Dubai default threat rattles world stocks

Nov 26 08:14 AM US/Eastern

Global stock markets tumbled Thursday on mounting anxiety over a debt
default request by Dubai and tighter lending conditions in China, analysts
said.

London lost 1.86 percent to 5,264.97 points in late morning trade but was
suspended at about 1030 GMT owing to a technical issue.

The London Stock Exchange said it was investigating the "root cause" of the
problem and would update investors when it had further information.

Elsewhere, Frankfurt dived 1.80 percent to 5,698.99 points and Paris plunged
1.89 percent to 3,737.06 points at the half-way stage.

In Asia, Beijing nosedived 3.62 percent, Tokyo fell 0.62 percent and Hong
Kong closed 1.78 percent lower. Chinese shares were also hit by the prospect
of tighter banking rules and worries about monetary policy next year.

New York markets is closed Thursday for the Thanksgiving Day holiday in the
United States.

"We have two major factors weighing on equities and other risk markets:
Dubai's call for a moratorium on its debt repayment to May and more
stringent capital adequacy requirements for Chinese banks -- but Dubai is
bigger," David Morrison, an analyst at financial betting firm GFT, told AFP.

The government of Dubai shocked financial markets on Wednesday when it said
it would ask creditors of its Dubai World conglomerate for a debt moratorium
of at least six months.

The Dubai government announced that it would revamp the Dubai World group
and wanted its lenders to extend its maturing debt until at least May 2010.

Dubai added that it had raised five billion dollars in a new bonds issue
aimed at helping meet its debt obligations.

"Dollar weakness ... sent Asian markets plunging, which then took European
exchanges with them," said Xavier de Villepion, an analyst with Global
Equities in Paris.

In addition, the partial default by Dubai "fed a climate of insecurity and
crisis of confidence at a time when fears are mounting about excessive
public debt."

As equities sank heavily, investors sought safety in the bond market and
gold, which struck yet another record high point.

"It's causing a mini flight-to-quality as US, European debt gets bought as a
relative safe haven," noted Morrison.

He added: "If (Dubai) had given the debt markets more warning, then there
would be less of a panic now."

Meanwhile, ratings agency Standard & Poor's said the development could be
considered a default and downgraded a raft of Dubai government entities
including Dubai World.

"The rating actions are the result of the announcement on November 25 of the
restructuring of the debt obligations of Dubai World and its subsidiary,
(construction group) Nakheel," S & P said in a statement.

"In our view, such a restructuring may be considered a default under our
default criteria, and represents the failure of the Dubai government to
provide timely financial support to a core government-related entity."

Barclays Capital analyst Paul Robinson warned that the issue of Dubai could
contribute towards a "serious" pullback in global stock markets.

Others warned that it could take more than a decade for investor enthusiasm
over Dubai to return, as a result of this week's development.

"Dubai could not undermine either itself, or global perception any further
as a place not to do business in at the moment," MF Global analyst Manus
Cranny told AFP.

"Quite literally, this geographic region is now looking as a mirage in
stability terms."

He added: "It is the much longer term implications on funding, confidence
and capital raising that will take a decade or more to re-establish.

"This last-minute moratorium on debt repayments at Dubai World is
unacceptable has all the smacking of an Ireland -- nay worse, an Iceland --
in the making.

"The two regions may be polemic in climate but mirror images in terms of
credit and ability to meet their bills."

Elsewhere on Thursday, gold soared to a record high of 1,195.13 dollars an
ounce after a purchase of IMF gold by Sri Lanka's central bank, traders
said.

The precious metal has also won support in recent weeks from inflationary
fears, the weak US currency and increasing moves by central banks to
diversify assets into gold.

Copyright AFP 2009

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.172a2f217acbdb6e4e9b446773ee0f1c
.a1&show_article=1

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

  <http://www.mycomicspage.com/calvinandhobbes/>

Iran clerics start taking control of schools
Nov 25 12:48 PM US/Eastern
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Islamic religious authorities have begun tightening
their grip on Iranian public schools, a report said Wednesday, as
hard-liners expand an ideological "soft war" against Western influence.

The effort appears to be part of a wider drive to counter opposition groups
and other pro-reform factions that have been emboldened by the unprecedented
protests after June's disputed presidential election.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi strongly attacked the Revolutionary
Guard in a new statement Wednesday, accusing the elite corps of using brutal
force to crush the massive street protests.

Authorities have recently emphasized the need to battle the reach of Western
media, viewpoints and culture-which resonate strongly in a country where
nearly half the population was born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Officials also have stepped up blocks on Internet links and closures of the
few remaining liberal-leaning news outlets, while expanding state-run media
arms and giving hard-liners more sway over education.

"Now, the enemy has put soft war on its agenda and the top priority today is
to fight the soft war," Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on
state television Wednesday during a meeting with Revolutionary Guard
commanders and its affiliate paramilitary Basij forces.

Mousavi's statement said the Basij, the street wing of the Guard, was
created by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of Iran's 1979 Islamic
Revolution, as a popular body to serve the public and not to become stooges
of the government and kill citizens holding peaceful protests.

"Basij, which the Imam (Khomeini) favored, didn't stand against the people,
it stood by the people," he said in the statement. "It was not expected that
Basij ... rob the people of their free votes ... and be rewarded for
detaining people at gatherings."

Mousavi says President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole the June 12 election from
him through massive vote fraud. Hundreds of thousands of protesters poured
into the streets in the weeks after the vote, prompting a violent government
crackdown.

The opposition says at least 72 people died in the security crackdown on
protesters and that many of those detained were abused in custody. The
government puts the number of dead at half that figure.

Although the street protests died down months ago, Mousavi and other leading
opposition figures have refused to silence their protests and their pressure
on the country's Islamic leadership.

In his Wednesday statement, Mousavi said the Revolutionary Guard has under
Khameini, Khomeini's successor, deviated from the values it was once
committed to.

"Should anyone who rejects the superstition offered to the people in the
name of religion ... be beaten up in the streets, tortured in prison and
sentenced to long jail terms? Does Islam ... allow that people who seek
justice from their rulers be killed?" he asked.

Cleric Ali Zolelm, who heads a joint school-seminary committee, said Islamic
clerics have already widened control in some schools, the daily Etemad
newspaper reported.

Full details of the plan have not come out and it was not known whether the
Education Ministry would relinquish full oversight. But hard-liners,
including Ahmadinejad, have criticized Western influence in school
curriculum.

"Recently, seminaries took management control of some schools in several
provinces," the paper quoted Zolelm as saying.

Elementary grades were believed to be the focus of the nationwide plan. It
was not immediately clear whether higher grades also would fall under
clerical influence.

Earlier this month, Iranian officials announced plans to appoint a cleric in
every school-a move widely seen as an effort to bring stricter Islamic
interpretations into the public education system and address growing divides
between clerics and many young, secular-oriented Iranians.

An Education Ministry official, Ali Asghar Yazdani, was quoted as saying
that the clerics could lead collective prayers in schools and answer
religious questions by students.

Last month in Tehran, pupils elected a classmate in student elections
because his name was similar to opposition leader Mousavi's.

In the central city of Isfahan, a student running for school office copied
Mousavi's campaign and used the green as his signature color.

While Iranian government officials tried hard to stop spread of the news,
words of the student vote spread across the nation.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9C6MRUO3&show_article=1

US online ad revenue down 5.4 pct in third quarter

Nov 25 02:02 PM US/Eastern
By DEBORAH YAO
AP Business Writer

Online advertising revenue in the U.S. fell 5.4 percent in the third quarter
from a year ago, as the sputtering economy kept its tight grip on even the
fastest growing segment of industry, according to a report released
Wednesday.

But there's a glimmer of hope: Revenue was up 1.7 percent from the second
quarter, the first sequential increase since late 2008, the industry trade
group Interactive Advertising Bureau said in a report prepared by
PriceWaterHouseCoopers LLP.

In the third quarter, online ad revenue totaled $5.5 billion, down from
$5.84 billion a year ago and a substantial decline from the peak of $6.1
billion in the fourth quarter of 2008. But it's up from the second quarter's
$5.43 billion.

Online ads have proven to be more resilient than other forms of advertising
because of its ability to gauge whether customers are paying attention,
through clicks on the ad and other forms of tracking. But the economy has
slowed the growth of online ads.

"The advertising sector overall has been hard hit by the economy, but
digital media has been a bright spot within the larger economic downturn,"
Randall Rothenberg, chief executive of the advertising trade group, said in
a statement.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9C6NUIO0&show_article=1

Posted: Wednesday, 25 November 2009 5:30PM

Charges filed in Carnahan health care forum fight

Kevin Killeen Reporting
kakilleen@...

ST. LOUIS (KMOX Radio)  -- Three months after the punches were thrown,  a
prosecutor in St. Louis County has filed charges against six people in
connection with fights outside a congressional forum on health care.

It happened outside a Russ Carnahan town hall meeting, on an August night
when the national debate over health care reform was rising like a heat wave
before a thunderstorm.  Members of the Service Employees International Union
clashed with members of the Tea Party.

Now, St. Louis County Counselor Patricia Redington has issued a total of ten
charges spread out among six people.

Reached by phone after she left the office for the Thanksgiving holiday,
Redington spoke from memory in general terms about the case.

Among those charged, two accused of assault in connection with the beating
of Tea Party activist Kenneth Gladney.  Gladney had claimed that two men
wearing SEIU shirts attacked him as he sat at a table giving away tea party
buttons.

Redington could not immediately provide the names of those charged, and she
said she did not know whether those charged are members of SEIU.

The charges are all St. Louis County ordinance violations, which are lesser
charges than a misdemeanor.   If convicted, the six people face up to a year
in jail and a thousand dollars fine on each count, Redington said.

Redington was asked if she was pressured after recent publicity about the
lack of charges to wrap up the case.  "Nobody called me and I don't know why
that was perceived to be long," Redington said.  "We have about 90 thousand
charges a year.  We try to get charges written up within six to eight weeks
of getting a report."

So why did this case take three months?

"Most of our charges don't involve dozens of police officers, multiple
defendants and quite a few videos to review," she said.

Kenneth Gladney is reacting with disappointment to the charges against those
accused of beating him.

His brother Keith, who has been acting as his spokesman, told KMOX the
charges "should have been more serious."   Keith Gladney also claims
investigators failed to contact his brother Kenneth or interview the
witnesses to his alleged beating during the three month investigation.

Redington confirms that among those charged is St. Louis Post-Dispatch
reporter Jake Wagman, accused of interfering with police.    Wagman had been
working the story and shooting video when a dispute arose with police over
where a reporter could be allowed to stand.

http://www.kmox.com/Charges-filed-in-Carnahan-health-care-forum-fight/576010
1

China, gold, and the civilization shift

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Economics Last updated: November 26th, 2009

Stephen Jen from the hedge fund Blue Gold Capital has a warning for those
who think that gold has risen far too high, is necessarily in a speculative
bubble, and must soon come clattering back down.

Mr Jen is an expert on sovereign wealth funds from his days at Morgan
Stanley. The gold story - essentially - is that the rising economic powers
of Asia, the Middle East, and the commodity bloc are rejecting Western fiat
currencies. China, India, and Russia have all been buying gold on a large
scale over recent months.

Why should that stop when the AAA club of sovereign debtors is pushing
towards the danger threshold of 100pc of GDP?

These new players account for almost all the accumulation of foreign
currency reserves worldwide over the last five years, so what they do
matters enormously.

After crunching the numbers, Mr Jen found that the share of gold in their
reserves is just 2.2pc compared to 38pc for the Old World (perhaps we should
just call them the deadbeats from now on). They would have to buy $115bn of
gold at current prices to raise their bullion to just 5pc of total reserves,
and $700bn to reach just half western levels.

The killer-term here is at current prices since any such move in the tiny
global market for gold would send prices into the stratosphere.

Mr Jen says that you know where you are in the currency markets - more or
less - because there are concepts of "fair value" used by experts. Ditto for
the equity markets, where you have P/E ratios (warts and all I might add,
since the actual reported P/E of the S&P 500 was a record 141 in September
before the agency stopped publishing the figure - a far cry from the forward
earnings in vogue).

How on earth do we determine what fair value should be for gold? "We have no
such concept," he said. Actually, that is not quite true. You can use the
dollar monetary base as a proxy.

Mr Jen said China alone accumulated $150bn in reserves in the third quarter,
pushing the total to $2.3 trillion. These are colossal sums. China is
amassing almost as much each month as the United States ($63bn) has built up
in the entire history of the country. True, the US understates the value of
its gold, but you get the picture. Something big is going on.

So far, China has just 1.7pc of its reserves in gold, or 34m troy ounces. I
was told by a top Chinese official that they are buying on the dips so as
not to crowd out the market, which means of course that gold cannot "crash"
unless you think China itself is going to crash - or stop building reserves
(which is possible: Albert Edwards from SocGen says China may be in current
account deficit next year, leading to a yuan move - down, not up).

The gold proportions are: Hong Kong (0), Singapore (0), Korea (0.2), Brazil
(0.6), India (4.8) after its shock purchase of IMF gold, and Russia (5.5).
Yes, the West still has a lot in percentage terms - US (86), France (78),
Italy (72), Switzerland (33), Germany (25) - but they don't count for so
much any more.

It is true that the Old World could meet demand for a while (a short while
actually) by selling some of their gold. But will they do so? They did not
use up their quota for the last year under the Washington accord. My own
guess is that they too are wondering whether it makes any sense to keep
selling metal in order to buy the fiat paper of the bankrupt peers (note
that the Bank of England's own pension fund has got rid of almost all its
Gilts, buying inflation protection instead). Britain may become a net buyer
of gold under the Tories, Who knows?

Bottom line: "The scope for EM central banks to buy more gold is
substantial, if they choose to do so," he wrote cautiously in a note to
clients.

Will they choose to do so?

"I suspect they will," he told me.

Personally, I have been feeling vertigo with gold near $1180. All my
contrarian instincts cause me to dislike momentum stories - but there again,
maybe this is not momentum. Perhaps it is a civilization shift. Can't make
up my mind.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100002252/china-
gold-and-the-civilization-shift/

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has covered world politics and economics for 25
years, based in Europe, the US, and Latin America. He joined the Telegraph
in 1991, serving as Washington correspondent and later Europe correspondent
in Brussels. He is now International Business Editor in London.

Climategate: five Aussie MPs lead the way by resigning in disgust over
carbon tax

By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: November 26th, 2009

Australia is leading the revolt against Al Gore's great big AGW conspiracy -
just as the Aussie geologist and AGW sceptic Professor Ian Plimer predicted
it would.

ABC news reports that five frontbenchers from Australia's opposition Liberal
party have resigned their portfolios rather than follow their leader Malcolm
Turnbull in voting with Kevin Rudd's Government on a new Emissions Trading
Scheme.

     The Liberal Party is in turmoil with the resignations of five
frontbenchers from their portfolios this afternoon in protest against the
emissions trading scheme.

     Tony Abbott, Sophie Mirabella, Tony Smith and Senators Nick Minchin and
Eric Abetz have all quit their portfolios because they cannot vote for the
legislation.

     Senate whip Stephen Parry has also relinquished his position.

The ETS is Australia's version of America's proposed Cap and Trade and the
EU's various carbon reduction schemes: a way of taxing business on its CO2
output. As Professor Plimer pointed out when I interviewed him in the
summer, this threatens to cause enormous economic damage in Australia's
industrial and mining heartlands, not least because both are massively
dependent on Australia's vast reserves of coal. It is correspondingly
extremely unpopular with Aussie's outside the pinko, libtard metropolitan
fleshpots.

Though the ETS squeaked narrowly through Australia's House of
Representatives, its Senate is proving more robust - thanks not least to the
widespread disgust by the many Senators who have read Professor Plimer's
book Heaven And Earth at the dishonesty and corruption of the AGW industry.
If the Senate keeps rejecting the scheme, then the Australian government
will be forced to dissolve.

For the rapidly increasing number of us who believe that AGW is little more
than a scheme by bullying eco-fascists to deprive us of our liberty, by big
government to spread its controlling tentacles into every aspect our lives,
and scheming industrialists such as Al Gore to enrich themselves through
carbon trading, this principled act by Australia's Carbon Five is fantastic
news.

Where they lead, the rest of the world's politicians will eventually be
forced to follow: their appalled electorates will make sure of it.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100018003/climategate-five
-aussie-mps-lead-the-way-by-resigning-in-disgust-over-carbon-tax/

Hero Who Led Last Bayonet Charge Dies

November 20, 2009
Army News Service

Retired Col. Lewis L. Millett, who received the Medal of Honor during the
Korean War for leading what was reportedly the last major American bayonet
charge, died Nov 14.

Millett, 88, died in Loma Linda, Calif., last weekend after serving for more
than 15 years as the honorary colonel of the 27th Infantry Regiment
Association.

Millet received the Medal of Honor for his actions Feb. 7, 1951. He led
Company E, 27th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division in a bayonet charge up Hill
180 near Soam-Ni, Korea.

A captain at the time, Millet was leading his company in an attack against a
strongly held position when he noticed that a platoon was pinned down by
small-arms, automatic, and antitank fire.

Millett placed himself at the head of two other platoons, ordered fixed
bayonets, and led an assault up the fire-swept hill. In the fierce charge,
Millett bayoneted two enemy soldiers and continued on, throwing grenades,
clubbing and bayoneting the enemy, while urging his men forward by shouting
encouragement, according to his Medal of Honor citation.

"Despite vicious opposing fire, the whirlwind hand-to-hand assault carried
to the crest of the hill," the citation states. "His dauntless leadership
and personal courage so inspired his men that they stormed into the hostile
position and used their bayonets with such lethal effect that the enemy fled
in wild disorder."

During the attack, Millett was wounded by grenade fragments but refused
evacuation until the objective was firmly secured. He recovered, and after
the war went to attend Ranger School.

In the 1960s he ran the 101st Airborne Division Recondo School, for
reconnaissance-commando training, at Fort Campbell, Ky. Then he served in a
number of special operations advisory assignments in Southeast Asia during
the Vietnam War. He founded the Royal Thai Army Ranger School with help of
the 46th Special Forces Company. This unit is reportedly the only one in the
U.S.Army to ever simultaneously be designated as both Ranger and Special
Forces.

Millet retired from the Army in 1973.

"I was very saddened to hear Col. Millett passed away," said Maj. Gen.
Robert L. Caslen Jr., the current commanding general of the 25th Infantry
Division at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. "He was a rare breed, a true patriot
who never stopped serving his country. He was a role model for thousands of
Soldiers and he will be missed."

Millet was born in Maine and first enlisted in 1940 in the Army Air Corps
and served as a gunner. Soon after, when it appeared that the U.S. would not
enter World War II, he left and joined the Canadian Army.

In 1942, while Millet was serving in London, the United States entered the
war. Millet turned himself into the U.S. Embassy there. He was eventually
assigned to the 1st Armored Division. As an antitank gunner in Tunisia,
Millet earned the Silver Star after he jumped into a burning halftrack
filled with ammunition, drove it away from allied soldiers and jumped to
safety just before the vehicle exploded. He later shot down a German fighter
plane with a vehicle-mounted machine gun.

As a sergeant serving in Italy during the war, his desertion to join the
Canadian forces caught up to him. He was court-martialed, fined $52 and
denied leave. A few weeks later he was awarded a battlefield commission.
After the war, he joined the 103rd Infantry of the Maine National Guard, and
attended college, until he was called back to active duty in 1949.

In addition to the Medal of Honor, Millett earned the Distinguished Service
Cross, the Silver Star, two Legions of Merit and four Purple Hearts during
his 35-year military career. After his retirement, he remained active in
both national and local veterans groups from his Idyllwild, Calif., home.

His son, Staff Sgt John Morton Millett, was a member of the 101st Airborne
Division returning from duty in the Sinaii Dec. 12, 1985, when a charter
plane crashed upon takeoff after stopping at Gander, Newfoundland. He was
one of 256 Soldiers killed in the crash.

On Feb. 7, 1994, retired Col. Millet was honored with a ceremony on Hill
180, now located on Osan Air Base, South Korea. The ceremony became an
annual one and the road running up the hill was named "Millet Road."

In June 2000, Millet returned to Seoul, South Korea, and served as keynote
speaker at the Army's 225th Birthday Ball at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. All
eight of the then-living Korean War Medal of Honor recipients attended the
event.
This year, Millet served as the grand marshal of a Salute to Veterans
parade, April 21 in Riverside, Calif. He died Nov. 14 at the Veterans
Affairs Medical Center in Loma Linda, Calif., of congestive heart failure.

A memorial service for Millet is scheduled for Dec. 5 at the National Medal
of Honor Memorial, Riverside National Cemetery in California.

C Copyright 2009 Army News Service. All rights reserved.

http://www.military.com/news/article/army-news/hero-who-led-last-bayonet-cha
rge-dies.html?ESRC=army.nl

Nov 25, 2009 23:38 | Updated Nov 25, 2009 23:49

Fundamentally Freund: Do the Arab states really care about the Palestinians?

By MICHAEL FREUND

For all their talk of standing by the Palestinians, the Arab regimes sure
have a strange way of showing it. Despite reaping an oil-driven windfall
last year of unprecedented proportions, few Arab states seem willing to dig
very deep into their own pockets to back up their concern with cash.

Indeed, the hollowness of their pro-Palestinian pronouncements was
unambiguously on display last week in Amman, at a meeting of the Advisory
Commission of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, better known by
its acronym of UNRWA.

Among the central topics discussed at the gathering was the growing
financial crisis confronting the organization, which relies on voluntary
contributions from governments to fund its activities on behalf of
Palestinian refugees.

In her remarks, Karen Abu Zayd, UNRWA's commissioner-general, bemoaned the
group's financial state, describing it as "my most worrying preoccupation."

She told those assembled that the agency is facing a deficit of $84 million
this year, and that it projects a budget shortfall of $140m. in 2010.
"UNRWA's weak financial situation," Abu Zayd said, "hinders our ability to
discharge our responsibilities to the standards Palestinian refugees
deserve."

FOR THE past several years, it seems, UNRWA has been in increasingly dire
straits. Indeed, on Tuesday of last week, the group's 16,000 employees in
Judea, Samaria and Gaza held a one-day strike to demand better pay.

Why, you might be wondering, have the UN agency's troubles been mounting of
late? After all, fuel prices surged last year, with oil peaking in July 2008
at a high of $150 a barrel, so the coffers of Arab treasuries throughout the
region were hardly lacking for funds with which to aid their Palestinian
brethren.

I wondered too, so I did some research and discovered a few surprising facts
about the colossal gap between Arab rhetoric and Palestinian reality.

Consider the following: In 2008, 19 of the top 20 donors to UNRWA's general
fund were from the West, with the EU contributing over $116m., and the US
more than $94m. Others, such as Sweden and the UK, each gave over $35m.

Just one Arab country - Kuwait - appeared among UNRWA's top 20 benefactors.
The Kuwaitis came in last on the list, having coughed up just $2.5m.

Given that Kuwait's oil revenues last year surged by 44 percent to nearly
$78 billion, you would think that if they really, truly cared about the
Palestinians, this would have been reflected in the size of their donation
to UNRWA.

Nonetheless, when compared to the other five Arab states that comprise the
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) - Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates - the Kuwaitis come out looking generous.

In 2008, the combined revenues of the GCC states from oil production
amounted to a whopping $575b. Yet their joint contribution to UNRWA's
regular budget was a little more than $3.6m., signifying less than one
one-thousandth of a percent of their total petroleum income! Bahrain gave a
miserly $50,000, Oman forked over just $25,000, while Saudi Arabia coughed
up zero.

I've been to Hadassah dinners where more money was raised in an hour than
the Arab states seem willing to part with in an entire year.

In fact, over the past two decades, Arab regimes have been providing a
steadily decreasing percentage of UNRWA's funding. In the 1980s, their
contributions amounted to 8% of the group's annual budget, whereas now they
comprise barely 3%.

As a result, Western states are currently providing more than 95% of the
funds behind UNRWA's ongoing programs.

Now don't get me wrong - I am not shedding any tears over UNRWA's
difficulties. The organization has long been a vehicle for perpetuating the
Palestinian refugee problem as a lever for pressuring Israel, and it has not
shied away from working closely with Hamas in Gaza, or serving as a vehicle
for anti-Israel and anti-Western indoctrination.

But UNRWA's woes lay bare the breathtaking hypocrisy of the Arab states.
They lambaste Israel at every opportunity over the condition of the
Palestinians, even as they themselves do very little to alleviate the
problem.

Sure, some Arab countries have kicked in funds to various UNRWA emergency
appeals, while others provide aid to Palestinians via other channels.

But the numbers above lead one to wonder: do the Arab states really care
about the Palestinians?

If UNRWA's ledger is any guide, the answer is a clear and resounding "no."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1259010982966&pagename=JPost%2FJP
Article%2FShowFull

NOVEMBER 26, 2009, 3:46 P.M. ET

How to Forge a Consensus

The impression left by the Climategate emails is that the global warming
game has been rigged from the start.

The climatologists at the center of last week's leaked-email and document
scandal have taken the line that it is all much ado about nothing. Yes, the
wording of the some of their messages was unfortunate, but they insist this
in no way undermines the underlying science, which is as certain as ever.

"What they've done is search through stolen personal emails-confidential
between colleagues who often speak in a language they understand and is
often foreign to the outside world," Penn State's Michael Mann told Reuters
Wednesday. Mr. Mann added that this has made "something innocent into
something nefarious."

Phil Jones, Director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research
Unit, from which the emails were lifted, is singing from the same climate
hymnal. "My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not
read well. I regret any upset or confusion caused as a result. Some were
clearly written in the heat of the moment, others use colloquialisms
frequently used between close colleagues," he said this week.

We don't doubt that Mr. Jones would have phrased his emails differently if
he expected them to end up in the newspaper. His May 2008 email to Mr. Mann
regarding the U.N.'s Fourth Assessment Report: "Mike, Can you delete any
emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?" does not "read well," it's true.
(Mr. Mann has said he didn't delete any such emails.)

But the furor over these documents is not about tone, colloquialisms or even
whether climatologists are nice people in private. The real issue is what
the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on
global warming was arrived at in the first place, and how even now a single
view is being enforced. In short, the impression left by the correspondence
among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game
has been rigged from the start.

According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been published
in select scientific journals, after having gone through the "peer-review"
process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure enough, any
challenges that critics have lobbed at climatologists from outside this
clique are routinely dismissed and disparaged.

This past September, Mr. Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the
leaked emails that: "Those such as [Stephen] McIntyre who operate almost
entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted." Mr. McIntyre is a
retired Canadian businessman who fact-checks the findings of climate
scientists and often publishes the mistakes he finds-including some in Mr.
Mann's work-on his Web site, Climateaudit.org. He holds the rare distinction
of having forced Mr. Mann to publish a correction to one of his more-famous
papers.

As anonymous reviewers of choice for certain journals, Mr. Mann & Co. had
considerable power to enforce the consensus, but it was not absolute, as
they discovered in 2003. Mr. Mann noted to several colleagues in an email
from March 2003, when the journal "Climate Research" published a paper not
to Mr. Mann's liking, that "This was the danger of always criticising the
skeptics for not publishing in the 'peer-reviewed literature'. Obviously,
they found a solution to that-take over a journal!"

The scare quotes around "peer-reviewed literature," by the way, are Mr.
Mann's. He went on in the email to suggest that the journal itself be
blackballed: "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate
research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.
We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more
reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board." In other
words, keep dissent out of the respected journals. When that fails,
re-define what constitutes a respected journal to exclude any that publish
inconvenient views. It's easy to manufacture a scientific consensus when you
get to decide what counts as science.

The response to this among the defenders of Mr. Mann and his circle has been
that even if they did disparage doubters and exclude contrary points of
view, theirs is still the best climate science we've got. The proof for this
is circular. It's the best, we're told, because it's the most-published and
most-cited-in that same peer-reviewed literature.

Even so, by rigging the rules, they've made it impossible to know how good
it really is. And then, one is left to wonder why they felt the need to rig
the game in the first place, if their science is as robust as they claim. If
there's an innocent explanation for that, we'd love to hear it.

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New Zealand Climate Science Coalition caught lying about temperature trends

Category: Global Warming
Posted on: November 26, 2009 7:49 AM, by Tim Lambert

The latest story exciting the denialosphere is being put about by Anthony
Watts and is based on a "news alert" from the New Zealand Climate Science
Coalition. (Note: New Zealand Climate Science Coalition contains no actual
climate scientists.)

     The New Zealand Government's chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under
fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend
that wasn't there.

     The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate
science is not confined to just Britain's CRU climate research centre. ...

Gareth Renowden explains how the NZCSC concocted their result -- they made
the NZ warming trend go away by treating measurements from different sites
as if they came from the same site. Now that might be simple incompetence,
but they also claim that NIWA won't explain how they adjust the data for
site changes, and as Renowden says:

     Nothing in the station histories? It's all there for anyone who can be
bothered to look, or to ask politely. But Treadgold and the NZ CSC have no
excuse, because the NZ CSC were told about this information at least two
years ago, the last time they tried to make a fuss about "adjusted data". In
other words, Treadgold and whoever in the NZ CSC helped him with the data
are being more than economical with the truth, they are lying through their
teeth.

I wonder how many of the folks accusing NIWA of cooking their data will
correct their posts?

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/11/new_zealand_climate_science_co.php?u
tm_source=sbhomepage&utm_medium=link&utm_content=channellink

IAEA chief: Iran investigation at 'dead end'

Nov 26 01:05 PM US/Eastern
By GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press Writer

VIENNA (AP) - The International Atomic Energy Agency probe of Iran's nuclear
program is at a dead end because Tehran is not cooperating, the chief of the
U.N. nuclear watchdog said Thursday in an unusually blunt expression of
frustration four days before he leaves office.

Mohamed ElBaradei also warned that international confidence in Iran's
assertions of purely peaceful intent shrank after its belated revelation of
a previously secret nuclear facility. And he criticized Tehran for not
accepting an internationally endorsed plan meant to delay its achieving the
ability to make nuclear weapons.

"There has been no movement on remaining issues of concern which need to be
clarified for the agency to verify the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's
nuclear program," ElBaradei told the opening session of the IAEA's 35-nation
board of governors. "We have effectively reached a dead end, unless Iran
engages fully with us."

"Issues of concern" is the IAEA term for indications that Tehran has
experimented with nuclear weapons programs, including missile-delivery
systems and tests of explosives that could serve as nuclear-bomb detonators.

ElBaradei has emphasized the need for talks instead of threats in engaging
Iran. He has criticized the U.S. for invading Iraq on the pretext that
Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program, which has never been proven.
That-and perceived softness on the Iran issue-has drawn criticism from the
U.S. and its allies that he was overstepping his mandate.

But ElBaradei's comments Thursday left little doubt that he was most unhappy
with Tehran.

"I am disappointed that Iran has not so far agreed to the original proposal"
involving removal of most of Iran's enriched stockpile, ElBaradei told the
meeting.

The plan approved by the six world powers negotiating with Iran over the
past few months would commit Tehran to ship out 70 percent of its enriched
uranium for processing into fuel rods for its research reactor in Tehran.
That would help allay international fears by removing most of the material
that Iran could use to make a nuclear weapon.

It would take more than a year for Tehran to replace the enriched material,
meaning it would not be able to make a weapon for at least that long.

Iran says it is enriching only to power a future network of nuclear
reactors. But enrichment can also produce fissile warhead material. Iran
continues enriching, despite three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions
meant to make it freeze that activity and has built an enriched stockpile
that could arm two nuclear warheads.

Initially, Tehran appeared to favor the plan. But in recent weeks it has
offered modifications that have one thing in common-its refusal to ship out
most of its enriched stockpile. That effectively kills the plan, with the
West refusing to accept anything else than an Iranian commitment to export
the material.

Russia urged Tehran to accept the uranium proposal and abide by other
agreements reached at a meeting with six world powers last month.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Iran's ambassador to Moscow on
Thursday that such cooperation would "significantly move forward the process
of restoring the international community's trust in the exclusively peaceful
nature of the Iranian nuclear program," the ministry said.

The sextet endorsing the proposal-the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France
and Germany-planned to mount a new challenge to Tehran in the form of a
resolution at the board meeting criticizing it for ignoring U.N. Security
Council and IAEA board demands, and continuing to build its enrichment
program-sometimes clandestinely.

Impatience with Iran has been fueled by Tehran's September revelation that
it had secretly been building a new enrichment facility. In a possible
pre-emptive move, Iran notified the IAEA in a confidential letter only days
before the leaders of the U.S., Britain and France went public with the
project.

Iran says it did not violate IAEA statutes by waiting with its notification.
But ElBaradei has said Tehran was "outside the law" in not telling his
agency about the facility much earlier. On Thursday, he said that Iran's
late reporting on the facility reduced "confidence in the absence of other
nuclear facilities under construction in Iran which have not been declared
to the agency."

Ruediger Luedeking, Germany's chief IAEA representative, called the
questions about the facility "a major issue which again gives rise to
serious questions and concerns regarding the nature of Iran's nuclear
program."

A perusal of IAEA records shows that Tehran's chief envoy to the IAEA, Ali
Asghar Soltanieh, told the agency's board last year that his country "has
repeatedly declared that there is no undeclared nuclear material and
activity in Iran"-at the time when construction of the secret nuclear
facility was in full force.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9C7C6VG0&show_article=1