Anthony Watts over at Watts Up With That has a breaking story about unknown hacker or persons breaking into the East Anglia Climate Research Unit’s database. The over 61 megs of data “appears to be genuinue” considering the herculean task of creating emails and other sundry data of such magnitude.
I’m currently traveling and writing this from an airport, but here is what I know so far:
An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised an FTP file on a Russian FTP server, here is the message that was placed on the Air Vent today:
We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps.
We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents
The file was large, about 61 megabytes, containing hundreds of files.
It contained data, code, and emails from Phil Jones at CRU to and from many people.
I’ve seen the file, it appears to be genuine and from CRU. Others who have seen it concur- it appears genuine. There are so many files it appears unlikely that it is a hoax. The effort would be too great.
Watts has the text of some of the huge file’s emails posted on his website. Saunter over to the first link above to read at his site.
Of special note is CRU’s Prof. Phil Jones’ admission of fudging the numbers to hide the temperature decline.
Veterans Day becomes somewhat of a quandary if one seeks to highlight only one particular group amongst the magnitude of those deserving of focus. For indeed, while some may appear to shine more brightly, their luster and magnificent illumination is merely a reflection of a cast of more than a million military members who served, and continue serving our nation…. of which our FA “founding father”, Curt is one. (hat doff to you, guy….)
As the wife of a Navy enlistee during the Vietnam War, I can say that my military life still remains a strong and humbling memory in my life. The comraderie is unlike any bond I’ve seen… from soldiers and shipmates to their families. Their unquestioned loyalty to freedom, liberty and this country is uncomprehendable to most civilians. During decades of wars conducted on foreign soils – indeed even the strategic and import of these missions being even more foreign to the layman’s understanding – the sense of ultimate sacrifice of self for fellow Americans and country has suffered from lack of respect. Nay… has even been demeaned by some with words and spittal.
With this diminished view of our nation’s warriors in mind, I settled on honoring that less heralded and honored Marine crew of WWII, the Code Talkers.
I have no intention of deliberately slighting any of the 18 tribes that contributed Code Talkers to the great battlefield. For all Code Talkers returned to their reservation homes as heroes without a heroes’ welcome. Very little was revealed of their role in order to reserve this uniquely Native American communication system for future conflicts. But little by little over the decades, more has come out of their importance in the war, and the untold many lives they saved.
So with both an honored bow to not only the Native American tribes, and our remaining veterans and currently serving military personnel, I devote this post to the story of the more well known Navajo Code Talkers of the USMC.
Also press conference says female who shot Maj. Hasan went thru surgery and in stable condition. Add the official reports to comments for us all, if you please…
Lord Christopher Monckton has been making the rounds, warning against the December Copenhagen climate change conference and their proposed legislation to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Treaty. Monckton – not only known as Margaret Thatcher’s advisor, but as a clarion skeptic on the global warming propaganda machine – appeared on Fox News Happy Hour a couple of days ago. It ended with co-host, Rebecca Diamond, subtly expressing her disbelief at the end of the interview that Obama and the world leaders could possibly be involved in such nefarious doin’s.
President Obama is on a path toward establishing a one-world government. This is the warning of Christopher Monckton, a former major policy adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
In December, world leaders will descend upon Copenhagen to sign a United Nations climate change treaty that will succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which is aimed at reducing greenhouse gases and set to expire in 2012. An agreement has been drafted.
When you get the AP doing fact checking, you have to know something’s amiss in Obama fantasyland. In the POTUS’s desperate attempt to simplify his demand for remaking America’s health care system, he reverts to the proven Alinsky techniques of finding a demon, targeting that demon and isolating it to stir up public discontent.
His latest mantras have been focused on portraying those evil health insurers in the same light as Wall Street CEO’s.
Trouble is, facts get in the way of the rhetoric.
Per AP’s Calvin Woodward today, health insurers’ profits have barely exceeded 2% in the latest annual measures. With a traditional measure of a private enterprise’s financial health and growth potential generally hovering between 25-33% profit structure, one wonders how the heck they are surviving.
Here the disconnect between Good’s op-ed, and the actual content of the study begin. Good has chosen to focus on race and racism… and dances around the study’s finding that the discontent of “weak” partisans… Republican and Independents… appears to have nothing to do with race.
I’m not sure what the bigger story is here… that the troops are feeling less than confident in their new Commander in Chief, or that this story is being reported in the New York Times.
A number of active duty and retired senior officers say there is concern that the president is moving too slowly, is revisiting a war strategy he announced in March and is unduly influenced by political advisers in the Situation Room.
“The thunderstorm is there and it’s kind of brewing and it’s unstable and the lightning hasn’t struck, and hopefully it won’t,” said Nathaniel C. Fick, a former Marine Corps infantry officer who briefed Mr. Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign and is now the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a military research institution in Washington. “I think it can probably be contained and avoided, but people are aware of the volatile brew.”
Last week the national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Thomas J. Tradewell Sr., gave voice to the concerns of those in the military when he issued a terse statement criticizing Mr. Obama’s review of Afghan war strategy.
“The extremists are sensing weakness and indecision within the U.S. government, which plays into their hands,” said Mr. Tradewell’s statement on behalf of his group, which represents 1.5 million former soldiers.
For too long, citizens of the world have suffered under the tyranny of unattractive leaders. Some people say that this is just the way things are: unattractive people have a death grip on the levers of power that will never be loosened. We say: Not with that attitude it won’t. By ranking the world’s leaders by looks, we hope to heighten voter awareness of this problem and shame the citizens of countries with unattractive leaders into rising up and staging coups or something.
And don’t forget to check out their FAQs page for a few more grins..
I’ve spoken often about “puzzle pieces” on a variety of political subjects in my posts. Rarely can we, Joe Q Public, see one news event and piece it into the entire puzzle until someone assembles all the pieces in one place.
Thus is the case with the plot for usurping traditional input from the public, and passing a bill reforming remaking America’s health care system… with very little cost savings measures included.
Yesterday, the puzzle piece assembler happened to be Brian Darling, posting at Heritage Foundation’s blog, The Foundry. Yes yes, many of you will say… the *conservative* Heritage Foundation?? Lest you embarrass yourself resorting to the typical “attack the messenger” defense, you’ll find that Mr. Darling’s facts and events have been confirmed by many a traditional and prominent liberal leaning media, as well as Congressional events. However, as the MSM constantly demonstrates, they are math challenged and – in this case – they have failed to put two and two together.
Allow me to ’splain…
My first heads up came with a morning Senate Brief email update from McConnell’s office, discussing the Baucus bill, with the following comments that piqued my curiousity…
….. bummer. Word, da man, missed the best part (IMHO). So to bracket his post, I’m adding Rush’s record breaking performance for the worst race time and most penalizations in Leno’s infamous electric car race.
Then again, that was Rush’s quest… so did he lose? Or win? It’s all a matter of perspective.
It’s rather interesting that Obama constantly insists that it’s improper to meddle in other nation’s affairs. It become even more ironic when, in his… and his TOTUS twins… address to the UN, he touts America’s committment to nations’ populations who fight for the basic freedoms we enjoy.
And I pledge that America will always stand with those who stand up for their dignity and their rights, for the student who seeks to learn, the voter who demands to be heard, the innocent who longs to be free, the oppressed who yearns to be equal.
I’d say the Iranians and the Hondurans had to be rolling on the floor in hysterical laughter at that one…
So in Obama’s “just words”, he doesn’t meddles … or maybe he does… if is politically expedient. And proof in the pudding is a White House, now exercising the backroom bully pulpit over Massachussetts laws, and New York gubernatorial races.
Obama took office, confident he would fulfill his campaign promise to close Club Gitmo in a year’s time. To head up the closure details, he appointed White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig… a leading voice for instituting a closure deadline. Despite the advice of other of Obama’s top advisors, warning against any such deadlines, he chose political posturing and poll bumps, signing the EOs… thereby obligating himself to a deadline he was doomed to miss.
Today, as reported by WaPo staffers, Anne E. Kornblut and Dafna Linzer, Obama’s WH is not only quietly backpeddling on his false “hopes”, but has already arranged for Craig’s payment for his scapegoat services – dangling a possible seat on the bench or a diplomatic position.
The POTUS, ever conscious of never wanting to be the focus of blame for failure, tapped Pete Rouse back in May as Craig’s replacement, and pulled in message strategist, Axlerod and deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer to craft the new talking points when the manure of broken promises hit the proverbial fan.
With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress.
Even before the inauguration, President Obama’s top advisers settled on a course of action they were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal.
“Over the last several months, through ongoing communication with our regional offices, it is clear that ACORN’s affiliation with the 2010 Census promotion has caused sufficient concern in the general public, has indeed become a distraction from our mission, and may even become a discouragement to public cooperation, negatively impacting 2010 Census efforts,” read a letter from Census Director Robert M. Groves to the president of ACORN.
“Unfortunately, we no longer have confidence that our national partnership agreement is being effectively managed through your many local offices. For the reasons stated, we therefore have decided to terminate the partnership,” the letter said.
ummmm, yeah. So while the FBI investigations and corruption charges couldn’t sway Obama’s devotion to his pet non-profit, an entrepreneurial journalist-wannabecorrection…activist filmmaker and his trusty female sidekick topple the group’s cushy position with the POTUS… armed merely with a hidden camera, a good plot line, and a spot on YouTube and a website. All they needed to complete a quest obviously unachievable by federal law enforcement agencies was a few over eager ACORN mortgage advisors… apparently not too difficult to find.
To the other authors who have done a stellar job of remembrance today, I say thank you. It was a somber walk thru those times, and a moving memorial.
Yet on this day mourning the loss of loved ones, revisiting the vunerability we felt, and even the anger that still lives in many of us, there is a spot of good news that may give you a small smile.
For the second year running, top jihad sites affiliated with Al Qaeda have mysteriously started exhibiting “technical problems” on the eve of 911, forcing the militants to shut down and lose their cyberspace presence.
A U.S.-based group monitoring militant Web sites said Friday that jihadist forums have been experiencing technical problems on the eve of Sept. 11, finally going offline a day before the 8th anniversary of the al-Qaida attack on the U.S.
The SITE Intelligence Group said the same thing happened last year, promoting consternation in militant circles.
“As happened last year … top jihadist forums affiliated with al-Qaida began experiencing technical problems, culminating in their ultimate closure on September 10, 2009,” the group said in a statement.
According to SITE, members of other jihadist forums expressed annoyance and “confusion” at the inability to access the Web sites and forums where they share updates and messages.
Couldn’t have happened to a lower class of humans…
I sure don’t know who the masked cyber crusader is, and no one is taking public credit for the second anniversary of jihad internet chaos. But this is one hacker to whom I sure would like to say, *thank you!*
According to Farrell’s account in the Times, the captors moved the two men several times and eventually put them in a tiny room. On the third day, some new fighters, apparently more senior Taliban figures from elsewhere in Afghanistan, arrived and discussed moving their hostages out of the Kunduz area.
Afghan officials believed the two Times journalists were originally held by a Mullah Qadir, but were handed off to a commander Mullah Salaam and held in the village of Ghor Tepa, said Lt. Gen. Mirza Mohammad Yarmand, an Afghan army investigator sent to Kunduz by President Hamid Karzai to look into the case.
The Times reported that the militants taunted Munadi, reminding him of the case in 2007 when kidnappers released Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo but beheaded his translator and another Afghan colleague.
Farrell, an experienced reporter who was once held captive in Iraq, thought the atmosphere turned menacing.
Before dawn on Wednesday, they could hear helicopters approaching.
