Wong's climate paper clouded with mistakes
(28July 08) “.....Climate Minister Penny Wong published an astonishing green paper in response to what she perceives to be the threat of global warming. The first sentence of the opening section of her paper, entitled "Why we need to act", contains seven scientific errors — almost one error for every two words... Here is the sentence: " Carbon pollution is causing climate change, resulting in higher temperatures, more droughts, rising sea levels and more extreme weather...." It makes no more sense for Wong to talk about carbon in the atmosphere than it would for her to talk about hydrogen comprising most of Sydney's water supply.... Use of the term carbon in this way is, of course, a deliberate political gambit, derived from the green ecosalvationist vocabulary and intended to convey a subliminal message about "dirty" coal. Next, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a naturally occurring, beneficial trace gas in the atmosphere. For the past few million years, the Earth has existed in a state of relative carbon dioxide starvation compared with earlier periods....” Wong's climate paper clouded with mistakes , Professor Bob Carter, James Cook University “....There is no empirical evidence that levels double or even treble those of today will be harmful, climatically or otherwise....Indeed, a trebled level is roughly what commercial greenhouse tomato growers aim for to enhance growth....To label carbon dioxide a "pollutant" is an abuse of language, logic and science..... the statement that human carbon dioxide emissions will cause "more droughts, rising sea levels and more extreme weather" is unbridled nonsense.Such confident predictions are derived from unvalidated, unsuccessful computer models that even their proponents agree cannot predict the future. Rather, a model projection represents just one preferred, virtual reality future out of the many millions of alternatives that could have been generated. Complex climate models are in effect sophisticated computer games, and their particular outputs are to a large degree predetermined by programmers' predelictions. It cannot be overemphasised, therefore, that computer climate projections, or scenarios, are not evidence. Nor are they suitable for environmental or political planning... Never has a policy document of such importance been released in Australia that is so profoundly out of touch with known facts of the real world....Time for some due diligence, Minister....”
Professor Bob Carter is a geologist who studies ancient environments and their climate, and is a science adviser to the Australian Climate Science Coalition.
Fraud and Deceit in selling Man-Made Global Warming
(28July 08) There‘s a lot to read concerning the Climate Change debate, and the one thing that becomes quite apparent is that the science “is not settled” The book Unstoppable Global Warming, every 1500 years , mercilessly and forensically carves up the arguments of the alarmists ( read review here ). In the chapter “ Fraud and Deceit in selling Man-Made Global Warming , “ The authors lift the lid on how the scientists, having signed off on the second assessment report, “ IPCC's Climate Change 1995 ”, had their work reversed through the deletion of major statements from the expert approved chapter 8 draft, by policy wonks and bureaucrats effectively distorting and reversing their conclusions. As you'll read, “ Chapter 8, which should have governed the entire IPCC report, was rewritten to accord with the global warming campaign being waged by the United Nations, the NGOs, and the Clinton administration .” Might as well take the time to once again go over the 35 errors from Al Gore's movie Inconvenient Truth.
(26July 08) “....Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast -- a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins -- would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials. What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Ronald Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final "tear down this wall" liquidation. When President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin....” The Audacity of Vanity , Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post “....Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop?... Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name....His most memorable work is a biography of his favourite subject: himself. It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly.... in the words of his own slogan, "we are the ones we've been waiting for," which, translating the royal "we," means: " I am the one we've been waiting for.".... For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?...We are getting to know....”
(26July 08) “....In our postmodern, anything-goes, Oprah-ised, non-judgmental era, it is increasingly difficult for elite elements to lay down the law on what is right or wrong, or to induce guilt and shame in the wayward masses, or to make nakedly moral judgments about the apparently soulless, greedy populace. Instead, ostensible scientific fact - "evidence" about individuals' disgusting impact on their surroundings - has become the main means through which the elites hector us and police our behaviour... Everywhere one looks, longstanding snooty prejudices are being "scientised"; old-fashioned hatred for mass behaviour is being replaced by new, superbly convenient scientific facts that apparently show - on spreadsheets, graphs and pie charts, no less - that mass behaviour is quantifiably, unfalsifiably, unquestionably harmful.... Today, a new diagnosable, scientifically provable illness has emerged to describe the stupidity of the masses: "affluenza"..... Science of snobbery , Brendan O'Neill, The Australian “...Serious writers, researchers and policymakers claim that years of fact-gathering and scientific-style study proves that the rat-race and the stuff race makes people mentally ill... Even the hatred of football fans now has a scientific basis to it. In the past they were looked down on as a seething, heaving, potentially violent mob. Now, serious academics and green reporters carefully measure how much football fans travel, eat and discard, and have worked out that a big football event can leave an "eco-footprint" 3000 times as big as the pitch at Wembley..... Call me a cynic, a doubter, even a denier if you like, I don't care; but when scientific research continually and conveniently, almost magically, "proves" that people are disgusting and must rein in their desires and change their habits - just as the elite caste, from priests to politicians, have been arguing for decades - then I get suspicious. The new scientisation is defensive and censorious. It suggests an elite that has lost the nerve and the will to say what is morally right and wrong, and that instead continually hides behind dubious "facts" to justify its agenda....”
China's £4bn drive to buy Africa's mineral wealth
(26July 08) “...Full scale work by the Chinese begins to rebuild 2,050 miles of roads in the Democratic Republic of Congo, left to rot in the rainforest after the Belgian colonialists pulled out 48 years ago and further shattered by seven years of war. The vast project, which will triple Congo's current paved road network, is part of China's largest investment in Africa, a £4.5 billion infrastructure-for-minerals deal signed in January. As well as the roads, Beijing has promised to repair 2,000 miles of largely defunct railways, build 32 hospitals and 145 health centres, install two electricity distribution networks, construct two hydropower dams and two new airports. In return, China has won the rights to five copper and cobalt mines in Congo's southern minerals belt which boasts some of the world's richest ore deposits..... to engage with the Chinese you have to move pretty quickly," a senior European diplomat in Kinshasa told The Daily Telegraph....” China's £4bn drive to buy Africa's mineral wealth Mike Pflanz, Telegraph.co.uk "...They are setting themselves up as being unlike other donors who are seen as too slow and always telling governments what to do, and there is a sense that the Europeans have been caught a little on the hop." Victor Kasongo, Congo's deputy minister of mines, said: "To be honest, China was Plan B. "We first approached the Europeans but they said they did not have the muscle to do what we needed. "China has stepped into that opening, very quickly." At the unheard-of speed of half-a-mile a day, crews from the Chinese Railway Engineering Company are rebuilding the key road linking Congo's south to Zambia, the first 60 miles of what will eventually become a 1,000 mile highway to Kisangani, the rainforest capital far to the north on the Congo River. Already, stretches of pristine asphalt have been laid.... “Congo was ready to offer cooperation with anyone who came here to invest - any others could have come but they did not ask. We just took up the offer which was there."
How China's taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried
(23July 08) “....Reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale - China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke. With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way. The strategy has been carefully devised by officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually need to send 300 million people to Africa to solve the problems of over-population and pollution. The plans appear on track. Across Africa, the red flag of China is flying. Lucrative deals are being struck to buy its commodities - oil, platinum, gold and minerals. New embassies and air routes are opening up. The continent's new Chinese elite can be seen everywhere, shopping at their own expensive boutiques, driving Mercedes and BMW limousines, sending their children to exclusive private schools. More than a thousand miles of new Chinese railroads are crisscrossing the continent, carrying billions of tons of illegally-logged timber, diamonds and gold.... The trains are linked to ports dotted around the coast, waiting to carry the goods back to Beijing after unloading cargoes of cheap toys made in China.... From Nigeria in the north, to Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Angola in the west, across Chad and Sudan in the east, and south through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, China has seized a vice-like grip on a continent which officials have decided is crucial to the superpower's long-term survival. 'The Chinese are all over the place,' says Trevor Ncube, a prominent African businessman with publishing interests around the continent. 'If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have taken their place.'..” How China's taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried , Mail Online “....Despite Britain's commendable colonial legacy of a network of roads, railways and schools, the British are now being shunned. According to one veteran diplomat: 'China is easier to do business with because it doesn't care about human rights in Africa - just as it doesn't care about them in its own country. All the Chinese care about is money.'... In Congo, more than £2billion has been 'loaned' to the government. In Angola, £3 billion has been paid in exchange for oil. In Nigeria, more than £5billion has been handed over.... In Equatorial Guinea, where the president publicly hung his predecessor from a cage suspended in a theatre before having him shot, Chinese firms are helping the dictator build an entirely new capital, full of gleaming skyscrapers and, of course, Chinese restaurants. After battling for years against the white colonial powers of Britain, France, Belgium and Germany, post-independence African leaders are happy to do business with China for a straightforward reason: cash..... have also been riots in Zambia, Angola and Congo over the flood of Chinese immigrant workers. The Chinese do not use African labour where possible, saying black Africans are lazy and unskilled....In Angola, the government has agreed that 70 per cent of tendered public works must go to Chinese firms, most of which do not employ Angolans. As well as enticing hundreds of thousands to settle in Africa, they have even shipped Chinese prisoners to produce the goods cheaply. In Kenya, for example, only ten textile factories are still producing, compared with 200 factories five years ago, as China undercuts locals in the production of 'African' souvenirs....”
Greens are the enemy of liberty
(22July 08) “….Imagine a society where even some liberals demanded severe restrictions on freedom of movement; where people campaigned for travelling overseas to be made prohibitively expensive in order to force people to stay at home; and where immigration was frowned upon as "toxic" and "destructive"..,… Imagine a society so illiberal that columnists felt no qualms about demanding government legislation to force us to change our behaviour; where the public was continually implored to feel guilty about everything from driving to shopping – and where those who refused to feel guilty were said to be suffering from a "psychological" disorder or some other species of mental illness ". Surely no one would put up with such a society? Yet today, all of the above things are happening – under what we might call the tyranny of environmentalism – and people are putting up with it…..It seems to me that green thinking – with its shrill intolerance of dissenting views, its deep distaste for free movement and free choice, and its view of individuals, not as history-makers, but as filthy polluters – poses a more profound threat to liberty even than the government's paranoid anti-terrorist agenda….” Greens are the enemy of liberty , Brendan O'Neill, The Guardian “…Environmentalists are innately hostile to freedom of speech. Last month James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate change scientists, said the CEOs of oil companies should be tried for crimes against humanity and nature. They have been "putting out misinformation", he said, and "I think that's a crime". This follows green writer Mark Lynas's insistence that there should be "international criminal tribunals" for climate change deniers, who will be "partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths". They will "have to answer for their crimes"….It is the mark of shrieking authoritarianism to look upon dissenting views not simply as wrong or foolish, but as criminal. Throughout history inquisitors and censors have sought to silence sections of society by labelling their words as "dangerous" and a threat to safety and stability; now environmentalists are doing the same…. perhaps the main way that environmentalism undermines the culture of freedom is by its ceaseless promotion of guilt… And what of those individuals who say "to hell with environmentalism" and continue living the way they want to? Apparently, in the words of the Ecologist, they have a disordered "psychology"; they are victims of "self-deception and mass denial"….
Challenging the basis of Kyoto Protocol
Russian scientists deny that the Kyoto Protocol reflects a consensus view of the world scientific community.
(21 July 08) “....As western nations step up pressure on India and China to curb the emission of greenhouse gases, Russian scientists reject the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming. Russian critics of the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for cuts in CO 2 emissions, say that the theory underlying the pact lacks scientific basis. Under the Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, it is human-generated greenhouse gases, and mainly CO 2 , that cause climate change. “The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse,” says renowned Russian geographer Andrei Kapitsa. “It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round.”.... Russian studies showed that throughout history, CO 2 levels in the air rose 500 to 600 years after the climate warmed up. Therefore, higher concentrations of greenhouse gases registered today are the result, not the cause, of global warming. Critics of the CO 2 role in climate change point out that water vapours are a far more potent factor in creating the greenhouse effect as their concentration in the atmosphere is five to 10 times higher than that of CO 2 .....” Challenging the basis of Kyoto Protocol , Vladimir Radyuhin “...Even if all CO 2 were removed from the earth atmosphere, global climate would not become any cooler,” says solar physicist Vladimir Bashkirtsev. The hypothesis of anthropogenic greenhouse gases was born out of computer modelling of climate changes. Russian scientists say climate models are inaccurate since scientific understanding of many natural climate factors is still poor and cannot be properly modelled.... Academician Kapitsa denounced the Kyoto Protocol as “the biggest ever scientific fraud.” .... Russian climate researchers working in Antarctica confirm that temperatures on the sixth continent have been declining in recent years. According to geographer Nikolai Osokin, the ice cover in Antarctica, which accounts for 90 per cent of the global ice stock, has overall been growing. This year global temperatures have been showing a distinct downward trend, and according to the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, in May “the globe was cooler than at any time since January 2000.”
Inconvenient truths for PM big on promises
(21 July 08)“…Behind the hype of the Garnaut Report and the Rudd Government's carbon emissions green paper lie some very inconvenient facts. First: a carbon system applied as now proposed will barely make a dent in the growth of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions between now and 2020; it will not deliver a cut in emissions below today's levels, let alone below 2000 levels. Rudd is caught here by the Howard interest rate trap: it was not what the former prime minister said about interest rates under a Coalition government that mattered, it was what the voters thought he said, and when the rates rose again and again they punished him. In Rudd's case, he has led the voters to believe he is going to deliver relief from global warming or, at the very least, a world-leading Australian example of how this can be achieved - and he can't…. He can't, first, because no matter what is done here, the key impact of human-sourced greenhouse gases on the environment will be delivered elsewhere. Second, because delivering a massive cut in Australian domestic emissions through very high energy prices will make a slaughterhouse of the local manufacturing sector…” Inconvenient truths for PM big on promises, Keith Orchison, The Australian. “… The most inconvenient fact of all is to be found elsewhere: in China, where the direction of the global concentration of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere during the next few decades is already being decided…. Because global warming is above all else a global issue, where the total of greenhouse gases in the planetary atmosphere decides what happens, even a suicidal decision in Australia to scrap all coal burners in the interests of showing the world a lead - cutting emissions by 180 million tonnes a year - would have no impact in the face of what the Chinese alone have already decided to do…. Which leads to the question: what is Australia trying to achieve?.... If there is one thing that is crystal clear after a week of the Garnaut Report, his "town hall meetings" and the green paper, it is that the Rudd Government is already knee-deep in a swamp of its own making on carbon policy, and deaf to advice to stop wading….”
Dr David Evans, BSc, BE-EE, MA (Sydney)MS-EE, MS-Stat, PhD EE (Stanford) was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005
(20July 08) “....Since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming..... The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever. If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming.... There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None.... there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming...” No smoking hot pot, David Evans, The Australian “...The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect. None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them... This point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming... Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.... The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming....What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise....”
Killing Jobs to Save the Climate
(20July 08) “....The price of European emission permits is rising so rapidly that German companies are threatening to leave the country. Thousands of jobs could be lost. And the environment may, in the end, be no better off.... "If that's the shape the trading will take, we will simply move our cement operation to Ukraine," a cement factory manager shouted into the lecture hall. "Then there won't be any trading here, nothing will be produced here anymore -- the lights will simply go out here.".....The businessmen's anger surprised the emissions-allowance trading experts. They had invited industry representatives to a relaxed forum at the Environment Ministry's office in Bonn. They wanted to present international developments in the carbon trading market. However, the mood in the German business world has soured -- managers no longer have the stomach for academic lectures. The reason is that emissions allowances are already burdening some companies that require a lot of energy for production purposes.....” Killing Jobs to Save the Climate Spiegal OnLine “....In the last 12 months alone, the price for the right to pump a ton of carbon into the atmosphere has shot up from €23 ($36.5) to nearly €30 ($47.6), according to the European Energy Exchange in Leipzig. This hike of around 30 percent has a direct effect on the electricity production of power companies.... this price hike would drive up the marginal cost of energy from an old brown coal power plant by the entire price of carbon. For modern natural gas power plants, it would increase prices by a third. Energy company RWE, which is based in the German city of Essen, reckons it alone will have to pay €9 billion ($14.2 billion) for its own electricity production, which it, of course, will pass on in higher electricity prices. So carbon trading will have a direct impact on which countries firms chose to locate in.... Still, the really tough measures of the European emissions trading scheme have not yet been put into force. Only from 2013 -- the start of the third trading period -- will prices shoot
(18July 08) Next time you see or hear a talking head, Climate Change scare merchant going on about how Climate Change is the cause of more hurricanes, you may like to refer them to the graph Mighty Winds The graph skewers and torpedoes the argument that Global Warming/Climate Change is causing more hurricanes. As you'll see, The worst decade was 1941 to 1951, the next worse was 1901 to 1911 and the 3 rd worse was 1891 to 1900. The decades from 1961 to the present are way down the list. (Original article in the Wall Street Journal on July 1 st 2008)
Pyrrhic victory, Brendan Nelson, The Australian
(12July 08) “....Last Friday, Ross Garnaut, the Prime Minister's principal climate change adviser, admitted: "Only a global agreement has any prospect of reducing risks of dangerous climate change to acceptable levels." This week, he said: "Even the whole of the developed world getting its act together and reducing emissions won't solve the problem." Remember, too, that when the Clinton administration signed the Kyoto Protocol, it was then vice-president Al Gore who warned that the US could only ratify the agreement once "key developing nations participate". This is not a controversial point; it's merely a self-evident truth.. the Coalition has been criticised for failing to give bipartisan support to the Prime Minister's plans to introduce an emissions trading scheme by 2010. But why should we make an unconditional commitment to what amounts to an unprecedented imposition on the Australian economy...To unconditionally support the Government's position, before it is known and without examining what it would cost or how it would work without a global agreement to cut carbon emissions and in such a short timeframe, might win applause from those who claim moral superiority in this debate. But as the alternative government, we have a duty to subject the Government's agenda to extensive scrutiny..... Australia must not forsake its competitive advantage for no significant impact on global emissions.....” Pyrrhic victory, Brendan Nelson, The Australian “.... Our greenhouse gas emissions represent just 1.5 per cent of global emissions. Domestic action to reduce emissions, while important, will have little meaningful impact if not part of wider international action.... if the Prime Minister can botch something as simple as the means test for solar panels on roofs, throwing that industry into an unprecedented downturn, he needs to be very careful about implementing an environmentally credible and economically responsible scheme that will shape future generations..... Kevin Rudd insists we have no alternative but to lead the world, but the fact is no international consensus exists....Most of Europe has failed to meet its mandatory carbon targets under the Kyoto Protocol, despite already having introduced an ETS. China is putting up a new coal-fired plant nearly every week, raising emissions that would overwhelm whatever reductions Australia makes.... Unless the nations responsible for the biggest emissions commit to effective plans to reduce them, Australian unilateral action would inflict collateral damage on the wider economy in lower growth and higher prices up and down the energy chain. It would lead to the export of our energy-intensive jobs to those nations that do not take action to reduce carbon emissions, thus worsening the emissions problem....”
The Cynical Politics of Global Warming and Its Hobgoblins
(12July 08) “...Cynical politics” may be a redundancy, but it is hard to imagine a more cynical political issue than global warming ( GW )....In his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, Al Gore called for a “wrenching transformation of society.” Leftists, with their elitist penchant for social engineering, didn 't need any convincing..... Enlisting the help of the media was easy (apocalyptic fantasies are sure ratings winners), but getting enough scientists on board was trickier.... Right from the outset, the GW cult (like other illiberal movements, such as communism and fascism) had to resort to the “big lie” technique to make it appear that the science of GW was settled..... As senator, and then vice president, Gore used his power to channel money toward those who “played ball” and away from those who doubted GW .....” The Cynical Politics of Global Warming and Its Hobgoblins “.... The Kyoto Protocol—which called for the developed nations to curb their CO2 emissions—was the international front of Gore's GW agenda. For the last seven years, Gore's media allies have denounced George Bush for “killing” Kyoto. Poppycock! The history is this: after the Clinton administration signed Kyoto, the senate voted 95-0 against implementing Kyoto's provisions because they were slanted so unfairly against the United States..... Kyoto's agenda wasn 't to save the world, but to shackle economic activity in this country through curbing energy consumption. It's easy to understand why foreign economic competitors would want this, but why would Gore and American liberals want to do this to the American people? The answer is simple: the lust for power and importance. Remember: control energy and you control people.... There are signs that Gore's movement is losing credibility. An English judge ruled that Gore's award-winning film “An Inconvenient Truth” may not be shown in U.K. schools without disclaimers and the inclusion of opposing opinions, on the grounds that it is a work of political propaganda, and not scientifically sound....”
(1July 08) “....The writings of Canada's most talented journalist, Mark Steyn, went on trial in Vancouver on Monday, in a case designed to challenge freedom of the press. It is a show trial, under the arbitrary powers given to Canada's obscene "human rights" commissions, by Section 13 of our Human Rights Act.....I wrote "obscene" advisedly. A respondent who comes before Canada's "human rights" tribunals has none of the defences formerly guaranteed in common law. The truth is no defence, reasonable intention is no defence, nor material harmlessness, there are no rules of evidence, no precedents, nor case law of any kind. The commissars running the tribunals need have no legal training, exhibit none, and owe their appointments to networking among leftwing activists.... Take this in: A group of Islamist fanatics, claiming to speak for every Muslim in Canada, charged Maclean's magazine with "spreading hatred against Muslims" for having printed a lucid and reasonable (if controversial) excerpt from Steyn's bestselling book, America Alone.....” The show trial begins , David Warren, The Ottawa Citizen “....This is a news story that should be on the front page of every newspaper in Canada, every day until it is resolved.... A farce, but a farce that has huge consequences for Canada: for by such methods free speech and free press are being snuffed out. The Left may think they have found the ideal method to silence anyone who challenges their insane, "politically correct" ideas, but have instead created a monster that can as easily eat them next....While media attention to Mark Steyn's show trial is inadequate, it is nevertheless the best publicized case ever to come before our "human rights" bureaucracies. Most of the victims of these neo-Maoist tribunals have been "little people," with nothing like the resources Maclean's magazine has put in play to defend itself and Steyn, and no media reporting whatever. They have been persecuted, stripped of their livelihoods and savings, demonized among their neighbours, made to endure humiliating "re-education" programs - without lawyers, without assistance of any kind -- all for exercising rights that any Canadian would have taken for granted a mere generation ago....”