Anthrax Terrorist: Take 3… Um… 4

…Nobody believes the gub’ment anymore

Sure, there have been tin-foil hat conspiracy theories aplenty for as long as anyone alive can remember. The Jewish bankers got together with the German Illuminati and plotted the ‘New World Order’, getting its first nail in the coffin in 1913 with the Federal Reserve, going straight from there to instigating WW-I with a well-planned assassination in Sarajevo, culling the first wave of accumulated wealth in 1929 to start the Great Depression, which could only be alleviated in the end by WW-II.

And they needed an excuse to overrule America’s strong isolationism at the time, so they didn’t bother to do anything about the incoming Japanese fleet as it sailed en masse toward Pearl Harbor. Not exactly a “false flag” operation, but certainly despicable. REAL false flag operations got famous when the wholly fictional Gulf of Tonkin ‘incident’ allowed the US military to ensconce itself in perpetuity in South Vietnam, admittedly (by several ‘memoirs’ since, by people who could know) for the purpose of testing the nifty new armaments and chemical warfare agents amassed when they ‘forgot’ to cut the wartime military budget after Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war.

Then there was 9-11. A textbook case made for tin-foil speculation, undoubtedly. Huge skyscrapers imploding perfectly from jet fuel in the upper stories, a whole different, un-damaged skyscraper that mysteriously collapsed in the same fashion late that afternoon for no apparent reason, a hole in the danged Pentagon but zero signs of anything that might have caused it, etc., etc., etc. I doubt anybody’s unaware of the grand conspiracy theories for that dreadful day.

Then, just a week later, some journalists and a congresscritters received letters in the mail containing weaponized anthrax spores and badly printed notes from what we were told was just another Arab terrorist. Only that wasn’t true either, as quickly became known. Why, it turns out that the weaponized anthrax spores came from the US Army’s own bioweapons facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

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Filed under Analysis, COM, Outrage, Science, Media, 9-11, Government Lawsuits, Military | Comment (0)

Holocaust Memorial Day

Israel Remembers

“We will never forget, we will never hide, and we will never stop asking ourselves every morning what we must do to prevent what happened to ever repeat itself.”

So said Israeli President Shimon Peres at the main ceremony marking Holocaust Memorial Day at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned his audience that anti-semitism is on the rise across the world today, and that insidious forms of Holocaust denial were asserting themselves even in nations that have every reason to remember with circumspection what occurred in Europe 63 years ago.

Iran’s quixotic dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims the Holocaust is a “myth,” and hosted a revisionist Holocaust conference in 2006. Given that Israel and Iran are currently at a heightened state of tensions - complete with bravado from Hillary Clinton about “nuclear umbrellas” and US defense of Israel (which has plenty of its own nuclear weapons) - it’s worthwhile for those who weren’t born when this horror occurred to take a long, hard look at reality.

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Filed under Religion, War Crimes, Politics of Hate, Anti-Semitism, Memorials, Eugenics, Science, History, Racism | Comment (0)

Invitations Sent, Date to Be Announced…

Will the Candidates Show?

Government leaders, university presidents, leading scientists, engineering leaders, business executives, American innovators have been making the call loudly and with some help from NPR, MSNBC, the New York Times and Time Magazine as well as increasing numbers of other media outlets. Now that both the Democratic and Republican fields of potential Presidential candidates are down to two apiece, it’s time for Science Debate 2008 to happen.

The invitations to the candidates have been sent, the debate will be held at the Franklin Institute before the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Thus far none of the candidates have responded that they will commit. While we all know that issues of science and technology are usually handled by advisors who have knowledge of the subjects, it would be nice to get a feel for whether the candidates for our country’s highest office have a basic grasp of those issues and a defensible position on policy. Or find out if all they’re good for is to mouth sound bites their handlers feed them.

If you’re interested in what you may be able to do to help convince them, visit the Science Debate 2008 website and sign on. And it wouldn’t hurt to write to the campaigns and request the candidates’ participation while you’re at it.

Link:
Science Debate 2008

[Cross-Posted to Science News Review]

Filed under Policy, Debates, Energy, Campaigns, Science, Presidential Candidates | Comment (1)

What’s Going On?

A Surge in Racism, or Just the Demise of PC?

Nobel laureate, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory James Watson got himself into a bit of a pickle after opining in an interview with the UK’s Sunday Times (published Oct. 13) that he isn’t hopeful about our attempts to help Africa because Africans just aren’t as smart as other humans.

Within a week Watson had been soundly denounced by his scientific colleagues, the debate over cultural bias in intelligence testing was reignited, and the subject of modern day “New Eugenics” became prominent in dozens of internet forums and political websites.

By the end of the week Watson found himself out of a job as Cold Spring Harbor desperately tried to divert unwanted attention from its sordid history as the scientific base of American eugenics in the early decades of the last century. He also had his book tour cancelled and was sent home to “think things through.”

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Filed under Genetics, Science, Eugenics, Racism, Media | Comments (2)