RUTHFULLY YOURS

The science is settled, as the climate change supporters like to say. Only this time, science confirms the safety of hydraulic fracturing. According to a new study published by the National Academy of Sciences, fracking is safe. End of discussion.

Funded by the National Science Foundation and Duke University, a team of scientists at Ohio State and other universities conducted extensive research into the purported link between groundwater pollution and fracking. (The full title of the report, available online, is “Noble Gases Identify the Mechanisms of Fugitive Gas Contamination in Drinking-Water Wells Overlying the Marcellus and Barnett Shales.”) In an examination of 130 wells, the researchers found that, when properly conducted, no groundwater or aquifer pollution resulted from the practice of fracking itself.

Among the 130 wells studied, the researchers found only a subset of cases, including seven in Pennsylvania and one in Texas, in which faulty well construction or cementing was to blame for the seepage of gases into groundwater. According to Professor Avner Bengosh of Duke University, “[t]hese results appear to rule out the migration of methane up into drinking water aquifers from depth because of horizontal drilling or hydraulic fracturing.” That is to say, in the rare cases where it occurs, gases are entering the water supply from outside the borehead as a result of faulty well construction or poor cementing, both of which are manageable problems.

In their research, the scientists subjected the fracked well sites to a newly developed process of “geochemical forensics” using noble gases to determine whether pollution in proximity to a drilling site is naturally occurring or associated with drilling. The process was also able to determine whether the release of gases resulted from fracking itself or from seepage around well casings – an uncommon and correctable problem. As Thomas Darrah, the lead scientist in the study, stated, “most of the issues we have identified can potentially be avoided by future improvements in well integrity.”

While the new report answers the most important question, proving beyond doubt that fracking itself does not cause gas to seep into the water supply, it does not address several other important questions. One of these is the frequency of contamination of water supplies by naturally occurring petroleum, methane, and other gases.

WASHINGTON—The Army’s highest-ranking officer on Friday said the rapid spread of threats around the world and growing demands on the U.S. military should prompt a review of deep cuts scheduled in the size of America’s ground forces.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, said he had “grave concern about the size of the military,” particularly in light of a wave of new international problems, including Russian aggression in Europe, the rise of militancy in Iraq and the Ebola threat in Africa.

“Threats are increasing—they aren’t decreasing—and we have to make sure we are making the right decisions,” Gen. Odierno said.

Defense officials earlier this year made plans to shrink the U.S. Army to its smallest size since World War II, incorporating deep spending cuts that resulted from a bitter budget standoff between the administration and Congress.

The active-duty Army still has 510,000 service members. But the Army is due to shrink to 490,000 by the end of next year. Pentagon leaders are planning to cut the Army further, to 450,000 by the end of 2017 and potentially to 420,000 by the end of the decade.

“We have to look when enough is enough, and it is time to have that debate,” Gen. Odierno said.

In response to recent crises, the Army has been asked to send headquarters units to Europe and to deploy soldiers to Iraq and Liberia.

Gen. Odierno’s position is backed by many lawmakers and military advocates who consider the planned cuts untenable. But defense officials said that no reconsideration of the reduction currently is under way. Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the Pentagon is not now planning a review of its decisions on reducing the size of the Army.

“There is no intent right now to reconsider the manpower and end-strength requirements we laid before the Congress when we submitted the ’15 budget,” Adm. Kirby said.

Thomas Donnelly, a defense analyst at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said it could be a good time to review the decisions to cut the Army. Gen. Odierno’s arguments that demands on the Army were remaining high were “irrefutable,” Mr. Donnelly said. He added that political climate may be shifting enough to allow Congress to repeal the across-the-board spending cuts.

This is what makes it so difficult for the West to understand and combat Islamic terror: the cleverness with which religion has been intertwined with politics to justify and legitimise brutality. In the name of Allah, killing becomes holy killing and evil is His holy tool.

Why is everyone so surprised that young Muslims are rushing off from every civilised country to sacrifice themselves as jihadists on the barren plains of Iraq? The day after the World Trade Centre was reduced to piles of rubble, Americans were told they had had it coming to them. The cheers rang around the Islamic world. New York was soon confronted with a demand to set up a mosque a couple of blocks away — the classic victory salute from Arab history to mark the site of a battle won.

But nobody listened, or heard. Least of all the leader of the shattered country, George W. Bush. Incredibly, he chose Washington’s Islamic Centre as the site from which to explain the event to his nation. Standing beside leaders of the Muslim community, he exonerated Islam: “That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.”

In one of the most stupid acts of an American presidency, in which political expediency triumphed over historical knowledge and common sense, Bush quoted a passage from the Qur’an:

“In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil. For that they rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule.”

Where, that day, were the scholars who should have been able to explain to the president what those words meant to Islam? Precisely the opposite of what he thought. It had been evil America which had held the signs of Allah up to ridicule. In his misbegotten quote, President Bush sent out a coded message to the Arab world, signalling that the leader of the Free World didn’t understand what he was talking about, what he was up against.

It doesn’t require the code-breakers of Bletchley Park to decipher the messages of the Qur’an; it simply needs a reading of history and a study of how Muhammad designed his political religion and applied it in his own time. The atrocities we are seeing at the hands of ISIS, the self-promulgated Islamic State, are straight out of the script of Muhammad’s terrorism. What is happening today is an imitation of what Mohammed did 1400 years ago.

Massacre, rape, beheadings, crucifixions were the tools used to extend Islam in the seventh century; armed raids, seizures, and slavery financed the campaign. As leader, and the messenger of Allah, Muhammad was not merely charismatic, he could not be questioned. He was accepted as “the perfect human” (al ensan-e-kamel) and the ‘Mercy of God among all the worlds’ (rahmatan lil alamin). The laws he claimed to be passing on as the word of God conveniently legitimised his every action and were so crafted as to bind his followers, for all time.

Dr. Koonin was undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama’s first term and is currently director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. His previous positions include professor of theoretical physics and provost at Caltech, as well as chief scientist of BP.
We are very far from the knowledge needed to make good climate policy, writes leading scientist Steven E. Koonin

The idea that “Climate science is settled” runs through today’s popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future.

My training as a computational physicist—together with a 40-year career of scientific research, advising and management in academia, government and the private sector—has afforded me an extended, up-close perspective on climate science. Detailed technical discussions during the past year with leading climate scientists have given me an even better sense of what we know, and don’t know, about climate. I have come to appreciate the daunting scientific challenge of answering the questions that policy makers and the public are asking.

The crucial scientific question for policy isn’t whether the climate is changing. That is a settled matter: The climate has always changed and always will. Geological and historical records show the occurrence of major climate shifts, sometimes over only a few decades. We know, for instance, that during the 20th century the Earth’s global average surface temperature rose 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Nor is the crucial question whether humans are influencing the climate. That is no hoax: There is little doubt in the scientific community that continually growing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due largely to carbon-dioxide emissions from the conventional use of fossil fuels, are influencing the climate. There is also little doubt that the carbon dioxide will persist in the atmosphere for several centuries. The impact today of human activity appears to be comparable to the intrinsic, natural variability of the climate system itself.

Rather, the crucial, unsettled scientific question for policy is, “How will the climate change over the next century under both natural and human influences?” Answers to that question at the global and regional levels, as well as to equally complex questions of how ecosystems and human activities will be affected, should inform our choices about energy and infrastructure.

PINEHURST — A retired three-star general railed against the Obama administration, political correctness, the media and rules of engagement during a speech Monday night at Sandhills Community College.

Thomas G. McInerney, who retired from the Air Force in 1994 as a lieutenant general, currently serves as a Fox News military analyst and was invited to speak by the Moore County Republican Party.

The general was originally slated to talk about how military downsizing may affect preparedness, but changed his topic to instead address current threats facing the nation.

McInerney presented views that he called “more harsh” than his Fox News commentary.

He particularly focused on events surrounding the attack on a U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

“Unless we’re harsh we’re going to lose this nation,” he said. “We’re losing it fast.”

McInerney said U.S. leaders failed to attack during the Benghazi attack. He said leaders were derelict of duty and have since covered up their actions.

Benghazi is bigger than Watergate, McInerney said, but the media is complacent in covering up the Benghazi attacks.

“I can tell you, even from Fox, the information isn’t getting out here,” he said. “Our nation has never seen such duplicity, such dereliction of duty, such lying … and the media is covering it up.”

McInerney said the U.S. response was one of several miscues by leaders that have contributed to growing threats.

McInerney said the economy, shrinking military and more than a decade’s worth of U.S. policies in the Middle East have only increased the dangers facing the nation.

“These are very dangerous times for America,” McInerney said. “We are leading from behind, and that’s why these things are happening. You cannot lead from behind. Someone has to lead.”

The biggest threat, McInerney said, is radical Islam, and the general said the onus for “cleaning house” has to be on the Muslim community.

Downplaying the jihadist threat won’t keep Americans safe

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has just released a new National Intelligence Strategy, the first in five years. It’s a highly unsatisfying read for two reasons.

First, no public document can or should tell us everything we want to know — even much of what we think we need to know — about what we should expect from the intelligence community. This “strategy” lists goals and objectives and tosses around buzzwords from “corporate speak” as though it were a “management by objectives” statement written by an MBA student. We can excuse that but for one thing.

Second, a National Intelligence Strategy written for public consumption should resolve the apparent inconsistencies between what the government tells us and what we can see for ourselves. This one doesn’t.

Mr. Clapper writes, “This guidance is designed to propel our mission and align our objectives with national strategies.” However, the document is much more a summation of what the intelligence community should already be doing than a strategy to address the wide range of challenges to our national security. It has to be read in the context of the massive gaps in our strategies that President Obama has left open.

For example, Mr. Clapper’s strategy promises “innovative” intelligence analysis and constant improvements, which we should expect as the norm for intelligence agencies. There are a lot of very smart people trying every day to gather intelligence and improve how it’s done.However, at the president’s direction, the National Security Agency’s actions have been curtailed. Mr. Clapper’s strategy fails to tell us if his “innovations” will overcome those limitations, but he gives no such assurance.

Killing innocents is okay with Choudary.
In the beginning of his speech last week on the threat of ISIS (or ISIL), President Obama told Americans:
“Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents…”

He is wrong on both counts. And he knows it. He is doing a disservice to the American public and our “war” effort. If our Commander-in-Chief refuses to honestly identify the enemy, we are not going to win this war in the long run. That’s because even if we destroy ISIS there will be other Islamic organizations to take its place.

The reason: Islam is a religion of violence.

I can only conjecture that the President’s comments were meant to pander to American Muslims and anesthetize the American people to the true internal threat posed by Muslims within our gates.

But British Imam Anjem Choudary set the President and the American public straight in this short video clip. (Click Here)

In the clip from a recent interview on RT’s (formerly Russia Today) Worlds Apart, Choudary, told the world the truth about Islam that so called “moderate” Muslims in America have been trying to hide.

When asked if the beheading of American journalist James Foley was justified under Sharia law, Choudary said:

“Every action for a Muslim must be based on the Koran, the word of Allah and the teachings of the messenger Mohammad … But those who are already Muslim must know that Allah mentions in the Koran, in fact if you look at Chapter 8 Verse 60, he said prepare as much as you can the steeds of war to terrorize the enemy. So, terrorizing the enemy is in fact part of Islam. I mean, this is something that we must embrace and understand as far as the jurisprudence of jihad is concerned.”

If the California death and dying crowd has its way, in the future, on your child’s 18th birthday he or she will celebrate the event with a trip to a doctor’s office to have The Conversation on how and when to properly end one’s life, and California MediCal may well pay the doctor for having the conversation.

This little paragraph was removed from the Affordable Care Act when Sarah Palin labeled it Death Panels, but now it is appearing in state legislation.

In California this plan is already formulated in legislation and on Governor Brown’s desk awaiting his signature. It is AB 2139 by death and dying advocate Assemblywoman Susan Eggman, entitled Patient Notification.

The bill calls for using MediCal to pay a doctor for discussing end-of-life treatment when a patient receive a diagnosis of a chronic or terminal illness. It further requires the doctor or health care person, to hand the patient a POLST Palliative Care only form along with instructions in how to fill it out.

My local newspaper carried an article entitled “Earlier, better care urged for end of life.” The article is a report on an Institute of Medicine paper which includes the suggestion that one should begin having discussions with family and doctor beginning at age 18 on the subject of how to best plan for your end of life.
The reporter writing the story, Lisa Krieger, is an activist in the death and dying lobby and is once again using the freedom of the press to tout her own agenda. Two years ago the San Jose Mercury News allowed publication of a 10 part series written by Krieger, on the Cost of Dying. This was followed by several appearances in the area touting the Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment, or, the POLST form.

The article quotes a Dr. Philip Pizzo, former dean of Stanford University’s School of Medicine and co-chair of the report, as saying: “It is our hope that this report will lead to improvements in end-of-life care and the experience of dying for all.”

Have they found some way to return someone from the grave to tell us how wonderful it was to die by a government approved and funded process?

They are seeing the establishment of an Islamic state and now they need to populate the state,” expert says.

MINNEAPOLIS – US law enforcement is investigating a new phenomenon of women from the American heartland joining Islamic State as President Barack Obama vows to cut off the militants’ recruiting at home.

At least three Somali families in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area have female relatives who have gone missing in the past six weeks and may have tried to join Islamic State, said community leader Abdirizak Bihi. He said that while the reasons for their disappearance were unclear, he had told the families to contact police.

In a separate case, a 19-year-old American Somali woman from St. Paul snuck away from her parents on Aug. 25 saying she was going to a bridal shower. Instead, she flew to Turkey and joined IS in Syria.

Home to the biggest Somali community in the United States, the Twin Cities area of Minnesota has been plagued by terrorist recruiting since the Somali group al-Shabaab began enlisting in America around 2007.

This year, law enforcement officials say they learned of 15-20 men with connections to the Minnesota Somali community fighting for extremist groups in Syria. They included Douglas McAuthur McCain, a convert to Islam, who was killed in battle this summer.

The St. Paul woman is the first case of an area female joining IS that has been made public although her family have asked for her name to be kept private because it fears retaliation from Islamists.

Greg Boosalis, FBI division counsel in Minneapolis, said law enforcement was investigating the possible recruitment in the area by Islamist extremists of other females, as well as males, but refused to comment on specific cases.

“We are looking into the possibility of additional men and women travelers,” he said.

“My son and I love life with the beheaders.” — British jihadist Sally Jones.

Mujahidah Bint Usama published pictures of herself on Twitter holding a severed head while wearing a white doctor’s jacket; alongside it, the message: “Dream job, a terrorist doc.”

British female jihadists are now in charge of guarding as many as 3,000 non-Muslim Iraqi women and girls held captive as sex slaves.

“The British women are some of the most zealous in imposing the IS laws in the region. I believe that’s why at least four of them have been chosen to join the women police force.” — British terrorism analyst Melanie Smith.

Great Britain is now the leading European source of female jihadists in Syria and Iraq.

As many as 60 Muslim women between the ages of 18 and 24 are believed to have left Britain to join the jihadist group Islamic State [IS] during the past twelve months alone, according to British terrorism analysts.

Dozens more have inquired about joining IS since the beheading of American journalist James Foley in Syria in August 2014 set off a frenzy of enthusiasm within jihadist circles.

Many of the women seem to be motivated by the hope of finding a jihadist husband, analysts say, apparently because they covet the cultural and religious “prestige” conferred upon Muslim widows whose husbands have died as “martyrs” for Allah.

Until recently, most of the British women affiliated with IS have been restricted to performing domestic chores such as cleaning and cooking. Lately, however, some women have become restive and have demanded a greater role in the IS enterprise.

Several British women are now engaged in IS recruiting efforts, using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to encourage a new wave of British jihadists to travel to Syria and Iraq.

A half-dozen other women have been incorporated into a female-only militia called the Al-Khansaa brigade, based in the Syrian city of Raqqa, where the IS has set up its headquarters.