The Eagle Is Back

The avian symbol of our nation is no longer on the endangered species list. That’s great news.

If you read stories about it, though, they’ll probably propogate the most deadly myth of the last century: That DDT was involved in their decline. It wasn’t. But Rachel Carson’s screed puts her in rarified company:

Those hearings found that, contrary to Carson’s alarm, DDT had no deleterious effect on humans, freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife. And yet, 10 years after publication of Carson’s scare-manual and after 7 months of testimony, the 2 year old EPA banned DDT due to its “unreasonable adverse effects on man and the environment.”

As no other pesticide has proven effective against malarial mosquitoes, this action put the final signature on what would amount to the death warrant of up to 3 million people each and every year.

As a gruesome corollary, unbridled environmental activism killed more people last century than Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Ze-Dong, Hideki Tojo and Pol Pot combined. Granted, the deaths were inadvertent — but then, the perverse consequences of unqualified system meddling generally are. Global warming scare-mongers – pay heed!

(Emphasis added)

I hope he’s sincere

Charles at LGF takes this with a grain of salt, given the man’s past associations. On the other hand, this is exactly the sort of thing we need to encourage.

If our country is going to take on radicals and violent extremists, Muslim scholars must go back to the books and come forward with a refashioned set of rules and a revised understanding of the rights and responsibilities of Muslims whose homes and souls are firmly planted in what I’d like to term the Land of Co-existence. And when this new theological territory is opened up, Western Muslims will be able to liberate themselves from defunct models of the world, rewrite the rules of interaction and perhaps we will discover that the concept of killing in the name of Islam is no more than an anachronism.

Algore’s Honesty

I wonder if His Dimness ever thought what the book title looks like:

The Assault On Reason
by Al Gore

Freudians could have a field day.

Over at the American Thinker, Marc Sheppard lays out the real assault.

Adding a false sense of legitimacy to the over-hyping of CO2’s potential greenhouse gas (GHG) effect on warming is the oft-Gore-quoted yet woefully compromised Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These United Nations based “consensus builders” summarily dismiss solar activity in favor of more politically favorable culprits.

One former member and current outspoken critic of the panel testified to its bias before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in May of 2001. As I wrote following the release of the Working Group I Summary in February of this year, Dr. Richard Lindzen swore that, based on his experiences as a member, the IPCC was actually created specifically to support negotiations concerning CO2 emission reductions and would accept no contrary findings from its members.

Read the whole thing.

While al Qaeda decapitates farmers

as Michael Yon reported, the MSM is busy coming up with fake decapitation stories. All part of their “aid and abet” program, apparently. Chris Muir nails it. Again.

The Anwar Awakening

Michael Totten with more on the apparent success of the “surge” (which, as he points out, cannot have yet failed since it’s just getting started.)

Just about anything can happen in Iraq. The Anbar Awakening may not last. Empowered Sunnis in that province may end up gunning for the Shia for all anyone knows.

But if anything can happen, it may just yet last. Iraqi Kurds fought a pointless civil war in the 1990s after they were liberated from Saddam Hussein before they matured into the political grown-ups they are today. The Lebanese fought an Iraq-style civil war for fifteen years, but almost none – not even Hezbollah – want to go back to that even after the Syrian regime has spent years trying to get them fighting again.

Iraqis have disappointed and made suckers of many of us. But they aren’t robots of perpetual war any more than the Kurds or Lebanese were.

Totten links to a good article putting Phantom Thunder in context.

As you evaluate the still nascent “surge”, read about the decline in a Qaeda operations, and contemplate the decline in civilian casualties. Not to mention my idea of a fine kill ratio:

But civilian deaths occur. U.S. military officials said two pre-dawn raids Saturday in Shiite-dominated Sadr City in eastern Baghdad killed 26 “terrorists” and captured 17 fighters with links to Iran. U.S. forces said they opened fire on fighters detonating roadside bombs or firing guns and rocket-propelled grenades from buildings and from behind parked cars.

No U.S. casualties were reported.

Bless the Beasts and the Children

Michael Yon’s latest dispatch will fill you with rage, pity, sadness, and more rage. It tells the story of a village wiped out by al Qaeda: men, women, and decapitated children. Warning: The photos are not appropriate for children to see.

Michael Ledeen gets it right:

I stopped saying “faster, please” some time ago, because it is obvious that W and his people are not going to take the proper actions against the terror masters. But we must be clear about the nature of the war and the bestial nature of our enemies. Nobody does it better than Michael Yon.