already have the Ministry of Truth, and of course we are about to fall into the clutches of Big Brother or his Chinese, Russian and Saudi enemies.

This looks very very black. Think well what they do. There is still time to be rational and avoid a nuclear war.

Gun Control

I'm used to understanding that murder and senseless slaughter are part of life...if you bother to look around it's everywhere. 

I think you guys need to stop being so emotional and treat this as a simple issue: USA law allows residents to own weapons, but it also allows the government to restrict which kind of weapon gets owned. You focus too much on appearance and reputation, but the focus should be to restrict availability of weapons which have excessive lethality. This means focusing on the rounds (the mass, the type of construction) and the round and barrel combination (which gives muzzle velocity and kinetic energy upon impact). Other items you should control are the firing rate (remember Las Vegas), the recoil (a weapon with less recoil is easier to fire, move to a different target, and fire again), the clip size, and the reload rate. 

It's evident there's a lot of system inertia to keep things as they are, but I suspect it would be overcome if you stop the whining and crying and start protesting for real. A protest that blocks a highway with 2000 persons is much more effective than one with little signs in a park where you get interviewed by CNN repeating the same messages you've used for years, I think a majority would agree if the law is changed to control weapon lethality. You have the legal precedent, now you have to focus

Letter to The Guardian about the Petro

The following are questions I received from The Guardian, and the answers I sent a few minutes ago:

Will the Petro affect your life? 

It would be good if it fails. The Maduro dictatorship is nearly genocidal, has to be deposed, therefore all sources of income need to be choked off. 

Are you going to buy the Petro? 

No. The Petro has no meaningful backing. The oil reserves they claim do not exist. Therefore it's a worthless electronic bond. 

Who will the Petro help? 

The dictatorship, if it can convey the image that it's a success. They may use some of the stolen billions they have to buy Petros and thus manipulate the market. 

What should the country do instead of launching the Petro? 

The country should strive to depose Maduro and his maniacal communist and narco oligarchs, install a new government, put several thousand Chavistas in jail, and the National Assembly should address letters to countries, corporations, media and individuals who over the years helped this monstrosity stay in power, and tell them their names will be listed in a museum built to Chavez and Maduro's victims. 

Reminder: Never refer to the dictatorship as if it were Venezuela.