A Place to Stand

Channel 4, the 2nd British broadcaster owned by the state & paid out of taxation, have quite promptly responded to my recent query about whether they intended to balance the recent Al Gore lies with a similar lecture from the other side or even a debate between both sides. Also making a comparison with the Yugoslav coverage. Note that they use the fact that they broadcast Durkin's Great Global Warming Swindle over 2 years ago as their sole evidence of impartiality. Apart from the fact that in terms of accuracy there is no comparison it is an interesting example of using a very small amount of dissent as a shield against accusations of censorship. Essentially they are saying C4 may be 99.75% (assuming 1 programme & 2 news items a week pushing alarmism) state propagandists but not 100%. Highlights added.

Thank you for contacting Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries regarding AN
INCONVENIENT TRUTH.

We are sorry to hear that you feel this film should not have been shown as
you consider it to be lies and propaganda.

Channel 4 has always been interested in environmental issues and the climate
change debate. Al Gore?s Oscar winning film has been most of the most
influential factors in that public debate. The Great Global Warming Swindle
broadcast by Channel 4 also made an important and legitimate contribution to
the debate by presenting alternative, opposing views to the consensus view
on the subject

Nevertheless, please be assured your complaint has been noted and logged for
the information of those responsible for our programming.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us. We appreciate all
feedback from our viewers; complimentary or otherwise.

Regards,

Sally Smith
ViewerEnquiries@Channel4.co.uk

I replied pointing out

Please reread what I said. I actively did not say that it should not have been shown because it was lies. In fact what I said was

"I do not dispute the propriety of C4 showing this farrago of lies because it is important that you put alternative views."

And went on to say that, for the same reason apart from the lies, you should broadcast other alternatives like the 3 specifically suggested. Also that decisions to broadcast should not be prevented merely because the material is truthful, as the last review of the subject you mention, Great Global Warming Swindle (broadcast March 2007) certainly was. It is quite right that it be broadcast, even though full of lies, so long as at least equal time is given to broadcasting the truth.

Please could you answer my question on when you will be broadcasting a lecture by a much more qualified sceptic; or a formal debate on the subject; or indeed the documentary on the Yugoslav bombing which would also be "an important and legitimate contribution to the debate" albeit a different debate.

I await your answer with interest. I am very interested to see if C4 really is as interested in contributions to debate, even factual debate, as it appears to be to broadcasting government supported propaganda.

They answered

Thank you again for contacting us regarding AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH.

Please be assured that all your comments and complaint have been logged and
distributed throughout Channel 4 for the attention of the programmes.

There are no plans to produce or broadcast other documentaries on this
subject or the Yugoslav bombing, but your suggestions have been logged
throughout the Channel for those responsible for commissioning and producing
our documentaries.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us. We appreciate all
feedback from our viewers; complimentary or otherwise.

Regards,

Jessicka Burton

I replied

Could you double check that, because obviously it would be impossible for C4 to ever claim to be other than a fascist propaganda organisation on this subject deliberately promoting lies if you were not to allow equal time some sort of truthful broadcasting on the subject to match the, court proven, lies of Mr Gore.

Regrettably I am less surprised that you have no plans to allow "an important and legitimate contribution to the debate by presenting" facts about the Yugoslav bombing. I do not dispute that on this subject C4 are indeed a fascist propaganda organisation.

For the record can you confirm that C4 intend to continue their current monolithic censorship of any mention whatsoever of the 1,300 Serb teenagers kidnapped by our "police" & dissected, while still alive to sell their body organs to our doctors. Also of the Dragodan Massacre, which, while similar to the My Lai Massacre takes place in an era when the MSM are willing to censor such atrocities.

I await your response with interest since I would genuinely like to know if there are any circumstances whatsoever in which C4 will even attempt higher journalistic standards than those of the late Dr Goebbels.

To which they said

we regret that we are unable to
enter into any further correspondence on this subject.

Note that state owned C4 cannot even make a token attempt to deny that censoring to support genocide is their policy.

Some time ago I did a post on one of the people involved in expelling me from the LiBDems being herself purged. This brought up a certain amount of discussion on another blog which is fairly long but, since it involved discussion with Norman Fraser, the guy who made up the charges on which I was expelled.

The charge Norman wrote against me was primarily about letters I had had published in the Scottish press, all on traditional liberal low tax & low regulation lines or about the need for nuclear power to keep the lights on or about items on my blog primarily on the same lines, though with a dew stating facts about Yugoslavia all on the public record.

"47 Neil, whenever we hear your version of why you were expelled you somehow never mention the main thrust of my submission. That was that your blogging was an embarrassment to the Party..... On 13/11/05 (and this post can still be accessed) you called Ashdown a perjurer and implied that he was involved with child sex slavery in Bosnia. How relevant to expulsion do you think these examples were? To repeat, you were not expelled from the Party for being a ‘Classical Liberal’, you were expelled because you are a self-obsessed, offensive idiot."

Well that is interesting. Irrespective of my alleged IQ it is a matter of record that the charge Norman wrote against me was primarily about letters I had had published in the Scottish press, all on traditional liberal low tax & low regulation lines or about the need for nuclear power to keep the lights on, or items on my blog primarily on the same lines, though with a few stating facts about Yugoslavia all on the public record.

Thus officially I was expelled for being a liberal but according to the guy asked to write up the "charges" (which initially they didn't want me to see in case it made a defence possible) this was simply a cover story. The hidden reason for my expulsion is that I was & am opposed to genocide, child rape & Nazi war crimes & that is something which, unofficially but rigidly no member of the party may be.

I don't think it enhances the party's claim to "liberalism" that they didn't really expel me for that. The fact they use being a traditional liberal as a cover stry for expelling me shows how totally oppoed to traditicnal liberalism the party has become.

That it is simply impossible to remain a party member if you do not publicly endorse Nazism & racial genocide is not something I think any decent person can approve of. Of course they do not disapprove of all genocide. "Jenny Tonge, who endorsed suicide bombers (but only in killing Jews) was not expelled by merely sent to the Lords" (post 53). I don't think that the intent can be disputed.

############################

Going through it I found that a post (well 3 #79,80,81 but they are all the same post repeated) had been retroactively inserted into the discussion. This obviously explains why I hadn't taken them/it apart (or even made fun of the duplication). This post is an attempt to defend Nazi Ashdown from the charge of perjury. I think it must be taken as the "official party line" on his perjury. I should point out that I had sent an email to almost all LibDem MPS & MSPS suggesting that they either disown some of Norman's most obvious lies, used to justify the MPs voting for racial genocide, or say why they were true. Mot a one of them did either proving that that not a one of them could, but clearly this means the thread became worth such retroactive rewriting. Also the fact that Norman produces 3 links, whereas he has more often stuck to 1 - from something as accessible as the guardian - suggests more than usual concern. I also assume that retrocatively inserting comments is not easy.

This is the inserted item (#79.80,81):

"You do not dispute that Ashdown testified to seeing ethnic cleansing in villages not visible from where he was. You do not explain how that could possibly be anything other than deliberate perjury (neither has he).[quoting me]

I presume that you are alluding to Andy Wilcoxon’s article for Slobodan Milosevic. Org which alleges perjury by Ashdown based on rebuttal testimony from General Bozidar Delic, called by Milosevic in his defence. Wilcoxon’s article is here http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg092805.htm but I prefer the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) report here http://www.iwpr.net/?p=tri&s=f&o=253662&apc_state=henitri2005http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg092805.htm . I prefer it because it is a considerably more balanced account than Wilcoxon’s.
Anyone wishing to check the actual evidence should go to the actual ICTY transcript at http://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/050928ED.htm where they will find, amongst other things Wilcoxon omits, that the Prosecution advanced evidence that the maps which Delic used were the fabrications of a Yugoslav Army disinformation unit.

You have repeatedly advanced Delic’s testimony as incontrovertible proof whereas in practice it is simple assertion. Deilic himself has been accused of war crimes in the precise area Ashdown was describing and so may not be an entirely disinterested witness. See http://www.hlc-rdc.org/Saopstenja/963.en.html ."

While it is perfectly possible for the ICTY Prosecutor to allege that the maps in question were fabrication it would have been simple to prove if it were true. In fact all that would have been required would have been for an independent person to go to where he said he was & take a photo either of the villages he testified he had seen being "cleansed" or the mountains the maps shown to be in the way. The fact that they did not proves even the prosecution (& obviously Party) knows Ashdown perjured himself to promote racial genocide.

ADDENDUM - I find the site in question is not taking any more comments, or a least not from the likes of me. I guess they know anyway.

Channel 4 Chair
Dear Luke Johnson,
I note that last night C4 broadcast Al Gore's film officially called "An Inconvenient Truth" and colloquially and more accurately "A Pack of Convenient lies By a Wholly Corrupt Genocidal Child Raping Fascist War Criminal Who Spent $4 Million on His Beachfront House".

As you will be aware this propaganda piece has the unique honour of having been proven, in a British court, to contain many lies namely:

- The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
- The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
- The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
- The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.
- The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
- The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
- The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
- The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

There are also matters of opinion on which the film has since been proven wrong - such as that global warming would continue. In fact, as you doubtless know global temperature has declined since filming. The same applies to the increase in hurricanes following Katrina which he promised & though the opposite has happened. And so on. There were also things which, while not untrue, were misleading such as the use of a Mercator projection map of Greenland which showed it larger than central Canada though that is not the case in reality.

Some parts of the film may be true may be true. For example it was asserted that Mr Gore used to have a dog - though whether this & other emotional moments are relevant to the "scientific" claims he was making is questionable.

I do not dispute the propriety of C4 showing this farrago of lies because it is important that you put alternative views. However putting alternative views, rather than merely engaging in propaganda lies, requires that alternative views be put. I must ask when you will be giving equally prime time coverage to a similar lecture by Professor Singer, Viscount Monkton or indeed anybody with better scientific credentials than Gore & alternative views, on this subject?

The traditional, still best & I think most entertaining, way of reaching conclusions on such subjects would be a formal debate. Unfortunately Mr Gore has never felt that actually debating the case would help him & has been in the fortunate position of being given a free unrestrained run by the media for what he says, even when it has been proven to contain lies. Anyway having suggested this before I know that C4 (& to be fair the rest of Britain's broadcasters) are wholly opposed to free debate.

Incidentally since you approve of giving a coverage to controversial views may I ask when you will be broadcasting the film "It Started With A Lie: Nato Aggression against Serbia 1999" which, while putting a controversial view has the great advantage of being wholly truthful. I know that C4 believe in censoring from your news any mention of such things ar the Dragodan Massacre or the even more obscene kidnapping & dissection, while alive, of thousands of Serb teenagers to steal their body organs, carried out by NATO "police" but clearly if C4 ever wishes to be considered in any way honest or impartial, or even not fascist, in at least its non-news items you will be eager to ensure a balance there at least.

I await your reply.
Neil Craig

Any reply will be published, though experience shows C$ do not respond to complaints.
Hat tip to Joshua Rosenberg for pointing me to the German film

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI4kz8CSYmA

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeRXLw4nUhI

Part 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kuhfyd6bJs

Part 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR_xlhnSJEw

Part 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvS5sXlkMys

Buckminster Fuller designed this tetrahedronal floating city for Tokyo bay in the 1960's. He wrote:

"Three-quarters of our planet Earth is covered with water, most of which may float organic cities...Floating cities pay no rent to landlords. They are situated on the water, which they desalinate and recirculate in many useful and nonpolluting ways. They are ships with all an ocean ship's technical autonomy, but they are also ships that will always be anchored. They don't have to go anywhere. Their shape and its human-life accommodations are not compromised, as must be the shape of the living quarters of ships whose hull shapes are constructed so that they may slip, fishlike, at high speed through the water and high seas with maximum economy...Floating cities are designed with the most buoyantly stable conformation of deep-sea bell-buoys. Their omni-surface-terraced, slop-faced, tetrahedronal structuring is employed to avoid the lethal threat of precipitous falls by humans from vertically sheer high-rising buildings...The tetrahedron has the most surface with the least volume of all polyhedra. As such, it provides the most possible 'outside' living. Its sloping external surface is adequate for all its occupants to enjoy their own private, outside, tiered-terracing, garden homes. These are most economically serviced from the common, omni-nearest-possible center of volume of all polyhedra...When suitable, the floating cities are equipped with 'alongside' or interiorly lagooned marinas for the safe mooring of the sail- and powerboats of the floating-city occupants. When moored in protected waters, the floating cities may be connected to the land by bridgeways.

In 1966 my Japanese patron died, and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development commissioned me to carry out full design and economic analysis of the floating tetrahedronal city for potential U.S.A use. With my associates I completed the design and study as well as a scaled-down model. The studies showed that the fabricating and operating costs were such that a floating city could sustain a high standard of living, yet be economically occupiable at a rental so low as to be just above that rated as the 'poverty' level by HUD authorities. The secretary of HUD sent the drawings, engineering studies, and economic analysis to the Secretary of the Navy, who ordered the Navy's Bureau of Ships to analyze the project for its 'water-worthiness.' stability, and organic capability. The Bureau of Ships verified all our calculations and found the design to be practical and 'water-worthy.' The Secretary of the Navy then sent the project to the US Navy's Bureau of Yards and Docks, where its fabrication and assembly procedures and cost were analyzed on a basis of the 'floating city' being built in a shipyard as are aircraft carriers and other vessels. The cost analysis of the Navy Department came out within 10 percent of our cost - which bore out its occupiability at rental just above the poverty class. ``At this point the city of Baltimore became interested in acquiring the first such floating city for anchorage just offshore in Chesapeake Bay, adjacent to Baltimore's waterfront. At this time President Lyndon Johnson's Democratic party went out of power. President Johnson took the model with him and installed it in his LBJ Texas library. The city of Baltimore's politicians went out of favor with the Nixon administration, and the whole project languished."


The technical considerations indicate that such a structure is possible. The basic unit of Triton City is a neighborhood-sized community which will accommodate 3500 to 6000 people and which will support an elementary school, a small supermarket and local convenience stores and services. Three to six of these neighborhoods will form a town which will include a high school, more recreational and civic facilities and possibly light industry. When a community reaches the level of three to seven towns (90,000 to 105,000 population) it becomes a full-scale city with more specialized industry and a city center module to accommodate government offices and medical facilities. The high density occupation results in great economies in transportation service and other utilities.
Well if it was technologically feasible in the 1960s it certainly is now. Equally the cost of housing is even more a function of regulation than it was then. So if it was financially viable then it certainly is now. I haven't seen costings of this & I suspect no up to date ones exist but assuming construction costs of £100,000 per family (which if anything i suspect would be on the high side now) and about 2.500 families we have a cost of about £250 million. To run this as a deep sea seastead would probably cause some redesign but in fact shorelines are more dangerous to shipping than deep sea, both because it gives them something to hit & because waves are much higher on shores. Moreover seas on the equator are particularly calm ("the doldrums").

A Seastead based on a Triton unit powered by an OTEC & using the deep sea water to grow algael oil, as I have previously discussed, could probably be done for about £500 million. You can't make a smaller OTEC because the energy used to pull up water depends on the diameter of the tube & thus below a certain size it uses as much power as it produces. Thus this seems to be a minimum cost. This explains why it hasn't yet been done. £500 million is a lot for any business to risk, though relatively little for a government. " possible 1st steps would be:

1 - An OTEC based on an old ship, which would otherwise be scrapped, used to create algael oil.

2 - A Triton City design used as Buckminster Fuller originally conceived, to provide housing. There are many cities where land is in short supply, such as Singapore or Shanghai where this could be done. Abu Dhabi, where land is in short supply & money isn't has already contracted to do so, though on a somewhat smaller scale.

Sww also http://www.seasteading.org/seastead.org/commented/paper/review.html#TritonCity

This is an unpublished letter sent to all national UK & Scottish papers & to many US newspapers - list appended at the end. Google News shows it has not been published. I think it demonstrates how wholly, completely & deliberately the MSM are willing to censor these atrocities & by extension, absolutely anything the government do not want us to know about.
=======================
Dear Editor,
It is not often that the first anniversary of the publication of a bureaucrat's biography deserves discussion, however this is one. A year ago Carla del Ponte, the Chief Prosecutor of the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal published her biography. In it she confirmed having, 8 years previously, investigated reports from western journalists that NATO "police," formerly known as the KLA, had kidnapped & dissected, while still alive, at least 1,300 Serb teenagers & that the presumably 10s of thousands of body parts had been flown out of Tirana airports to western destinations. Her team had indeed found a building where 300 of these murders took place together with forensic evidence proving this atrocity. Then she stopped the investigation.

Since then there have been further investigations proving that such dissections were more extensive than thought & still going on. The EU even appointed a lawyer to look into the matter.

Over the last year we have seen leader writers & front page articles denouncing the Chinese government for their "heavy handed" breaking up of riots in Tibet in which less than 2 dozen died, most of them ethnic Chinese. We have seen headlines & denunciations of Russia's action which prevented a Georgian attempt to "ethnically cleanse" the entire South Ossetian population. We have seen massive reporting of the Israeli war against Hammas in which about 800 people died, overwhelmingly Hammas combatants.

How shameful that atrocities worse in numbers, infinitely worse in cruelty & forming only a part of the crimes carried out under NATO authority have gone virtually entirely unreported by British Press & broadcasters.

Faithfully
Neil Craig
Del Ponte's initial report http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/ips040108.htmSubsequent investigation http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/dcn100108.htm

PS Its OK I don't expect you to publish this. The only paper to publish even one previous letter on the subject was the Scotsman. The late Josef Goebbels managed a similar level, of censorship but then he could send journalists to concentration camps. How fortunate that today's journalists are sufficiently sensitive not to such threats to prevent them reporting.
===============================
List of US newspapers which are censoring this
San Francisco Chronicle
Time
The Star
New York Times
LA Times
Wall St Journal
USA Today
Globe
Seattle Times
& all Scottish & UK national papers

If anybody sees this letter, even in severely edited form, published, or even if any of them report the basic facts in any way please send me a link & I will put it up here. If a single journalist, anywhere in any NATO country feels able to defend their record as being honest on this, or even explain why they are to some extent honest on any other subject I will be happy to see their comments.

Anthony Watts of Watts Up With That has been keeping a record of how the MSM reports "Global Warming".On Tuesday he said

Over the last year or so I have been taking an informal survey of a key news metric - Google news searches for the term “global warming.” A year ago, the ratio of alarmist/skeptical articles was close to 100/1. About six months ago, the ratio was 90/10, Two months ago it was 80/20, and today it hit 50/50 for the first time

Google News searches mainly show US results but we are notoriously a bit behind the US in fashions. It has long been obvious that alarmists were very much in a minority on newspaper online comments but then they are, relatively, uncensored. Indeed George Moonbat has regularly railed against the fact that this vast majority, even in the Guardian, dares to disagree with him. However if even the newspapers themselves are finding their promotion of this swindle so unpopular that they can't keep pushing it then the game is indeed up.

Well not on the BBC where they do not yet aspire to even 1% accuracy.

Now beware of the next eco-fascist scare story coming up. Here are some pld ones I put up as an April fool threat 3 years ago. Since then I have found out acid rain & obviously last years claims that we had reached peak oil were lies too. Will 1 or more of the old ones get a retread from the eco-fascists or will it be a new one?

With the Information Commissioner's Office website having an undertaking to answer any questions about any refusal to act on any Freedom of Information Act inquiry I got an email from them yesterday afternoon (ie 14 days after I appealed to them) saying it was a Scottish matter & I should therefore contact the separate Scottish organisation. I note that the ICO site does not mention only covering England, indeed it actively claims the opposite.

the ICO is the UK's independent public body set up to protect personal information and promote public access to official information.

On the other hand they are merely stretching the law to protect SEPA. Their claim to have proven the radioactivity at Dalgety Bay, they are allegedly so worried about, isn't simply normal background radiation there since before humans arrived there is clearly untrue. The ICO aren't actually breaking their own rules.

However the ICO must, on a purely population basis, be finding that about 15% of queries from the public (I assume journalists will know the rules) are having to be returned, after a 14 day delay, on the grounds that they come from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. One would have thought they could run it better :-)
----------------------
I have emailed the Scottish Information Commissioner repeating the email I sent to the ICO with this cover:

2 weeks ago today I put this on the Information Commissioner's Office site by their complaints form

Since they guarantee to come up with a response in 14 days they have, today, said it was nothing to do with them & I should contact you. How unfortunate that the 2 organisations are not on speaking terms or they could have sent you this automatically & how unfortunate that absolutely nobody in the ICO was aware, with anything less than 14 days investigations, that no such contact was possible.

A cynical person might think they had deliberately been delaying & finding a pretext purely to protect civil servants in SEPA who have clearly & deliberately broken the law.

Please acknowledge receipt of this & whether your organisation will be able to reach a decision as to jurisdiction & everything else within 14 days.

Hopefully they will acknowledge later today.