Guns, Germs & Steeled » 2004

WSJ Uses Tsunami to Bash Environmentalists

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To: The Wall Street Journal

Dear Editor:The Wall Street Journal should offer an apology to its readers. In the OpEd piece entitled “A Great Natural Disaster” on December 28, 2004, your paper implied that two environmentalists, Stephen Tindale of Greenpeace UK and Tony Jupiter of Friends of the Earth, used the tsunami disaster to press an environmental agenda. Your piece implied that the two men stated some relation between the recent tsunami disaster in southeast Asia and global warming. You completely took their words out of context. Both men spoke only about climate-related disasters in the article in The Independent. Neither made any reference to the tsunami event as your editorial implies and I suspect that statements by both men were made before the tsunami occurred. Of course tsunamis are not climate-related.

In you efforts to paint environmentalists as extremists, your paper overstepped the bounds of good journalism by innuendo and false reporting.

Stephen C. Nodvin, Ph.D.

Posted under Environment, Political Interference in Science, Politics, Science by Stephen Nodvin on Wednesday 29 December 2004 at 3:08 pm

George Will Should Know Better

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The title of George Will’s column in the December 23, 2004 Washington Post is “Global Warming? Hot Air“. Will refers to Michael Crichton’s new fictional novel, “State of Fear,” to suggest that scientists’ concerns about global warming are no more that “chicken-little” fear mongering. (more…)

Posted under Environment, Political Interference in Science, Politics, Science by Stephen Nodvin on Friday 24 December 2004 at 3:22 pm

War Crimes

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Liberty Vandalized
It is pretty appalling when the Washington Post publishes an editorial entitled “War Crimes”.
There is really nothing to say other than to reproduce the text of the editorial here:

War Crimes

The Washington Post: Thursday, December 23, 2004; Page A22

THANKS TO a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups, thousands of pages of government documents released this month have confirmed some of the painful truths about the abuse of foreign detainees by the U.S. military and the CIA — truths the Bush administration implacably has refused to acknowledge. (more…)

Posted under Politics, War by Stephen Nodvin on Thursday 23 December 2004 at 7:51 am

New Government Rules Reduce Forest & Wildlife Protections

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As part of its ongoing efforts to rollback environmental policy, the Bush Administration today released new rules governing the National Forest Management Act. The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) stated that the new rules would undermine wildlife protection and exclude the public, other agencies and independent scientists from forest management planning. (more…)

Posted under Environment, Political Interference in Science, Politics, Science by Stephen Nodvin on Wednesday 22 December 2004 at 10:26 pm

U.S. Waters Down Global Commitment to Curb Greenhouse Gases

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Probably to no one’s surprise, the United States blocked efforts to begin more substantive discussions on ways to slow down global warming at the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 10) in Buenos Aires this week. (more…)

Posted under Environment, Political Interference in Science, Politics, Science by Stephen Nodvin on Saturday 18 December 2004 at 10:58 pm

Deluge of More than 100,000 Vets May Need Treatment

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Veterans
“There’s a train coming that’s packed with people who are going to need help for the next 35 years,” said Stephen L. Robinson Executive Director of the National Gulf War Resource Center as reported today in the New York Times.

The Times article states that because about one million American troops have served so far in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Pentagon figures, some experts predict that the number eventually requiring mental health treatment could exceed 100,000. (more…)

Posted under Politics, War by Stephen Nodvin on Thursday 16 December 2004 at 11:39 am

Possible AIDS Cure?

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HIV Virus
The Associated Press is reporting that researchers at Rutgers “have developed a trio of drugs they believe can destroy HIV, the virus that causes AIDS”. Information on the most promising of the three drugs, R278474, was published in the electronic edition of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. (more…)

Posted under Science by Stephen Nodvin on Monday 13 December 2004 at 6:09 pm

Annual Climate Change Conference being Held in Buenos Aires

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The Annual Climate Change Convention conference is being held in Buenos Aires, Argentina from 6 to 17 December 2004. This is the tenth session of what is know as the "Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change" (or COP 10). The conference’s 5,000+ participants include representatives from 189 "Parties" or countries, including the United States. (more…)