Dobson weilds a really big bat on the field that is home to the extremes on the religious right. Is he really crying UNCLE?
TO ORIGINAL SOURCE
James Dobson's Political Surrender
May 14, 2009 04:17 PM ET | Dan Gilgoff | Permanent Link | Print
By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
Politically, James Dobson has surrendered. At least for the time being. Today, the Focus on the Family founder devotes his typically family-focused radio show to what he calls "the utter evil that's coming out of the United States Congress." He's referring to the hate crimes bill that recently passed the House.
That's not so unusual.
What's surprising is that Dobson tells his listeners that they're politically helpless:
I want to tell you up front that we're not going to ask you to do anything, to make a phone call or to write a letter or anything.
There is nothing you can do at this time about what is taking place because there is simply no limit to what the left can do at this time. Anything they want, they get and so we can't stop them.
We tried with [Health and Human Services Secretary] Kathleen Sebelius and sent thousands of phone calls and emails to the Senate and they didn't pay any attention to it because they don't have to. And so what you can do is pray, pray for this great nation... As I see it, there is no other answer. There's no other answer, short term.
In an age of evangelical leaders like Rick Warren, Joel Hunter, and Richard Land, who've all expressed openness to working with the Obama administration, Dobson clings firmly to the culture war mentality: You're either with us or against us. He elaborates on why Christians are powerless as long as Democrats are in power:
I've been on the air for 32 years and I've never seen a time quite like this. It just illustrates what happens when we don't have what the Founding Fathers referred to as checks and balances, where the excesses of one party or one branch of government limit the reach of power hungry and self-serving people and keeps them form doing things that are harmful to the country. That's the way the system was designed. We have 2 major political parties in this country, not one. And bipartisanship is a media creation that's designed to promote one point of view instead of the debate that should occur. And that's why media doesn't talk about bipartisanship when conservatives are in power...
...[today] the radical left controls the executive branch through the president, and the Congress... and the Judiciary through the courts... now they control it all, including every department of government. As a result, the legislation that should shock the nation, if people were paying attention, is being rushed into law.
Dobson made headlines earlier this year when he said that conservative Christians had entered their "most discouraging period" and that "humanly speaking, we can say that we have lost all those battles." He later explained that he meant that conservative Christians had lost many battles, but that the culture war was by no means over.
What's remarkable about today's broadcast is that Dobson plainly states that the only way for Christians to start winning again politically is for the GOP to regain power. He makes no effort to avoid coming across as a Republican activist. For a long time, Dobson went out of his way to keep up the appearance of being above partisan politics. As he enters what may be the twilight of his broadcasting career, he appears to care less and less about maintaining that image.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Hate Group Violence Spurred By Obama Election?
TO ORIGINAL SOURCE
Obama election spurs wave of hate group violence
Study cites anger of white supremacists
By Joseph Williams, Globe Staff | May 11, 2009
WASHINGTON - While the inauguration of the first black president has lessened racial tensions for most Americans, it has set off a wave of violence on the white supremacist fringe, with anti-hate groups attributing six recent killings - including the ambush last month of three Pittsburgh police officers and the fatal shootings last month of two Florida sheriff's deputies - in part to anger over President Obama's election.
According to a study by two leading anti-bias organizations, paranoia over Obama, spread largely through Internet forums and chat rooms, apparently spurred a Maine man to gather components for a "dirty bomb," including substantial quantities of radioactive compounds, in a plot to kill the president. Police found the stockpile in the home of James G. Cummings, a frequent visitor to neo-Nazi websites, after his wife shot and killed him.
Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Movement, said the number of white extremist groups in the United States has increased by about 50 percent since 2000, and activity has sharply increased in recent months. The day after Obama won the presidency, he said, activity on the two most popular white supremacist websites overwhelmed computer servers.
The rash of threats and attacks, specialists fear, could lead to a renewal of the militia groups that spread around the nation in the 1990s and could prompt acts like the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed 168 people. Such groups, they said, tend to feed on racial resentment, economic deprivation, and anger toward government, but they have focused their wrath on Obama.
"It's sad and unfortunate, but it has been a consistent pattern in our country," said Hilary Shelton, the NAACP's vice president for advocacy and director of its Washington chapter. The paranoid rage, however, "has never been as finely tuned as this," he said. "They have a lightning rod in this case. We've never had a black president before."
Neither the Secret Service, charged with protecting Obama and his family, nor the FBI would comment on specific investigations related to threats against the president. All threats are taken seriously "no matter where the threat comes from," said Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley. "We've gotten threats on every president who has been in office."
The Secret Service started its protection of then-Senator Obama in May 2007 - the earliest extension of air-tight security to a presidential candidate in the nation's history. During the Democratic National Convention in Denver last year, local police arrested and charged three men with white-supremacist ties for allegedly plotting to kill Obama, and a similar plot was foiled in Tennessee just weeks before the presidential election.
And in December, police called to the Cummings home in Belfast, Maine, found him shot dead during a dispute with his wife Amber, who has not been charged. But they also found James Cummings had accumulated gallon-sized containers of radioactive materials, directions on how to build a bomb, and had completed applications to the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi party.
"Amber Cummings indicated that James was very upset with the election of Barack Obama," according to an FBI affidavit. She also indicated that her husband "had mixed the chemicals in the kitchen sink and had mentioned 'dirty bombs.' "
White extremists seem particularly upset at the belief Obama will curb their access to assault weapons; gun shops nationwide have reported a huge increase in sales of handguns and rapid-fire, large-capacity rifles, and the FBI reports that applications for required background checks for gun owners have soared compared with last year. Eric Holder, the nation's first black attorney general, has said that the administration will try to reinstitute the ban on military-style assault rifles that expired in 2004 during the Bush presidency.
Fears about the ban, and paranoia about Obama, allegedly led a Pittsburgh man to don body armor and lie in wait for police headed to his house on a domestic disturbance call early last month. After shooting three officers at point-blank range with a high-powered rifle, authorities say, Richard Poplawski, 22 - a Marine Corps washout with Nazi-style tattoos - traded more than 100 rounds of gunfire with police before they wounded and captured him.
"With Obama's election, Poplawski became convinced that there would be 'federal gun bans on the way' and that the people would be rendered defenseless in the face of a police state in which the military would be used against American citizens," according to an Anti-Defamation League report on the shooting.
In one posting on Stormfront, a popular international neo-Nazi site, Poplawski called himself "BracedForFate" and vowed he would "continue to instill racial awareness among our brothers and sisters," and promote the need to prepare for armed conflict.
The ADL report says that Poplawski "was posting on white supremacist sites and had elaborate fears about Zionists running the world, and, "he also saw Obama very much as a threat," Potok said.
Academics and anti-bias groups agree that people like Poplawski, Cummings, and Joshua Cartwright - a 28-year-old National Guardsman, nascent white supremacist, and militia enthusiast who died in a gun battle after killing two sheriff's deputies in Pensacola, Fla. - are on the fringes of American society and hold little political influence. A New York Times-CBS News poll last week found that two-thirds of Americans now say race relations are generally good.
At the same time, the number of white supremacist hate groups rose to 926 by last year, and the trend shows little sign of abating.
"These groups have an outsized effect based on the way they have been able to mainstream their propaganda and conspiracy theories," Potok said, noting racially tinged, anti-Obama demonstrations during the election. He also blamed conservative politicians and pundits for employing talking points that supremacists rally around, including reports of government-sponsored "reeducation camps" and claims that Obama is a socialist.
"The reality is there is an underworld of people who really believe that armed revolution is absolutely and vitally necessary. To the extent that that sector grows and is energized, they will be more dangerous," Potok said.
Judged by a 16-page string of postings on Stormfront titled "I hate Obama," the anger isn't going to subside soon. "I've never had a fire burning inside me like I do for that mongrel thug," said one posting April 29.
Obama election spurs wave of hate group violence
Study cites anger of white supremacists
By Joseph Williams, Globe Staff | May 11, 2009
WASHINGTON - While the inauguration of the first black president has lessened racial tensions for most Americans, it has set off a wave of violence on the white supremacist fringe, with anti-hate groups attributing six recent killings - including the ambush last month of three Pittsburgh police officers and the fatal shootings last month of two Florida sheriff's deputies - in part to anger over President Obama's election.
According to a study by two leading anti-bias organizations, paranoia over Obama, spread largely through Internet forums and chat rooms, apparently spurred a Maine man to gather components for a "dirty bomb," including substantial quantities of radioactive compounds, in a plot to kill the president. Police found the stockpile in the home of James G. Cummings, a frequent visitor to neo-Nazi websites, after his wife shot and killed him.
Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Movement, said the number of white extremist groups in the United States has increased by about 50 percent since 2000, and activity has sharply increased in recent months. The day after Obama won the presidency, he said, activity on the two most popular white supremacist websites overwhelmed computer servers.
The rash of threats and attacks, specialists fear, could lead to a renewal of the militia groups that spread around the nation in the 1990s and could prompt acts like the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed 168 people. Such groups, they said, tend to feed on racial resentment, economic deprivation, and anger toward government, but they have focused their wrath on Obama.
"It's sad and unfortunate, but it has been a consistent pattern in our country," said Hilary Shelton, the NAACP's vice president for advocacy and director of its Washington chapter. The paranoid rage, however, "has never been as finely tuned as this," he said. "They have a lightning rod in this case. We've never had a black president before."
Neither the Secret Service, charged with protecting Obama and his family, nor the FBI would comment on specific investigations related to threats against the president. All threats are taken seriously "no matter where the threat comes from," said Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley. "We've gotten threats on every president who has been in office."
The Secret Service started its protection of then-Senator Obama in May 2007 - the earliest extension of air-tight security to a presidential candidate in the nation's history. During the Democratic National Convention in Denver last year, local police arrested and charged three men with white-supremacist ties for allegedly plotting to kill Obama, and a similar plot was foiled in Tennessee just weeks before the presidential election.
And in December, police called to the Cummings home in Belfast, Maine, found him shot dead during a dispute with his wife Amber, who has not been charged. But they also found James Cummings had accumulated gallon-sized containers of radioactive materials, directions on how to build a bomb, and had completed applications to the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi party.
"Amber Cummings indicated that James was very upset with the election of Barack Obama," according to an FBI affidavit. She also indicated that her husband "had mixed the chemicals in the kitchen sink and had mentioned 'dirty bombs.' "
White extremists seem particularly upset at the belief Obama will curb their access to assault weapons; gun shops nationwide have reported a huge increase in sales of handguns and rapid-fire, large-capacity rifles, and the FBI reports that applications for required background checks for gun owners have soared compared with last year. Eric Holder, the nation's first black attorney general, has said that the administration will try to reinstitute the ban on military-style assault rifles that expired in 2004 during the Bush presidency.
Fears about the ban, and paranoia about Obama, allegedly led a Pittsburgh man to don body armor and lie in wait for police headed to his house on a domestic disturbance call early last month. After shooting three officers at point-blank range with a high-powered rifle, authorities say, Richard Poplawski, 22 - a Marine Corps washout with Nazi-style tattoos - traded more than 100 rounds of gunfire with police before they wounded and captured him.
"With Obama's election, Poplawski became convinced that there would be 'federal gun bans on the way' and that the people would be rendered defenseless in the face of a police state in which the military would be used against American citizens," according to an Anti-Defamation League report on the shooting.
In one posting on Stormfront, a popular international neo-Nazi site, Poplawski called himself "BracedForFate" and vowed he would "continue to instill racial awareness among our brothers and sisters," and promote the need to prepare for armed conflict.
The ADL report says that Poplawski "was posting on white supremacist sites and had elaborate fears about Zionists running the world, and, "he also saw Obama very much as a threat," Potok said.
Academics and anti-bias groups agree that people like Poplawski, Cummings, and Joshua Cartwright - a 28-year-old National Guardsman, nascent white supremacist, and militia enthusiast who died in a gun battle after killing two sheriff's deputies in Pensacola, Fla. - are on the fringes of American society and hold little political influence. A New York Times-CBS News poll last week found that two-thirds of Americans now say race relations are generally good.
At the same time, the number of white supremacist hate groups rose to 926 by last year, and the trend shows little sign of abating.
"These groups have an outsized effect based on the way they have been able to mainstream their propaganda and conspiracy theories," Potok said, noting racially tinged, anti-Obama demonstrations during the election. He also blamed conservative politicians and pundits for employing talking points that supremacists rally around, including reports of government-sponsored "reeducation camps" and claims that Obama is a socialist.
"The reality is there is an underworld of people who really believe that armed revolution is absolutely and vitally necessary. To the extent that that sector grows and is energized, they will be more dangerous," Potok said.
Judged by a 16-page string of postings on Stormfront titled "I hate Obama," the anger isn't going to subside soon. "I've never had a fire burning inside me like I do for that mongrel thug," said one posting April 29.
Friday, May 08, 2009
'Okay To Kill Jews'
Murder suspect: 'Okay to kill Jews' Arrest warrant details alleged events in killing of Wesleyan student
MIDDLETOWN, Conn. - A man suspected in the fatal shooting of a Wesleyan University student wrote in his journal that it's "okay to kill Jews and go on a killing spree," according to an arrest warrant released Friday.
Stephen P. Morgan, 29, was arrested Thursday night after seeing his photo in a newspaper and asking a convenience store clerk to call police. Officers found him standing outside the store, 10 miles from the bookstore where Johanna Justin-Jinich was gunned down by a man wearing a wig Wednesday.
Morgan was arraigned Friday in Middletown Superior Court. A judge increased his bond to $15 million.
Police found Morgan's journal inside the bookstore, according to the warrant. Morgan's father identified his son as the man seen in bookstore surveillance photos and told investigators his son was a loner who kept a journal and was known to make anti-Semitic comments, according to the warrant.
The journal had an entry saying "I think it okay to kill Jews and go on a killing spree" and "Kill Johanna. She must Die," according to the arrest warrant.
The composition book also had an entry dated May 6 at 11 a.m. — about two hours before Justin-Jinich was killed — that mentioned seeing all of the beautiful and smart people at Wesleyan, which is an elite private university.
Victim was Jewish
Morgan's parents and two sisters attended the brief hearing. One sister wept as Morgan, scruffy and unkempt, left the courtroom accompanied by judicial marshals. Outside court, defense attorney Dick Brown said Morgan would plead not guilty.
"He denies any effort to target the Wesleyan campus or anyone else," Brown said.
Justin-Jinich, of Timnath, Colo., came from a Jewish family, and her grandmother was a Holocaust survivor.
Authorities in New York said Morgan and Justin-Jinich had known each other since at least 2007, when Justin-Jinich filed a harassment complaint against him while they were enrolled in a summer class at New York University. In the complaint filed in July of that year, Justin-Jinich said Morgan called her repeatedly and sent her insulting e-mails.
One of the e-mails warned: "You're going to have a lot more problems down the road if you can't take any (expletive) criticism, Johanna." Both were interviewed by university police, but Justin-Jinich decided not to press charges.
Morgan's father, James, told police in Marblehead, Mass., he last saw his son on Tuesday, that his son told him he had decided to move to Newport, R.I., and that his son had taken all his belongings. Police checked Morgan's bedroom, where they said they found a box full of ammunition and an empty handgun holster.
Chilling details
Police said they found a red 2001 Nissan Sentra — with Colorado license plates and registered to Morgan — in the bookstore parking lot. They said there was a handgun case partially opened in the vehicle and two handgun magazines.
One witness, Susan Gerdhart, 22, told police she was paying for a salad when she heard four loud popping noises. She turned to see smoke in the air and bullet casings on the ground and faced the suspect, who fired three more shots, according to the warrant.
"Gerdhart noticed that the female behind the counter was no longer standing and the suspect was standing over the counter with a gun in his hand pointed at the floor," the warrant states.
Police responding to the scene found the victim moaning and shaking on the floor. In the basement, police said they found a baseball cap, glasses, a laptop computer and a brown colored wig on the floor. Police said they found a gun at the scene and seven shell casings.
WVIT-TV, citing unnamed sources, reported that the shooter used a pulley system similar to a dumbwaiter to get from the main floor of the bookstore to the basement, and then ditched his wig and gun.
Police stopped Morgan shortly after the shooting, took down his name and contact information and then let him go, not knowing he would be a suspect, WVIT said.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Who Else Does God Speak To?
This is just a laugh-a-minute.
Who Else Does God Speak To?
God works in mysterious ways, and speaks to really strange people. It looks like the GOP has a special inroad to the realm of the All Mighty. George W. Bush claimed that God spoke to him. Michele Bachman claims that God speaks to her. But, Joe the Plumber having a direct line?
AP STORY
Joe the Plumber calls gays 'queer'
Wed May 6, 11:52 pm ET
NEW YORK – Samuel Wurzelbacher, the Ohio man hailed as "Joe the Plumber" by Republican John McCain's presidential campaign last year, said he believes gays are "queer" and said he won't allow them near his children.
Nevertheless, Wurzelbacher said the decision about whether to allow same-sex couples to marry should be left to states.
Who Else Does God Speak To?
God works in mysterious ways, and speaks to really strange people. It looks like the GOP has a special inroad to the realm of the All Mighty. George W. Bush claimed that God spoke to him. Michele Bachman claims that God speaks to her. But, Joe the Plumber having a direct line?
AP STORY
Joe the Plumber calls gays 'queer'
Wed May 6, 11:52 pm ET
NEW YORK – Samuel Wurzelbacher, the Ohio man hailed as "Joe the Plumber" by Republican John McCain's presidential campaign last year, said he believes gays are "queer" and said he won't allow them near his children.
Nevertheless, Wurzelbacher said the decision about whether to allow same-sex couples to marry should be left to states.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
NAMED AND SHAMED IN THE UK
TO ORIGINAL STORY AND PICTURES
SIXTEEN of Britain’s LEAST wanted can today be named and shamed by The Sun in a roll call of hate-mongers.
The 15 men and one woman have been banned from entering the UK since October as part of a crackdown by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
The monsters’ list includes Islamic hate preachers, Russian skinhead killers plus US neo-Nazis — and even a former GRAND WIZARD of the Ku Klux Klan.
Ms Smith said: “Coming to the UK is a privilege. I refuse to extend that to individuals who abuse our standards and values to undermine our way of life.
“Therefore, I will not hesitate to name and shame those who foster extremist views, as I want them to know they are not welcome here.”
Despicable Shirley Phelps, 51, and father Fred, 79 — who picket US soldiers’ funerals saying it is a punishment from God as America tolerates gays — head the list.
Banned
The Westboro Baptist Church leaders were stopped from entering the UK to protest against a play by a gay youth group in February.
Islamic radical Dr Yunis Al Astal — who branded Jews “pigs” and “apes” — is joined on the list by fellow hate preacher Dr Wagdy Mohamed Ghoneim, 58.
Also banned are teenage skinheads Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky. They are serving ten years for killing 20 people in a bid to “cleanse” Russia of foreigners. Others barred include ex-KKK Grand Wizard Stephen ‘Don’ Black, 55, and neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe, 46.
Hatred
Suicide bomber supporter Abdul Ali Musa, 64, and Hezbollah terrorist and murderer Samir Al Quntar are banned.
Far-right US talkshow host Mike Savage, 57, was also on the roll call.
Making up the 16 were Jewish radical Michael Guzofsky, preachers Abdullah Qadri Al Ahdal, Safwat Hijazi and Amir Siddique, plus Kashmiri terror group leader Nasr Javed.
The full list comprises 101 people who have “engaged in unacceptable behaviour” since 2005.
Six will not be named as it would threaten national security. The other 79 may be exposed later.
A Home Office source said: “This isn’t about stopping freedom of speech. It’s about stopping people who foster hatred from entering Britain.”
Sunday, May 03, 2009
MEETING DR. DOOM
TO ORIGINAL SOURCE
Meeting Doctor Doom
Forrest M. Mims III
Copyright 2006 by Forrest M. Mims III.
There is always something special about science meetings. The 109th meeting of the Texas Academy of Science at Lamar University in Beaumont on 3-5 March 2006 was especially exciting for me, because a student and his professor presented the results of a DNA study I suggested to them last year. How fulfilling to see the baldcypress ( Taxodium distichum ) leaves we collected last summer and my tree ring photographs transformed into a first class scientific presentation that's nearly ready to submit to a scientific journal (Brian Iken and Dr. Deanna McCullough, "Bald Cypress of the Texas Hill Country: Taxonomically Unique?" 109th Meeting of the Texas Academy of Science Program and Abstracts [ PDF ], Poster P59, p. 84, 2006).
But there was a gravely disturbing side to that otherwise scientifically significant meeting, for I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka (Fig. 1), the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.
Something curious occurred a minute before Pianka began speaking. An official of the Academy approached a video camera operator at the front of the auditorium and engaged him in animated conversation. The camera operator did not look pleased as he pointed the lens of the big camera to the ceiling and slowly walked away.
This curious incident came to mind a few minutes later when Professor Pianka began his speech by explaining that the general public is not yet ready to hear what he was about to tell us. Because of many years of experience as a writer and editor, Pianka's strange introduction and the TV camera incident raised a red flag in my mind. Suddenly I forgot that I was a member of the Texas Academy of Science and chairman of its Environmental Science Section. Instead, I grabbed a notepad so I could take on the role of science reporter.
One of Pianka's earliest points was a condemnation of anthropocentrism, or the idea that humankind occupies a privileged position in the Universe. He told a story about how a neighbor asked him what good the lizards are that he studies. He answered, “What good are you?”
Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, “We're no better than bacteria!”
Pianka then began laying out his concerns about how human overpopulation is ruining the Earth. He presented a doomsday scenario in which he claimed that the sharp increase in human population since the beginning of the industrial age is devastating the planet. He warned that quick steps must be taken to restore the planet before it's too late.
Saving the Earth with Ebola
Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.
He then showed solutions for reducing the world's population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved.
Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its eye sockets.
AIDS is not an efficient killer, he explained, because it is too slow. His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola ( Ebola Reston ), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. However, Professor Pianka did not mention that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that eventually liquefy the internal organs.
After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and carefully said, “We've got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that.”
With his slide of human skulls towering on the screen behind him, Professor Pianka was deadly serious. The audience that had been applauding some of his statements now sat silent.
After a dramatic pause, Pianka returned to politics and environmentalism. But he revisited his call for mass death when he reflected on the oil situation.
“And the fossil fuels are running out,” he said, “so I think we may have to cut back to two billion, which would be about one-third as many people.” So the oil crisis alone may require eliminating two-third's of the world's population.
How soon must the mass dying begin if Earth is to be saved? Apparently fairly soon, for Pianka suggested he might be around when the killer disease goes to work. He was born in 1939, and his lengthy obituary appears on his web site.
When Pianka finished his remarks, the audience applauded. It wasn't merely a smattering of polite clapping that audiences diplomatically reserve for poor or boring speakers. It was a loud, vigorous and enthusiastic applause.
Questions for Dr. Doom
Then came the question and answer session, in which Professor Pianka stated that other diseases are also efficient killers.
The audience laughed when he said, “You know, the bird flu's good, too.” They laughed again when he proposed, with a discernable note of glee in his voice that, “We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth.”
After noting that the audience did not represent the general population, a questioner asked, "What kind of reception have you received as you have presented these ideas to other audiences that are not representative of us?"
Pianka replied, "I speak to the converted!"
Pianka responded to more questions by condemning politicians in general and Al Gore by name, because they do not address the population problem and "...because they deceive the public in every way they can to stay in power."
He spoke glowingly of the police state in China that enforces their one-child policy. He said, "Smarter people have fewer kids." He said those who don't have a conscience about the Earth will inherit the Earth, "...because those who care make fewer babies and those that didn't care made more babies." He said we will evolve as uncaring people, and "I think IQs are falling for the same reason, too."
With this, the questioning was over. Immediately almost every scientist, professor and college student present stood to their feet and vigorously applauded the man who had enthusiastically endorsed the elimination of 90 percent of the human population. Some even cheered. Dozens then mobbed the professor at the lectern to extend greetings and ask questions. It was necessary to wait a while before I could get close enough to take some photographs (Fig. 1).
I was assigned to judge a paper in a grad student competition after the speech. On the way, three professors dismissed Pianka as a crank. While waiting to enter the competition room, a group of a dozen Lamar University students expressed outrage over the Pianka speech.
Yet five hours later, the distinguished leaders of the Texas Academy of Science presented Pianka with a plaque in recognition of his being named 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist. When the banquet hall filled with more than 400 people responded with enthusiastic applause, I walked out in protest.
Corresponding with Dr. Doom
Recently I exchanged a number of e-mails with Pianka. I pointed out to him that one might infer his death wish was really aimed at Africans, for Ebola is found only in Central Africa. He replied that Ebola does not discriminate, kills everyone and could spread to Europe and the the Americas by a single infected airplane passenger.
In his last e-mail, Pianka wrote that I completely fail to understand his arguments. So I did a check and found verification of my interpretation of his remarks on his own web site. In a student evaluation of a 2004 course he taught, one of Professor Pianka's students wrote, "Though I agree that convervation [sic] biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90% of the human population should die of ebola [sic] is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness." (Go here and scroll down to just before the Fall 2005 evaluation section near the end.)
Yet the majority of his student reviews were favorable, with one even saying, “ I worship Dr. Pianka.”
The 45-minute lecture before the Texas Academy of Science converted a university biology senior into a Pianka disciple, who then published a blog that seriously supports Pianka's mass death wish.
Dangerous Times
Let me now remove my reporter's hat for a moment and tell you what I think. We live in dangerous times. The national security of many countries is at risk. Science has become tainted by highly publicized cases of misconduct and fraud.
Must now we worry that a Pianka-worshipping former student might someday become a professional biologist or physician with access to the most deadly strains of viruses and bacteria? I believe that airborne Ebola is unlikely to threaten the world outside of Central Africa. But scientists have regenerated the 1918 Spanish flu virus that killed 50 million people. There is concern that small pox might someday return. And what other terrible plagues are waiting out there in the natural world to cross the species barrier and to which scientists will one day have access?
Meanwhile, I still can't get out of my mind the pleasant spring day in Texas when a few hundred scientists of the Texas Academy of Science gave a standing ovation for a speaker who they heard advocate for the slow and torturous death of over five billion human beings.
Forrest M. Mims III is Chairman of the Environmental Science Section of the Texas Academy of Science, and the editor of The Citizen Scientist. He and his science are featured online at www.forrestmims.org and www.sunandsky.org. The views expressed herein are his own and do not represent the official views of the Texas Academy of Science or the Society for Amateur Scientists.
Copyright 2006 by Forrest M. Mims III.
Comments may be sent to Backscatter
Friday, May 01, 2009
Racism Goes Viral - from MSNBC
TO ORIGINAL SOURCE
Amid swine flu outbreak, racism goes viral
Anti-immigrant hatred spreads on talk radio, Web sites
By Brian Alexander
updated 11:46 a.m. CT, Fri., May 1, 2009
“No contact anywhere with an illegal alien!” conservative talk show host Michael Savage advised his U.S. listeners this week on how to avoid the swine flu. “And that starts in the restaurants" where he said, you “don’t know if they wipe their behinds with their hands!”
And Thursday, Boston talk radio host Jay Severin was suspended after calling Mexican immigrants "criminalians" during a discussion of swine flu and saying that emergency rooms had become "essentially condos for Mexicans."
That’s tepid compared to some of the xenophobic reactions spreading like an emerging virus across the Internet. “This disgusting blight is because MEXICANS ARE PIGS!” an anonymous poster ranted on the “prison planet” forum, part of radio host and columnist Alex Jones’ Web site.
There is even talk of conspiracy. Savage speculated that terrorists are using Mexican immigrants as walking germ warfare weapons. “It would be easy,” he said, “to bring an altered virus into Mexico, put it in the general population, and have them march across the border.”
As more than 140 cases of H1N1 virus, known as swine flu, have been confirmed across the United States — from San Diego to New York City — the growing public health concern has also exposed fear and hate.
Fear and blame are counterproductive and even dangerous in any disease outbreak because the more stigmatized any group feels, the more reluctant people in that group may be to seek medical care. That only helps propagate the disease.
The attempt to scapegoat Mexicans, immigrants and Hispanic Americans is no surprise to Latino rights groups, who are now mobilizing a countereffort.
‘Ignorant beyond the pale’
Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, called such comments “racist and ignorant beyond the pale … these so-called commentators shame themselves turning public health concerns into an immigrant bashing fest.”
“What we have seen is that the anti-immigrant groups are using this to shamelessly to promote their agenda,” said Liany Arroyo, director of the Institute for Hispanic Health at the National Council of La Raza.
While the war of words is mainly between the conservative commentariat and Latino advocacy groups, individual Mexican-Americas are beginning to worry.
“Our people are calling us and they are concerned,” said Florencia Velasco Fortner, chief executive officer of Dallas Consilio of Hispanic Organizations, an umbrella of affiliated service groups. “Even our staff members are starting to get a little discouraged. There was anti-immigrant sentiment prior to this and this adds fuel to the fire.”
The Consilio has mounted its own education campaign to teach Dallas-area Hispanic audiences proper disease prevention and hygiene techniques. Because many are uninsured and may avoid seeking medical care, the Consilio is also helping them find non-profit clinics and encouraging them to visit these immediately if they develop symptoms rather than waiting until they are severely ill.
As swine flu fears have spread, the backlash has also affected some Mexican restaurants’ business, possibly fueled by disparaging comments like those of Savage questioning the hygiene of workers.
Jennifer Pesqueira, whose family has owned and operated El Indio Mexican restaurants in San Diego since 1940, said her business has seen a 20 percent drop in business since the outbreak began.
Activist groups have advised their communities to be aware and on guard. “Board members put an alert out,” said Jan Hanvik, executive director of Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center in New York. “It was a heads up, saying ‘pay attention.’ ”
Blaming ‘the other’
Fearmongering and blame are almost a natural part of infectious disease epidemics, experts say.
“This is a pattern we see again and again,” said Amy Fairchild, chair of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. “It’s ‘the other,’ the group not seen as part of the nation, the one who threatens it in some way that gets blamed for the disease.”
Often, a disease outbreak is an excuse to vent pre-existing prejudices. “It’s fear of people we do not know or who look different,” said Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan and author of “When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the Fears They Have Unleashed.” “You take the fear of the unknown that already exists and then combine that with a real or perceived threat that is contagious disease and it’s explosive.”
During the medieval Black Plague, Europeans blamed Jews, saying they poisoned the wells. In an 1892 cholera pandemic, the U.S. blamed immigrant European Jews. In the flu of 1918, Markel said, “Italians blamed the Spanish. The Spanish blamed the Italians. For HIV it was gay men and Haitians.”
Americans “have a history of trying to keep ourselves ‘pure,’ ” Fairchild explained. “You saw it after the Civil War when slaves were denied citizenship, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when we were alarmed over southern and eastern European immigrants. There were fears that they would pollute America’s germ plasm, make us a weak nation of imbeciles.”
Americans have time and again responded to emergencies by clamoring to shut the borders and pull up the bridges.
“I’ve blogged for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the U.S. as a result of uncontrolled immigration,” conservative columnist Michelle Malkin wrote on her Web site. “9/11 didn’t convince the open-borders zealots to put down their race cards and confront reality. Maybe the threat of their sons or daughters contracting a deadly virus spread from south of the border to their Manhattan prep schools will.” (The cluster of New York school students who first contracted H1N1 brought the virus back from Mexico. The school is in Queens.)
“People who do not really know anything are creating ideas that don’t really exist,” said Sergio Ornelas, owner of a bi-national publishing and advertising business in El Paso. “I am worried these kinds of articles and comments might create panic.”
Fighting racism with information
Blame-the-victim reactions can be fought with clear, accurate information about the disease and about how it is spreading, said Dr. Larry Kline, a San Diego physician and member of the United States-Mexico Border Health Commission. “People get snippets of information here and there, and unfortunately much of it is inaccurate. That makes things ripe for blame and blame and fear never helped anybody.”
Tamping down blame and fear isn’t just the right thing to do morally, experts agree, it’s also the right thing to do medically. Germs, Markel stressed, don’t care about skin color or national origins or borders.
“These are naturally occurring events,” he said. “We expect flu pandemics every 30 to 40 years. It’s the cost of living in a world of emerging infectious diseases. That’s the folly of prejudice. They are wherever humans are.”
Amid swine flu outbreak, racism goes viral
Anti-immigrant hatred spreads on talk radio, Web sites
By Brian Alexander
updated 11:46 a.m. CT, Fri., May 1, 2009
“No contact anywhere with an illegal alien!” conservative talk show host Michael Savage advised his U.S. listeners this week on how to avoid the swine flu. “And that starts in the restaurants" where he said, you “don’t know if they wipe their behinds with their hands!”
And Thursday, Boston talk radio host Jay Severin was suspended after calling Mexican immigrants "criminalians" during a discussion of swine flu and saying that emergency rooms had become "essentially condos for Mexicans."
That’s tepid compared to some of the xenophobic reactions spreading like an emerging virus across the Internet. “This disgusting blight is because MEXICANS ARE PIGS!” an anonymous poster ranted on the “prison planet” forum, part of radio host and columnist Alex Jones’ Web site.
There is even talk of conspiracy. Savage speculated that terrorists are using Mexican immigrants as walking germ warfare weapons. “It would be easy,” he said, “to bring an altered virus into Mexico, put it in the general population, and have them march across the border.”
As more than 140 cases of H1N1 virus, known as swine flu, have been confirmed across the United States — from San Diego to New York City — the growing public health concern has also exposed fear and hate.
Fear and blame are counterproductive and even dangerous in any disease outbreak because the more stigmatized any group feels, the more reluctant people in that group may be to seek medical care. That only helps propagate the disease.
The attempt to scapegoat Mexicans, immigrants and Hispanic Americans is no surprise to Latino rights groups, who are now mobilizing a countereffort.
‘Ignorant beyond the pale’
Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, called such comments “racist and ignorant beyond the pale … these so-called commentators shame themselves turning public health concerns into an immigrant bashing fest.”
“What we have seen is that the anti-immigrant groups are using this to shamelessly to promote their agenda,” said Liany Arroyo, director of the Institute for Hispanic Health at the National Council of La Raza.
While the war of words is mainly between the conservative commentariat and Latino advocacy groups, individual Mexican-Americas are beginning to worry.
“Our people are calling us and they are concerned,” said Florencia Velasco Fortner, chief executive officer of Dallas Consilio of Hispanic Organizations, an umbrella of affiliated service groups. “Even our staff members are starting to get a little discouraged. There was anti-immigrant sentiment prior to this and this adds fuel to the fire.”
The Consilio has mounted its own education campaign to teach Dallas-area Hispanic audiences proper disease prevention and hygiene techniques. Because many are uninsured and may avoid seeking medical care, the Consilio is also helping them find non-profit clinics and encouraging them to visit these immediately if they develop symptoms rather than waiting until they are severely ill.
As swine flu fears have spread, the backlash has also affected some Mexican restaurants’ business, possibly fueled by disparaging comments like those of Savage questioning the hygiene of workers.
Jennifer Pesqueira, whose family has owned and operated El Indio Mexican restaurants in San Diego since 1940, said her business has seen a 20 percent drop in business since the outbreak began.
Activist groups have advised their communities to be aware and on guard. “Board members put an alert out,” said Jan Hanvik, executive director of Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center in New York. “It was a heads up, saying ‘pay attention.’ ”
Blaming ‘the other’
Fearmongering and blame are almost a natural part of infectious disease epidemics, experts say.
“This is a pattern we see again and again,” said Amy Fairchild, chair of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. “It’s ‘the other,’ the group not seen as part of the nation, the one who threatens it in some way that gets blamed for the disease.”
Often, a disease outbreak is an excuse to vent pre-existing prejudices. “It’s fear of people we do not know or who look different,” said Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan and author of “When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the Fears They Have Unleashed.” “You take the fear of the unknown that already exists and then combine that with a real or perceived threat that is contagious disease and it’s explosive.”
During the medieval Black Plague, Europeans blamed Jews, saying they poisoned the wells. In an 1892 cholera pandemic, the U.S. blamed immigrant European Jews. In the flu of 1918, Markel said, “Italians blamed the Spanish. The Spanish blamed the Italians. For HIV it was gay men and Haitians.”
Americans “have a history of trying to keep ourselves ‘pure,’ ” Fairchild explained. “You saw it after the Civil War when slaves were denied citizenship, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when we were alarmed over southern and eastern European immigrants. There were fears that they would pollute America’s germ plasm, make us a weak nation of imbeciles.”
Americans have time and again responded to emergencies by clamoring to shut the borders and pull up the bridges.
“I’ve blogged for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the U.S. as a result of uncontrolled immigration,” conservative columnist Michelle Malkin wrote on her Web site. “9/11 didn’t convince the open-borders zealots to put down their race cards and confront reality. Maybe the threat of their sons or daughters contracting a deadly virus spread from south of the border to their Manhattan prep schools will.” (The cluster of New York school students who first contracted H1N1 brought the virus back from Mexico. The school is in Queens.)
“People who do not really know anything are creating ideas that don’t really exist,” said Sergio Ornelas, owner of a bi-national publishing and advertising business in El Paso. “I am worried these kinds of articles and comments might create panic.”
Fighting racism with information
Blame-the-victim reactions can be fought with clear, accurate information about the disease and about how it is spreading, said Dr. Larry Kline, a San Diego physician and member of the United States-Mexico Border Health Commission. “People get snippets of information here and there, and unfortunately much of it is inaccurate. That makes things ripe for blame and blame and fear never helped anybody.”
Tamping down blame and fear isn’t just the right thing to do morally, experts agree, it’s also the right thing to do medically. Germs, Markel stressed, don’t care about skin color or national origins or borders.
“These are naturally occurring events,” he said. “We expect flu pandemics every 30 to 40 years. It’s the cost of living in a world of emerging infectious diseases. That’s the folly of prejudice. They are wherever humans are.”
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