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It’s Academic: Kinsey’s Love Affair with Pedophilia Three Generations Later

April 12, 2014/in Culture War, Education, Featured, News, Policy, Science/by Dr. Judith Reisman

Twentieth-century philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead defined western philosophy as “footnotes to Plato.” Similarly, sexology can be defined as “footnotes to Alfred Kinsey,” whose psychopathologies are writ large in the hetero and homosexual child-abuse epidemic that is touching every corner of the world, particularly in academic settings.

My own academic case study illustrates the woeful state we are in. On June 18, 1986, American University’s (AU) celebrated psychology chairman, Dr. Elliot McGinnies, was discreetly “charged with sexually abusing a 9-year-old girl on four occasions in his trailer at a nudist colony.” Meanwhile, my staff and I were being rather indiscreetly banished from our AU annex. AU administrators deliberately subverted our research on both Professor Kinsey’s child sex crimes and our findings of systematic child sex abuse by “Kinsey’s pamphleteer,” Hugh Hefner, which were published in a U.S. Department of Justice study titled Images of Children, Crime and Violence in Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler (1984–1986), a study for which I was principal investigator. Why were we targeted, I wondered?

Was there more to it than McGinnies’ nudist escapades? Did other AU academics protect their colleague in order to protect themselves from exposure? Indeed, birds of a feather must have flocked together: In 1990, AU’s distinguished president, Dr. Richard Berendzen, pled guilty to charges arising from years of making obscene phone calls to daycare centers. Berendzen would call the centers and talk to the caretakers about having sex with children, child pornography, and sex-slave auctions, and he even claimed to be keeping a 4-year-old girl caged in his basement.

Shocking but Not Surprising

Fast forward 21 years, to the arrest of Penn State’s popular assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, for allegedly engaging in the sexual molestation of boys over a period of at least 15 years. In the wake of Sandusky’s arrest, head coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier were fired, and other Penn State officials were formally charged with failing to report Sandusky’s alleged abuse to proper authorities.

Spanier himself had subscribed to Kinsey’s views for years. In 1972, he endorsed Kinsey to the Midwest Sociological Society, claiming that Kinsey had accurately documented the “widespread existence of extramarital sexual relations” in the United States. In 1976, under a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Development, Spanier validated Kinsey’s data on “childhood sex play”5 for similar “scholars.” More recently, Spanier approved the choice of Pat Califia, a transgendered advocate of sadomasochism and pedophilia, as the keynote speaker for a women’s health conference held at Penn State in 2002. The previous year, the group Womyn’s Concerns hosted a “Sex Faire” on campus, featuring such activities as “orgasm bingo” and “the tent of consent.” Asked if the fair was morally wrong, Spanier was quoted as saying, “It depends on what your definition of immoral is.” So while news of the Sandusky affair is shocking, it should come as no surprise.

About the same time as the charges against Sandusky surfaced, Syracuse University associate basketball coach Bernie Fine was also charged with having engaged in homosexual child abuse and fired. Like Sandusky, Fine had allegedly been molesting boys for years. One of his accusers, a former ball boy, said Fine had abused him for six years, beginning as long ago as 1984.

Training in Deviancy

Alfred Kinsey

In fact, as long ago as 1948, the world’s future leaders were being taught that sex with children was intelligent adult behavior. Their teacher was that Rockefeller Foundation-funded biology professor at Indiana University, Alfred Kinsey. For 64 years—almost three generations—his Sexual Behavior in the Human Male has trained millions of young college students—like Berendzen, McGinnies, Sandusky, Spanier, and Fine—to believe that all sexual perversion is normal. Both hetero- and homosexual interactions with children are said to help children by replacing “sexually repressed” Judeo-Christian morality with a more “enlightened” sexual worldview. According to one Kinsey disciple, the late Dr. Loretta Haroian, “free sexual expression of children” requires “a sexually supportive society . . . in which every man, woman and child can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to sex.” Dr. Haroian was a member of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, which has trained millions of “sexologists” in the Kinsey mode.

The inroads made by the academic pedophile coterie are reflected not just in the reports coming out of Penn State and Syracuse, but also in earlier incidents at American University, Johns Hopkins, and scores of other institutions of higher learning. Academic journals embraced the Kinseyan worldview early on, as illustrated by Ralph Slovenko’s comment in the 1962 Vanderbilt Law Review that “even at the age of four or five, [a girl’s] seductiveness may be so powerful as to overwhelm the adult into committing the offense”; in other words, a little child could be an “initiator and seducer.”

In 2007, the first Chinese-language book on Kinsey (English title: Kinsey, the Man Who Has Changed the World) was published and sold 500,000 copies in China. Co-author Liana Zhou, head of the Kinsey Institute library, says that, thanks to Kinsey’s “pioneering” work, we can now “study human sexuality within the confines of science rather than only through the lens of religion or social morality.” In Italy, researchers claim to have found a possible “pedophile” gene, and the bankrupt Greek government has just amended state-recognized disability categories to include “pedophiles, exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs.” So now the sexual immorality and psychopathologies of Kinsey are being spread in other countries, too.

All this modern sexual insanity may be a “footnote to Alfred Kinsey,” but a few people are trying to set the story straight. When former presidential candidate Michele Bachmann was told by a critic that “10 percent of the population is gay,” she replied, “Well, that’s according to the Kinsey Report.” Her husband, Marcus, then added, “It’s been a myth for many years.” Alas, that myth invented by Kinsey, “the Man Who Has Changed the World,” has been normalizing abusive sex education, pornography, child sexual abuse, and sexual trauma all over the world, training millions to be as sexually insane as he was.

Special thanks to Mary McAlister, Esq., who contributed to this article.

Endnotes:

1. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, (Free Press, 1979), p. 39.
2. www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/NudistHallofShame/McGinnies.html.
3. http://articles.philly.com/1994-05-15/living/25829613_1_childhood-sexualabuse-richard-berendzen-child-pornography.
4. www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/12/penn_state_officials_tim_curle_2.html.
5. Graham B. Spanier, “Mate Swapping,” Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 4, no. 2, 1975, and “Formal and Informal Sex Education,” ibid., vol. 5, no. 1, 1976.
6. www.wnd.com/2002/03/13317.
7. http://www.localsyr.com/sitesearch?q=Bernie-Fine%20fired%20from%20Syracuse%20University
8. www.ejhs.org/volume3/Haroian/body.htm.
9. R. Slovenko & J. Phillips, “Psycho sexuality and the Criminal Law,” 15 Vanderbilt Law Review (1961–1962).
10. www.kinseyinstitute.org/newsletter/sp2008/zhoubook.html.
11. http://worldcrunch.com/therepedophilia-gene/4032.
12. http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-01-10/news/30613327_1_disability-welfare-system-greece.
13. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/18/bachmann-pausesin-iowa-tour-to-talk-myth-of-kinseyreport

The Methane Hoax Cranks Up

April 11, 2014/in Commentary, Environment, News, Policy, Science, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Alan Caruba

Having spent decades trying to convince everyone that carbon dioxide (CO2) was a “greenhouse gas” that was going to cause the Earth to heat up, the same environmental charlatans are now embarking on a campaign to do the same with methane. In the U.S. the first move was announced by the White House in late March.

The carbon dioxide hoax fell apart in the wake of a cooling cycle affecting the Earth that began around 1997 and continues to this day. Warming and cooling cycles are natural events and both are tied to the activity or lack of it of the Sun. Humans have nothing to do with the climate other to enjoy or endure it.

Why methane? It has a lot to do with the development of hydraulic fracturing, commonly called “fracking”, and the way it unlocks natural gas, aka methane, all of which portends an America that is energy independent, along with its huge reserves of coal and oil. If, of course, the government permits this to occur.

As we know, the Obama administration does not want that. It would mean more jobs, greater prosperity, and the ability to pay down the national debt, not to mention drive down the cost of electricity, gasoline, and everything else that depends on energy.

Despite the cooling cycle that is likely to last for many more years, Steve Hamburg, chief scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, was quoted by the Washington Post saying that “ounce for ounce, methane is 84 times as potent as a greenhouse gas over 20 years” compared to carbon dioxide. “More than a third of the warming that we’ll see as a result of today’s emissions over the next couple of decades comes from, essentially, methane. We need to remain focused on carbon dioxide emissions, but doing so is not enough.”

Excuse me, but the Environmental Defense Fund and countless other Green advocacy groups have been focused on carbon dioxide for decades and the Earth is cooling, not warming. What part of this does Hamburg not understand?

James M. Taylor, the managing editor of Environment & Climate News, a national monthly published by The Heartland Institute, reported in January that “Natural gas fracking is not causing a spike in the U.S. methane emissions”, citing Environmental Protection Agency data. “Methane emissions specific to natural gas are in a long-term decline, down ten percent since 1990 and down seven percent since 2007 when the fracking boom began.”

The Washington Post, however, asserted that emission levels “are set to rise by 2030 as shale oil and shale gas production expands in the United States.” Do you remember all those predictions about the increase of carbon dioxide emissions and how, in ten, twenty, fifty or a hundred years, the Earth would heat up?

This is not about methane, it is about finding a way to shut down fracking and the extraction of natural gas and oil in the same way the Obama administration’s “war on coal” has caused the loss of over 150 coal-fired plants that until it began, were providing electricity. Reducing sources of electricity drives up its cost to everyone. As more natural gas came on line by 2013 it had become the second greatest source of U.S. electricity, but overall the amount of electricity produced was less than in 2007 before the war on coal began.

A natural component of the Earth, it has a number of sources, but one that has also caught the eye of government regulators involves cow flatulence and belching.

The White House has proposed cutting methane emissions from the dairy industry by 25% by 2020. The Environmental Protection Agency has been tracking cow farts since 2012 and now the dairy industry has to worry along with the oil and gas industry. In addition to the EPA, the Bureau of Land Management will be announcing “new standards this fall to reduce venting and flaring from oil and gas production on public lands.”

It’s often best just to let the Greens speak for themselves, revealing their never-ending efforts to attack the energy industry that keeps our lights on, heats and cools our homes, and fuels our cars and trucks. “President Obama’s plan to reduce climate-disrupting methane pollution is an important step in reining in an out of control industry exempt from too many public health protections,” said Deborah Nardone, the director of the Sierra Club’s Keeping Dirty Fuels in the Ground campaign.

“However,” said Ms. Nardone, “even with the most rigorous methane controls in place, we will still fall short of what is needed to fight climate disruption if we do not reduce our reliance on these dirty fossil fuels.”

What the heck is a climate disruption? A blizzard, a hurricane, a flood, tornadoes? None of these phenomena have anything to do with using fossil fuels. This is the kind of utter drivel we have all been hearing for decades.

It has nothing to do with the climate and everything to do with denying access and use of the greatest reserves of coal, oil and natural gas that exist in the greatest nation on Earth, the United States of America.

Is Lying About Climate Change Okay?

April 10, 2014/in Environment, Must Read, News, Policy, Regulation, Science/by Alan Caruba

Those of us who have chronicled the global warming hoax, now called “climate change”, know that it is based on decades of lies about carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gas” with predictions that the Earth will heat up and cause massive problems unless those emissions are drastically reduced by not using coal, oil and natural gas.

Two American think tanks, The Heartland Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) have been among those exposing those lies for years. The lies have been generated and led by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Despite the panel’s insistence that the Earth is getting hotter, five different datasets show that there have been no observable warming for 17 and a half years even as carbon dioxide levels have risen 12%,” notes Christopher Monckton, a science advisor to Britain’s former Prime Minister Thatcher. “The discrepancy between prediction and observation continues to grow.”

Recently, two Chinese assistant professors of economics, Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao, were published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Their paper, “Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements”, openly advocated lying about global warming/climate change in order to get nations to sign on to the International Environmental Agreement.

“It appears that news media and some pro-environmental organizations,” they noted, “have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency.”

Craig Rucker, CFACT’s Executive Director, responded to the Chinese authors saying “They’re shameless.” Theirs and others ends-justify-the-means tactics reflects the attitudes and actions of environmental organizations and serves as a warning to never accept anything they say on any aspect of this huge hoax.

CFACT’s President and co-founder, David Rothbard, noted that “Global warming skeptics have long charged that alarmists are over-hyping the dangers of climate change.” How long? Back in 1989, the late Stanford University professor, Stephen Schneider, said, “So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ which we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance between being effective and being honest.”

There is no “right balance” between telling lies and telling the truth when it comes to science or any other aspect of our lives. Suffice to say that thousands of scientists who participated in the IPCC reports over the years supported the lies, but many have since left and some have openly denounced the reports.

As the latest IPCC summary of its report has garnered the usual verbatim media coverage of its outlandish predictions, The Heartland Institute has released its own 1,062 page report from the “Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) called “Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts. An 18-page summary is available at http://ClimateChangeReconsidered.org.

Among its findings:

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
There is little or no risk of increasing food insecurity due to global warming or rising atmospheric CO2 levels.
Rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels do not pose a significant threat to aquatic life.
A modest warming of the planet will result in a net reduction of human mortality from temperature-related events.

Based on hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, the NIPCC report is free of the lies that are found in the IPCC report whose studies have been, at best, dubious, and at worst, deliberately deceptive.

In light of the natural cooling cycle the Earth has been in that is good news and it will be even better news when the planet emerges from the cycle that reflects the lower levels of radiation from the Sun.

On March 31, CNS News reported that “The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report estimates it will cost developed nations an additional $100 billion each year to help poorer nations adapt to the devastating effects of ‘unequivocal’ global warming, including food shortages, infrastructure breakdown, and civil violence. But that figure was deleted from the report’s executive summary after industrial nations, including the United States, objected to the high price tag.”

The price tag reveals the IPCC’s real agenda, the transfer of funds from industrial nations to those less developed. It’s about the money and always has been. It’s not global warming the planet needs to survive, it is the costly lies about it.

ALERT: UN’s World Environment Day Coming to Sarasota, Florida

April 10, 2014/in Environment, Featured, News, Science/by Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)

The Observer’s Alex Mahadevan reports, “Sarasota County may be a quickly-growing international tourism destination for its beaches, but now the United Nations has highlighted the community for its environmental accomplishments. The United Nations Environmental Programme Regional Office for North America (UNEP RONA) has chosen the county as its host community for World Environment Day, which is celebrated internationally June 5. The UNEP RONA will showcase Sarasota County, which will host environmentally-focused events beginning on Earth Day and culminating with a roundtable session.”

This announcement comes the day after two climate experts spoke at an event hosted by Beth Colvin from the Sarasota Patriots. The two experts are John Casey, President of the Orlando based Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC), and Craig Rucker, Executive Director of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).

Both men spoke about the greatest fraud ever perpetrated upon the world – the United Nations’ man-made global warming campaign. World Environment Day (WED) is part of that effort to keep alive what both men showed was a unscientific theory that has been disproven by actual events. The theme of WED 2014 is the threat of rising sea levels. The tag line for WED 2014 is “Raise your voice, not the sea level”.

Casey during his presentation pointed out that sea levels along the Western shores of the United States are dropping due to the Pacific Ocean waters cooling. He announced in August of 2013 that the global threat of sea level rise caused by decades of global warming is ending.

“As a result of the Sun entering a ‘hibernation’ phase, the Space and Science Research Corporation hereby declares that the past two hundred years of global sea level rise is expected to end no earlier than mid-2014 and no later than 2020. After that time, global sea levels are expected to begin a long term period of decline, lasting at least through the decade of the 2030’s. The estimated global sea level decline during that period will range from 20 to 25 cm from current levels.”

Casey elaborated with, “The many climate models that have taken two decades and billions of dollars to fabricate have been utter scientific failures. Once you take the greenhouse gas theory out of the laboratory and try in in the real world it just does not stand up. Not only has there been no effective growth in the planet’s temperature for sixteen years, but current temperature trends show the Earth’s oceans have been cooling for ten years and the atmosphere for seven years! These real world indicators of the true status of the Earth’s climate are of course, an impossibility if the greenhouse gas theory really worked and mankind’s CO2 emissions had the effect as has been alleged. On the other hand, using solar variations for climate prediction, we see global warming ended and the next climate began right on schedule.”

Rucker speaking at the UN climate change conference in Bonn, Germany in June 2013 stated, “We at CFACT continue to be amazed at how people cling to their global warming talking points at UN climate conferences like this one and keep their heads buried in the sand whenever new information comes in. The United Nations cannot go on paying no heed to real world observational data, nor the expense, ineffectiveness, waste, fraud and abuse surrounding the policies being proposed. Sadly, to attend a UN climate conference, is to enter an unrealistic wonderland.”

Rucker made these points about global warming science and policy which are not receiving the attention they deserve:

Global temperatures have been at a standstill since the nineties.
Climate computer models call for a warmer world than that we have actually experienced.
With little warming and none in recent years, claims that global warming is causing current extreme weather have no basis in reality and shamelessly exploit natural tragedies.
Climate science is not “settled” and there is not, nor has there ever been a scientific “consensus”
The climate mitigation policies that have been put in place and are being advocated for are ineffective and hugely riddled with waste, fraud and abuse.

Rucker concluded with, “[W]ith temperatures at a standstill, science unsettled, and global warming waste, fraud and abuse rampant, it is incumbent on the nations of the world to reassess and radically readjust the climate process. The first step is ending the climate of intimidation and suppression surrounding those who dare to question global warming science and policy. Eyes and minds need to open. Questioning and dissent should be welcomed. The media should stop reporting extreme, but shallow global warming claims without investigation, balance or question.

“The UN should return to valuing the freedom and prosperity which enables us as a species to be true stewards of our environment. The nations united here today should swear an economic and environmental Hippocratic oath and resolve immediately when considering climate policy, to ‘first do no harm’,” said Rucker.

Perhaps the Sarasota County Commissioners should reconsider being part of this hoax upon all Americans? Perhaps it is time to learn the truth about what WED is really all about? Perhaps the Sarasota County Commission should “first do no harm” to its citizens?

Chasing Dystopian Rainbows by STEWART DOMPE, ADAM C. SMITH

April 9, 2014/in Commentary, Environment, News, Science/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

It seems scientism passes for science these days.

There are rarely any happy prophets. To get headlines you have to claim the world is ending. Add generous helpings of doom and gloom—and a pinch of apocalypse—and you’ll widen your audience.

The most recent batch of dire predictions for humanity’s future takes the same dramatic approach. You might think these are coming from the usual suspects—believers in the Mayan calendar or radical Evangelical interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. Nope. Apparently, this global, glass-half-empty prediction is the consensus of the mainstream scientific community. Or so we’re told.

Just last week, the United Nations released its IPCC report, which states that if we don’t meet global climate change head on, then all of humanity will soon be a vulnerable, dreary mess with plenty of natural disasters, famines, and other dismal scenarios to look forward to. Despite its attempt at shock and awe, there’s nothing new being offered in the report. We don’t want to suggest there are no potential problems looming in the future, but rather remind readers that one must be precise in articulating the problem if one is to propose a solution. Even among the strongest proponents of climate change, there is still considerable debate about the strength of their models given the serious shortcomings in the precision of their forecasts.

Collapse: Houston, We Have a Problem

One exemplar of this wave of dystopia is a bit of research ostensibly conducted at the behest of NASA, presumably with your tax dollars. (See here, here, here, and here.) Study authors argue that not only will human civilization collapse, but that income inequality is intricately intertwined both in the causal process and in the timing of the collapse.

The NASA study is a good illustration of the risks in applying analytical tools to problems they are unsuited to analyze. Its Human and Nature DYnamics (HANDY) model is built on the predator-prey model—which simulates interactions among wolves and rabbits—where predator Elites do everything but literally cannibalize the Commoners. Their biological model, in this instance, is simply inappropriate. Or more charitably, it’s severely limited in dealing with problems better suited to political economy.

The study starts with an assumption about inequality that would make even Paul Krugman blush. People are placed into two categories: Elites and Commoners. “The economic activity of Elites is modeled to represent executive, management, and supervisory functions, but not engagement in the direct extraction of resources, which is done by Commoners. Thus, only Commoners produce,” the report says. Elites, as much modern thinking goes, do nothing but skim off the labor performed by Commoners. Given such assumptions, the model has nothing very encouraging to say about our future.

Models Just Aren’t That Smart

The authors might contend that theirs is a model of predator (humans) and prey (nature) but the Elites can only eat because of the existence of the Commoners. This is problematic for various reasons. For example, are Commoners also responsible for entrepreneurial discovery? Going further, the authors assume that not only do the Elites hold the Commoners at a subsistence wage but that the Elites will always pay themselves a wage k times larger than subsistence.

Over time, the gap widens as Elites populate at greater rates than Commoners, thus placing tremendous burdens on the supply of natural resources. At some point, this burden becomes so pronounced that extraction rates fall because the total population has exceeded the carrying capacity of the environment. Here’s what happens:

The Elites always pay themselves first;
Forced extraction exceeds the natural regeneration of the environment;
Commoners are then driven below subsistence income; and
Famine ensues.

Once Commoners start dying out, Elites are unable to sustain the economy without them and presto! Doomsday. (Have a nice day!)

Such a model might explain the population dynamics of North Korea, but it seems inapplicable to most of the modern world. So, the main problem with this “study” is that it doesn’t go much further than nineteenth-century economics in its assumptions about how the economy actually works. Using neo-Malthusian pseudoscience with a touch of Marxian class struggle only leaves us with an embarrassingly outdated framework that is about two hundred years past its prime. However elegant the mathematical model, the assumptions used to create it are beyond spurious.

The Ultimate Resource Redux

One of the fundamental differences between humankind and the rest of the animal kingdom is that we humans discover new resources and modes of production. When there are more wolves, there are fewer rabbits; but when there are more humans, there are more chickens. Malthus, despite some interesting insights, was catastrophically wrong in his prognostications about population and agricultural output. And neo-Malthusians have been even more wrong.

The simulation only serves to give the underlying argument a veneer of scientistic respectability. But it really is just as wrongheaded as Malthus’s original theory. Relaxing the initial assumption of extreme wealth inequality would not only be more realistic but would overturn the result, as Elites would only be able to extract surplus above wages set by the market, which would certainly be greater than subsistence for most workers. This would in turn check their ability to damage the underlying resource base.

Furthermore, the model assumes that any efficiency gains from technological progress are undermined by greater consumption (akin to Peltzman’s argument that better safety technology leads to greater consumption of risk). But then how do we explain how productivity gains in agriculture have led to exponential growth in other emergent sectors (manufacturing, services, computers, etc.)? We may consume more food but not nearly enough to balance out the productivity gains. So farm employment shrinks and resources move to other pursuits, making the world a wealthier place. These real-world phenomena are literally an impossible result in the NASA model.

Cross-disciplinary studies can offer new insights into how we should view human behavior. That said, those that offer only partisan parlor tricks and dystopian caterwauling should stick with reading Mayan calendars.

ABOUT STEWART DOMPE

Stewart Dompe is an instructor of economics at Johnson & Wales University. He has published articles in Econ Journal Watch and is a contributor to the forthcoming Homer Economicus: Using The Simpsons to Teach Economics.

ABOUT ADAM C. SMITH

Adam C. Smith is an assistant professor of economics and director of the Center for Free Market Studies at Johnson & Wales University. He is also a visiting scholar with the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University and coauthor of the forthcoming Bootleggers and Baptists: How Economic Forces and Moral Persuasion Interact to Shape Regulatory Politics.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is courtesy of FEE and Shutterstock.

SHOCK: New paper advocates ‘exaggeration’ & ‘manipulation’ about global warming to ‘enhance global welfare’

April 4, 2014/in Culture War, Environment, Must Read, News, Science, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Marc Morano from Climate Depot

A new peer-reviewed paper published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, titled “Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements”, is openly advocating that global warming proponents engage in mendacious claims in order to further their cause.

The paper appears to openly advocate lying or “information manipulation” to further the cause of man-made global warming and “enhance global welfare.”

The authors, Assistant Professors of Economics Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao, note how the media and environmental groups “exaggerate” global warming and then the offer their paper to “provide a rationale for this tendency” to exaggerate for the good of the cause.

The paper was published on February 24, 2014.

The author’s boldly note in the abstract of the study that the “news media and some pro-environmental have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency.”

“We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA (International Environmental Agreements) which will eventually enhance global welfare.”

The authors of the paper are Fuhai Hong, an assistant professor in the Division of Economics, Nanyang Technological University and Xiaojian Zhao is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. (fhhong@ntu.edu.sg)

The complete Abstract of the paper is reproduced below:

“It appears that news media and some pro-environmental organizations have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency by using a modified International Environmental Agreement (IEA) model with asymmetric information. We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA, which will eventually enhance global welfare. From the ex ante perspective however, the impact that manipulating information has on the level of participation in an IEA and on welfare is ambiguous.”

Reaction to the paper has been very critical. Craig Rucker of Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow CFACT (Climate Depot’s parent company) noted in an April 4 blog: “What will shock you is that two professors not only candidly admit it, but published a paper in a peer reviewed journal touting the beneficial effects of lying for pushing nations into a UN climate treaty in Paris next year!”

Rucker added: “The authors not only believe that their dubious ends justify their shady means, they institutionalize ‘information manipulation’ as a tactic, host panels about it at climate conferences and publish it in journals. They’re shameless.”

CFACT Davi’s Rothbard noted: “Global warming skeptics have long charged that alarmists are over-hyping the dangers of climate change. Now comes a new paper from two economists in Singapore and Hong Kong that actually advocates exaggerating global warming fears to get countries on board international environmental agreements.”

According to Kevin Glass of Townhall.com, the paper claims that the urgency of climate change makes it OK to deceive the public about the projected consequences of global warming. They don’t actually use the word “lying,” but by calling for “informational manipulation and exaggeration,” they certainly think the ends justify these very questionable and over-heated means.”

This is not the first time that global warming advocates have been accused of being deceptive.

The late Stanford University professor Stephen Schneider wrote in 1989: “So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” which we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.” Discovery Magazine (October, 1989, p. 45-48).

Former NASA global warming scientist James Hansen conceded in a 2003 issue of Natural Science that the use of “extreme scenarios” to dramatize global warming “may have been appropriate at one time” to drive the public’s attention to the issue.

April’s Fools: The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

April 4, 2014/in Commentary, Environment, News, Policy, Science/by Richard C. Savage, Ph.D.

On March 31st the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. You probably read something about it in your paper; almost certainly, you heard about it on the evening news from ABC, CBS, or NBC. But, why pay attention to the small fry, like Diane Sawyer or Brian Williams? The Secretary of State, John Kerry, tells us that “the costs of inaction are catastrophic.” Mr. Kerry apparently still believes “climate change” is the greatest weapon of mass destruction we face.

This report was brought to us by the same people who, last September, admitted their climate models tremendously exaggerate warming, as shown in the below graph.

For a larger view click on the graph.

There are thousands of balloon observations of the atmosphere daily, going back to the 1950’s. Since 1980, there have been millions of satellite measurements of the temperature of the mid-troposphere (15 – 30,000 feet). And, as the IPCC (and NASA, and NOAA, and the UK Meteorological Office) admit, there has been no global warming for over 17 years.

Think about that. Science is based on formulating a hypothesis about the cause of a phenomenon in nature, conducting an experiment to test that hypothesis, and then modifying or rejecting, or – rarely – accepting the original hypothesis (at least until you can conduct a more definitive experiment).

UN “climate scientists” – the sort accepted by the UN and John Kerry – have been observing an ongoing experiment in the atmosphere for over seventeen years. Throughout that time, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) has been increasing, by about 10%. The hypothesis is that CO2 “traps” heat in the atmosphere and warms the Earth. But no warming has been observed. How to explain this? Other than to admit the experiment demonstrates the hypothesis is false?

I personally accept that the hypothesis is false. In a previous article, I pointed out that, of infrared radiation emitted from Earth, and absorbed by a greenhouse gas (water vapor or CO2), at least half is re-radiated toward space. The other half (or less) is radiated downward; that’s the “greenhouse effect.” It acts like the insulation in the roof of your house, which helps the furnace keep the house warm, but it won’t set fire to the house. It won’t even heat the house by itself, in the absense of a furnace. You can live in a house with a furnace and no insulation, but a house with no furnace and lots of insulation will still be cold – at least some of the time.

But there are several excuses on offer for the lack of warming, such as the sun is getting colder, or the missing heat is hiding in the oceans, or there’s a lot more volcanic dust in the atmosphere than we thought, or oceanic winds are stronger than modelled, or we just don’t have enough observations in the right places….all excuses that were never mentioned before. Until the last six months, carbon dioxide was the one and only climate control. Now the story is changing; the models were just incomplete, and, as soon as they get their models improved (i.e., keep the “climate scientists” funded), they will figure out what the climate is really doing.

You should not believe this argument, for a fundamental reason. Models of the atmosphere are not reliable beyond about a week. A year? A century? Give me a break! Not a chance.

I’ve been musing over this for a couple of days – the impossibility of modelling the climate. I’m pleased to see that Lord Monckton of Brenchley has written on the same topic. You can read his description of why climate modelling is impossible as well – or you can simply write or call your local weather forecaster. None of this is a secret.

I became a student of meteorology in 1962, at Florida State, and I learned that scientific meteorological forecasting was becoming possible, through the ability of smart meteorologists (i.e., my professors) and the advent of very high-speed computers. The smart meteorologists would write the necessary non-linear partial differential equations in spherical coordinates on a rotating earth and initialize the boundary conditions from the thousands of surface and upper air balloon observations (with satellite observations yet to come) and run (i.e., find the solution that satisfied) the equations and out would come the forecast. Note the word initialize.

The next year, 1963, it all went to Hell. A very smart meteorologist, Ed Lorenz at MIT, started his computer and stepped away for a cup of coffee. When he came back, to his annoyance, he found the computer had stopped for some reason, only part way through. No reason to redo all the calculations, so he restarted the computer, and initialized the calculations with some of the values partway through. This time the calculations ran as far as he wanted, several days into the future. Much to his surprise, when he compared his partial results with the full results, they were very different. Much to everyone’s surprise, the solution to a set of deterministic non-linear partial differential equations depends very much on the initial conditions. Slightly – I mean infinitesimally – small initial condition differences can lead to wildly different forecasts. As Lorenz phrased it, “the flapping of a butterfly’s wings could lead to a tornado in Texas.”

So, how does a meteorologist know the initial conditions – always a little uncertain – won’t turn the forecast into nonsense? The National Meteorological Center runs the model several times, with small random variations in the numerical values of the initial conditions, to be sure the forecast doesn’t change drastically. But, over a few days, the inevitable errors – noise – in the initial value data will swamp the valid solution. The forecast always goes wrong.

As I said, every forecaster who has to face real customers in TV land, or the newspapers, or at the airport, or in the Air Force or Navy, is aware of this. That’s one of the reasons most real weather forecasters don’t believe the ivory tower “climate scientists” who offer prognostications of the climate a century from now. Have you noticed the “climate scientists” don’t bother to offer a forecast for next month? Or next year? Gee, I wonder what their verification statistics would look like?

Ed Lorenz discovered a new field of mathematics, called Chaos Theory, a major scientific development. It also includes fractals and fractal art, such as the Mandelbrot set. And the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock (I’m told) contain fractal characteristics. I guess meteorology’s loss is art’s gain. If you wish to know much more about Chaos Theory, The Great Courses (www.teach12.com) offers a very nice 24-lecture course by Professor Strogatz of Cornell.

Ann Curry

Breaking news: the propaganda campaign to control your life and take your money, in the name of saving our children from climate change, will get a fresh hour of nonsense from Ann Curry (NBC News) on Sunday evening, April 6, 7p/6c. Curry will assure us that 2013 was “a year of extremes” that proves …well, I’ll wait to see.

Report: Global Warming Causes ‘No Net Harm’ to Environment or Human Health

April 4, 2014/in Energy, Environment, Featured, Healthcare, News, Policy, Science/by Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)

Independent review of climate science contradicts “alarmist” views of United Nations report.

The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) on Monday released Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts. The 1,062-page report contains thousands of citations to peer-reviewed scientific literature — and concludes rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels are causing “no net harm to the global environment or to human health and often finds the opposite: net benefits to plants, including important food crops, and to animals and human health.”

Click here to read the full report in digital form (PDF). An 18-page Summary for Policymakers is available here. Print versions of the full report and the summary will be released by NIPCC in Washington, DC the week of April 7th. Individual chapters of the full report can be downloaded at the Climate Change Reconsidered Web site.

Among the findings in Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts:

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a non-toxic, non-irritating, and natural component of the atmosphere. Long-term CO2 enrichment studies confirm the findings of shorter-term experiments, demonstrating numerous growth-enhancing, water-conserving, and stress-alleviating effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 on plants growing in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
There is little or no risk of increasing food insecurity due to global warming or rising atmospheric CO2 levels.Farmers and others who depend on rural livelihoods for income are benefiting from rising agricultural productivity around the world, including in parts of Asia and Africa where the need for increased food supplies is most critical. Rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels play a key role in the realization of such benefits.
Rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels do not pose a significant threat to aquatic life. Many aquatic species have shown considerable tolerance to temperatures and CO2 values predicted for the next few centuries, and many have demonstrated a likelihood of positive responses in empirical studies. Any projected adverse impacts of rising temperatures or declining seawater and freshwater pH levels (“acidification”) will be largely mitigated through phenotypic adaptation or evolution during the many decades to centuries it is expected to take for pH levels to fall.
A modest warming of the planet will result in a net reduction of human mortality from temperature-related events.More lives are saved by global warming via the amelioration of cold-related deaths than are lost due to excessive heat. Global warming will have a negligible influence on human morbidity and the spread of infectious diseases.

NIPCC scientists and experts from Washington, DC-based think tanks will be in Washington the week of April 7th to publicly release the final two volumes of the Climate Change Reconsidered II series: Biological Impacts, which is available online at www.climatechangereconsidered.org, and Human Welfare, Energy, and Policies, which will become available online during the coming week.

ABOUT THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE

The Heartland Institute is a 30-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit the Heartland Institute website or call 312/377-4000.

ABOUT THE NONGOVERNMENTAL INTERNATIONAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE

The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is an international panel of scientists and scholars who first came together in 2003 to provide an independent review of the climate science cited by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). NIPCC has produced five major scientific reports so far and plans to release one more in the coming weeks. These reports have been endorsed by leading scientists from around the world, been cited in peer-reviewed journals, and are credited with changing the global debate over climate change. No corporate or government funding was solicited or received to support production of these reports.

Scaring the World about its Climate

April 2, 2014/in Commentary, Environment, News, Policy, Politics, Science/by Alan Caruba

Ever since the creation in 1988 of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it has engaged in the greatest hoax of modern times, releasing reports that predict climate-related catastrophes as if the climate has not been a completely natural and dynamic producer of events that affect our lives.

The IPCC was set up by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Program. It has enlisted thousands of scientists to contribute to its scare campaign, but as Joseph Bast, the president of The Heartland Institute, noted in a recent Forbes article regarding the vast difference in the assertions of the IPCC scientists and those of its puckishly named Non Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), “What is a non-scientist to make of these dueling reports? Indeed, what is a scientist to make of this?”

“Very few scientists are familiar with biology, geology, physics, oceanography, engineering, medicine, economics, and scores of other more specialized disciplines that were the basis of the claims…” The IPCC has depended on the ignorance of those scientists outside their particular disciplines and recruited them to be involved in the UN hoax. The rest of us look to them to provide guidance regarding issues involving the climate and, as a result, have been deliberately deceived.

The NIPCC, anticipating the latest IPCC addition to its climate scare campaign, has just issued a new addition to its “Climate Change Reconsidered” reports. The first volume was 850 pages long and the latest is more than 1,000 pages. It represents the findings of scores of scientists from around the world and thousands of peer-reviewed studies. At this point they represent some twenty nations.

I have been an advisor to The Heartland Institute for many years and have been exposing the climate change lies since the late 1980s. A science writer, I have benefited from the work of men like atmospheric physicist, S. Fred Singer, a founder of the NPCC who has overseen five reports debunking the IPCC since 2003.

The Heartland Institute has sponsored nine international conferences that have brought together many scientists and others in an effort to debunk the UN’s climate scare campaign.

I have always depended on the common sense of people to understand that humans have nothing to do with the climate except to endure and enjoy it. We don’t create it or influence it.

The global warming campaign is based on the Big Lie that carbon dioxide (CO2) traps the Sun’s heat and warms the Earth, but the fairly miniscule amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (0.038%) does not do that in a fashion that poses any threat. Indeed, it is the Sun that determines the Earth’s climate, depending where you happen to be on the Earth. Next to oxygen, CO2 is vital to all life on Earth as it is the “food” on which all vegetation depends. More CO2 is good. Less is not so good.

The IPCC has depended in part on the print and broadcast media to spread its Big Lie. It also depends on world leaders, few of whom have any background or serious knowledge of atmospheric science, to impose policies based on the Big Lie. These policies target the use of “fossil fuels”, oil, coal and natural gas, urging a reduction of their use. The world, however, utterly depends on them and, in addition to existing reserves, new reserves are found every year.

One reason the IPCC has been in a growing state of panic is a new, completely natural cooling cycle based on a reduction of solar radiation. As James M. Taylor, the managing editor of Heartland’s “Environment & Climate News”, pointed out recently, “Winter temperatures in the contiguous United States declined by more than a full degree Celsius (more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit) during the past twenty years.” He was citing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data. “The data contradicts assertions that human induced global warming is causing a rise in winter temperatures.”

In addition to the recent extremely cold winter, there have been others in 2000-2001 and 2009-2010. There will be more.

The IPCC report is full of claims about global warming, now called “climate change” since the world is obviously not warming. In March, Taylor rebutted an IPCC claim that crop production is falling, noting that global corn, rice, and wheat production have more than tripled since 1970. In recent years, the U.S. has set records for alfalfa, cotton, beans, sugar beets, canola, corn, flaxseed, hops, rice, sorghum, soybeans, sugarcane, sunflowers, peanuts, and wheat, to name just a few.

The Earth would benefit from more, not less, CO2 emissions, but the Obama administration has been engaged in imposing hundreds of new regulations aimed at reductions. It targets the development and expansion of our energy sector. The President has repeated the lies in his State of the Union speeches and we have a Secretary of State, John Kerry, who insists that climate change is the greatest threat to mankind and not the increase of nuclear weapons.

Every one of the Earth’s seven billion population are being subjected to the UN’s campaign of lies and every one of us needs to do whatever we can to bring about an end to the United Nations and reject the IPCC’s claims.

Looking for Answers to the Autism Epidemic in All the Wrong Places

April 2, 2014/in Culture War, Must Read, News, Policy, Science/by Joan Swirsky

Just last week, on March 24, 2014, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta (CDC) released its latest data on autism. After surveying medical and school records from 11 states, the CDC found that autism has more than doubled since the new century began only 14 years ago. Today the condition affects one out of 68 children – five times as many boys as girls. Alarmingly, there was a 30 percent climb in its incidence between 2008 and 2010.

Maybe you missed the story, since the day it broke, and the following day, the media –TV, radio, print – devoted about 30 seconds and just a few articles to this horrific report, significantly less time than is still spent endlessly speculating on Flight 370 or debating the use of the word “bossy,” both of which pale in comparison to the marathon of unendurable daily ads for Cialis and Viagra! Exhibit Number One in America’s priority system!

The powers-that-be at the CDC once again trotted out the age-old rationales to explain this bizarre finding:

Greater awareness and therefore earlier and more accurate diagnoses
The role that being an older parent plays not only in the incidence of autism but also Down syndrome and other developmental disabilities
Genes
“Something” in the environment

The study found that the incidence of autism in blacks “continues to lag behind whites and Hispanics,” which some experts attributed to racial bias (i.e., blacks lack equal access to medical care), but other experts said that blacks may simply be less vulnerable to autism for some unknown reason.

What is consistently omitted, however, is the role that ultrasound exams during pregnancy may and probably do play not only in this seeming black/white disparity, but in the rapidly-escalating incidence of the condition. More about that below.

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Autism is a neurological disorder that affects the normal development of the brain, causing self-defeating behaviors and an inability to form social relationships. It usually appears before the age of three. Most scientists believe that autism is strongly influenced by genetics but allow that environmental factors may also play a role.

To be diagnosed on the autistic spectrum, a child must have deficits in three areas:

Communication (most children can’t make eye contact; others can’t speak)
Social skills (typified by disinterest in both people and surroundings)
Typically “normal” behavior (many autistic children have tics, repetitive behavior, inappropriate affects, et al)

Those diagnosed on the autistic spectrum range from high-functioning, self-sufficient people, even geniuses, to those who need lifelong supportive help.

Newsday reporter Delthia Ricks interviewed Coleen Boyle, the Director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (a division of the CDC), who said that “8-year-olds [were chosen for the study] because, by that age, everyone with an autism-spectrum disorder usually will have been diagnosed.”

According to New York Times writer Benedict Carey, the study revealed “a huge range in autism prevalence… from one child in 175 found with autism in Alabama, to one in 46 in New Jersey.”

Other sites in the study, Carey reported, were in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Utah and Wisconsin.

After the CDC announced the horrifying results of its study, several members of Congress and advocacy groups called for more funding for research and support services.

A LARGELY-DEBUNKED THEORY

The increased incidence of autism has been attributed by legions of parents and a number of professionals to the mercury-containing preservative thimerosol, used to prevent bacterial or fungal contamination in the vaccines babies and children routinely receive.

This is not backed up by hard science.

Thimerosol, which has been used in vaccines since the 1930s, has not been used in the U.S. since 2001 and the vaccine dosages containing the preservative that were given before then had about the same amount of mercury found in an infant’s daily supply of breast milk.

Numerous studies – by the Centers for Disease Control, the Institute of Medicine, American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization, and the National Academy of Sciences, among others – have found no autism-vaccine link, while other studies have shown an increase in autism in countries that have removed thimerosal from vaccines.

Nevertheless, aided by salivating personal-injury lawyers, parents have filed thousands of lawsuits claiming that thimerosol “caused” their children’s autism. Between late 1999 and late 2002, mercury was removed from most childhood vaccines, including DPT (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis), Hepatitis B, and Hib [Haemophilus influenza b]. The MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella), which is a live vaccine, is not compatible with thimerosal.

Also abetting the quack science are figures like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who wrote an article, “Deadly Immunity,” for Rolling Stone magazine, which was reprinted in Salon.com. But Salon ended up removing the article from its website because of the scorn it received from the scientific community. Kennedy’s articles were “rife with factual errors and distortions,” wrote Robert V. Fineberg, M.D, president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

What appears significant, however, is the degree to which diagnoses of mental retardation and learning disabilities throughout the country have decreased at the same time as diagnoses of autism have risen, as reported in a May 2006 issue of Behavioral Pediatrics. Some experts theorize that “diagnostic substitution” may explain this phenomenon. Diagnostic Substitution means that children who were diagnosed with other conditions – including ADHD and learning disabilities – are now diagnosed with autism.

MY THEORY

In the early ‘70s, I worked as a delivery-room nurse at a university-affiliated hospital near my home on Long Island. It was a revolutionary time in obstetrics, when the Lamaze method of “prepared childbirth” and the use of sonograms to visualize fetuses were gaining popularity.

Actually, ultrasound technology was first developed in Scotland in the mid-1950s by obstetrician Ian Donald and engineer Tom Brown to detect industrial flaws in ships. By the end of the ‘50s, ultrasound was routinely used in Glasgow hospitals, but it was well into the 1970s before it was used in American hospitals to check that the developing baby, placenta, and amniotic fluid were normal and to detect abnormal conditions such as birth defects and ectopic pregnancies, et al.

At the end of the ‘70s, I became a certified Lamaze teacher and spent the next 22 years giving classes in my home. In a very real way, I had my own laboratory, as I learned directly from my clients about the increasing escalation of sonogram exams they had as the decades elapsed.

In the early 1980s, it was common for only one or two out of the 10 women in my classes to have a sonogram. In just a few years, every woman in my classes had had a sonogram. And in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, almost every woman had not one sonogram, but often two or three or four or five – starting as early as three or four weeks gestation and extending, in some instances, right up to delivery!

It was in the ‘90s, in fact, that it began to occur to me that the scary rise in the incidence of autism might be linked to the significant rise in ultrasound exams. Over the years, I’ve posited my theory to a number of people, written letters to the editors of newspapers – including the NY Times, for which I wrote for over 20 years, but they still refused to publish my letter – and e-mailed my idea to one of the top news people at the Fox News Network, but the we report/you decide powers-that-be on that station strangely decided not to report on this subject.

I contacted autism researchers Dr. Marcel Just and Dr. Diane L. Williams, who told me via e-mail that Dr. Pasko Rakic at Yale was, indeed, exploring the autism-ultrasound link.

Then, in 2006, I found an article in Midwifery Today, “Questions about Prenatal Ultrasound and the Alarming Increase in Autism,” by writer-researcher Caroline Rodgers.

“The steep increase in autism,” Rodgers wrote, “goes beyond the U.S.: It is a “global phenomenon”… that “has emerged…across vastly different environments and cultures.”

“What do countries and regions with climates, diets and exposure to known toxins as disparate as the U.S., Japan, Scandinavia, Australia, India and the UK have in common?” Rodgers asked.

“No common factor in the water, air, local pesticides, diet or even building materials and clothing can explain the emergence and relentless increase in this serious, life-long neurodevelopmental disorder,” she stated.

However, Rodgers added: “What all industrial countries do have in common is …the use of routine prenatal ultrasound on pregnant women. In countries with nationalized healthcare, where virtually all pregnant women are exposed to ultrasound, the autism rates are even higher than in the U.S., where due to disparities in income and health insurance, some 30 percent of pregnant women do not yet undergo ultrasound scanning.” Aha! Could this be why blacks and Hispanics in America continue to lag behind whites in the development of autism?

Even in remote, rural regions of developing countries like China, ultrasound is in common use because sex determination is so important to their one-child – preferably male – policy.

The cause of autism, Rodgers continues, “has been pinned on everything from `emotionally remote’ mothers…to vaccines, genetics, immunological disorders, environmental toxins and maternal infections – a far simpler possibility…is the pervasive use of prenatal ultrasound, which can cause potentially dangerous thermal effects.

ENTER HARD SCIENCE

In August 2006, Pasko Rakic, M.D., chair of Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Neurobiology, announced the results of a study in which pregnant mice underwent various durations of ultrasound. The brains of the offspring showed damage consistent with that found in the brains of people with autism.

The research, funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, also implicated ultrasound in neurodevelopmental problems in children, such as dyslexia, epilepsy, mental retardation and schizophrenia, and showed that damage to brain cells increased with longer exposures.

Dr. Rakic’s study, Rodgers said, “… is just one of many animal experiments and human studies conducted over the years indicating that prenatal ultrasound can be harmful to babies.”

In thedailybeast.com, Jennifer Margulis, author of Business of Baby: What Doctors Don’t Tell You, What Corporations Try to Sell You, and How to Put Your Baby Before Their Bottom Line, writes that Dr. Rakic “concluded that all nonmedical use of ultrasound on pregnant women should be avoided.”

In her research, Margulis said, she discovered that “there is mounting evidence that overexposure to sound waves – or perhaps exposure to sound waves at a critical time during fetal development – is to blame for the astronomic rise in neurological disorders among America’s children.”

PROBLEMS WITH SOUND AND HEAT

A 2009 article in Scientific American by John Slocum explains that sonar (Sound Navigation And Ranging) systems, which were first developed by the U.S. Navy to detect enemy submarines, “generate slow-rolling sound waves topping out at around 235 decibels; the world’s loudest rock bands top out at only 130. These sound waves can travel for hundreds of miles under water, and can retain an intensity of 140 decibels as far as 300 miles from their source.”

This is relevant because many mass deaths and strandings of whales and dolphins have been attributed to the sonar waves emitted from Navy ships. Slocum writes that a successful 2003 lawsuit against the Navy brought by the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to restrict the use of low-frequency sonar in waters rich in marine wildlife was upheld by two lower courts, but the Supreme Court “ruled that the Navy should be allowed to continue the use of some mid-frequency sonar testing for the sake of national security. “

There are hundreds if not thousands of cases that point to the dangers of sound waves. As many as 3,000 dead dolphins were found in Peru during the summer of 2012. Researchers at the Organisation for the Conservation of Aquatic Animals (ORCA), a Peruvian marine animal conservation organisation, attributed the mass deaths to the use of deep water sonar by ships in nearby waters. In June of 2008, four days after a Navy helicopter was using controversial sonar equipment during training exercises off the Cornish coast in Great Britain, 26 dolphins died in a mass stranding.

Two quick questions: If sonar beams can kill fully-developed dolphins, what effect, then, do they have on the developing brains of in-utero embryos and fetuses? And why is this never discussed or debated or mentioned on TV broadcasts like the ones last week that reported the CDC’s latest and quite disastrous findings?

Getting back to those embryos and fetuses, Rodgers explains that an ultrasound used in fetal imaging emits short pulses of high-frequency sound waves that reflect off the tissues of the fetus, and the return echoes are converted into images. In addition to vibration, ultrasound waves can cause heating of the tissue and bone.”

“When the transducer from the ultrasound is positioned over the part of the fetus the operator is trying to visualize,” she continues, “the fetus may be feeling vibrations, heat or both.”

Rodgers then cites a warning the Food and Drug Administration issued in 2004: “…even at low levels, [ultrasound] laboratory studies have shown it can have…”jarring vibrations” – one study compared the noise to a subway coming into a station – “and a rise in temperature.”

Imagine how these assaults affect the developing brain of a fetus!

Just as concerning, as far back 1982, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) study, “Effects of Ultrasound on Biological Systems,” concluded that “…neurological, behavioral, developmental, immunological, hematological changes and reduced fetal weight can result from exposure to ultrasound.” Two years later, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reported that when birth defects occurred, the acoustic output [of sonograms] was usually high enough to cause considerable heat.

And yet, in 1993, the FDA approved an eight-fold increase in the potential acoustical output of ultrasound equipment! Ostensibly, this increase was done to enhance better visualization of the heart and small vessels during microsurgery. Clearly, the health and well-being of developing fetuses was not a consideration!

“Can the fact that this increase in potential thermal effects happened during the same period of time the incidence of autism increased nearly 60-fold be merely coincidental?” Rodgers asks.

Pregnant women are always warned to avoid steam rooms and saunas, based on studies published in numerous prestigious journals in which an irrefutable relationship between elevated maternal temperature and the development of brain defects in their infants has been established.

Again, Rodgers asks the question every woman must be asking herself after hearing of the disastrous results of the new CDC study:

“Using common sense, why would anyone think that intruding upon the continuous, seamless development of the fetus, which has for millions of years completed its work without assistance, be without consequences?”

KEEPING THE HEAT ON (so to speak)

In October of 2010, Ms. Rodgers participated in a forum sponsored by the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In PDF format, she presented a lecture about autism and ultrasound entitled “The Elephant in the Room,” which included the following information:

Worldwide autism boom identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began with children born only 22 years ago in 1988-1989.
- Since the FDA approved an allowable eightfold increase in acoustic output in the early ‘90s, only one prospective study has been undertaken. The study design did not expose fetuses to the first-trimester scans that are common today.
- Ultrasound use and autism are more prevalent among higher socioeconomic groups.
- Several studies have shown increased prevalence of autism among better-educated, more affluent communities. Women in these communities undoubtedly have health insurance and other resources to allow access to good nutrition, prenatal vitamins and excellent prenatal care, which, according to current practice, includes more ultrasound.

Autism surveys and studies have found the following groups of women are at higher risk of bearing children with autism:

Mothers who receive first-trimester care
Mothers with higher educations
Mothers with private health insurance
Older mothers

Rodgers concludes: Only increased exposure to prenatal ultrasound can explain all of the above.

Rodgers also elaborates on how things have changed since the FDA approved an eight-fold increase in the potential acoustical output of ultrasounds in 1993.

The number of ultrasound scans conducted during each pregnancy has increased, with women often receiving two or more scans even in low-risk situations
The development of the vaginal probe, which positions the beam of sound much closer to the embryo or fetus, may put it at higher risk
The use of Doppler ultrasound, which is used to study blood flow or to monitor the baby’s heartbeat, has increased. According to the 2006 Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, “routine Doppler ultrasound in pregnancy does not have health benefits for women or babies and may do some harm.”

Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are researching this issue in their Study to Explore Early Development (SEED).

There is a vast human tragedy – a true man-made disaster – taking place before our eyes.

For whatever reasons – follow the money? – the mountain of evidence that points to a causal relationship between prenatal ultrasound exams and an escalating pandemic of autism is being systematically ignored.

Could it have anything to do with the huge investments doctors and scientists have made in ultrasound technology, which, according to Jennifer Margulis, “adds more than $1 billion to the cost of caring for pregnant women in America each year”?

Could it have anything to do with the revenue now pouring like an avalanche into the coffers of diagnostic and treatment centers and classrooms?

Could it have anything to do with modern journalism’s almost complete abandonment of hard-nosed reporting and life-saving exposés?

As Caroline Rodgers said, there is an elephant in the room when it comes to the subject of autism – and that elephant is the worldwide blitzkrieg of ultrasound exams on pregnant women, exams that have bombarded the babies they’re carrying with the brain-warping sound waves and heat that will affect them every second of their autistic lives.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is of children enrolled in Camp Pendleton’s Exceptional Family Member Program play with sensory balls during the program’s annual holiday party at the Abbey Reinke Community Center, Dec. 6. Sensory toys stimulate the senses of those who are diagnosed with autism. The photo is courtesy of the US Marine Corps.

How teachers’ “attitude restructuring” is hypersexualizing your kids

March 30, 2014/in Culture War, Education, Featured, News, Science/by Dr. Judith Reisman

Note: Thomas R. Hampson, chief investigator, Liberty Center for Child Protection, contributed to this column.

“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.” – Matthew 10:16

Ira L. Reiss. Photo courtesy of the Kinsey Institute.

Ira L. Reiss, a sociologist and professor emeritus at Minnesota University, was a charter member of Alfred Kinsey’s Sex Cult. His papers, articles, and audio and video recordings already are housed at the Kinsey Institute, 57 years of his work so far. Reiss, like other Kinsey disciples, advocated the production of pornography and its display for “training” purposes to prepare students entering the new sexuality fields spawned by Kinsey’s supposed revelations on sex. Kinsey gleefully promoted this type of material, which during the late ’60s started to be called Sexuality Attitude Restructuring (later renamed Reassessment), or SAR, sessions.

These training sessions are promoted as sexual desensitization seminars, pornographic extravaganzas of all manner of enthusiastic sexual activities presented to groups of men and women as training to become certified therapists, counselors, educators or researchers. In addition to desensitizing sexologists to the images of heterosexual activities, sado-masochism, group sex, sodomy, the use of sex “toys” and homosexual behavior, the sex leaders also hold small group discussions to explore the participants’ attitudes and biases in order to neutralize any “negative” views.

But the stated purpose of these sessions is not the whole story, or even the real story.

Early on, these sessions were not used to merely desensitize and encourage acceptance of all sex acts but as indoctrination into a “sex positive” mindset. (Such training has been a requirement for certification by the American Association of Sex Educators Counselors and Therapists, or AASECT, from the beginning.) SAR leaders also often pressured participants into sexual experimentation with each other.

Reiss revealed this in his book, “An Insider’s View of Sexual Science since Kinsey,” recounting his experience at an eight-day SAR session in San Francisco in 1972. At the time, Reiss already was a professor at the University of Minnesota where its medical school was one the first in the country to offer SAR training to medical students. But it was a new, untested program.

The director of U of M’s SAR program had secured a grant from the Playboy Foundation to send 25 couples from the University, all expenses paid, to San Francisco to receive training from the group that had followed on Kinsey’s practices, the National Sex Forum (aka the National Sex and Drug Forum). The purpose was to improve the programming at Minnesota. Reiss and wife were among the volunteers for the Playboy-sponsored training of future national sex educators. Reiss reports:

“The view presented by many of the staff was supportive of people trying out the full variety of sexual acts that exist (S and M, gay, extramarital, group sex, etc.). The supposed purpose was to allow people to break through their old restrictive sexual attitudes. I had no objection to offering such options. However, as they elaborated, it became clear that this support of broad experimentation was more than just permission giving – it was presented as a demand to experiment.”

When Reiss resisted, the SAR leaders ridiculed him, one of them saying, “Are you hostile to group sex or gay sex, and is that why [you are] so cautious about trying something new? Are you biased?”

Reiss did not object to the activity. Rather, he objected to demanding it. It should be promoted, not required, according to Reiss. Such promoting, demanding and encouraging of freewheeling sexual libertinism SAR trainers have been doing for over 40 years now.

While AASECT requires SAR training as an element in their certification standards, the Kinsey Institute is still involved, and Planned Parenthood has joined in. SAR trainings are regularly available now.

Mentally and emotionally corrupted graduates of the SAR training become the “experts” who design sex-ed courses and teach our children. Thus, they have “determined” that the anus is a “genital” as it is described in the currently used sex education program in Hawaii, that orgies are natural entertainment, that sex addiction is a myth, that addiction to pornography is not possible, that it’s normal for children of any age to have sex and that they have the right to choose whatever sexual activity they may think to try with whomever they want, and that sodomy (legalized by the Supreme Court in 2003) is a healthy sexual practice for all sexual orientations.

The whole purpose of these “sex positive” programs is not to liberate adults from their Victorian moral prisons but to indoctrinate children into an unrestrained, sexually available lifestyle. Even if such “programs” are not being taught in all schools yet, this material has been made available on multiple websites and are widely promoted to all, regardless of age. The Kinsey Institute, SIECUS, Planned Parenthood, AASECT and others all provide, or recommend, sites that extoll the virtues of unrestrained sexual experimentation.

Is it any wonder that youthful STDs, pregnancies, abortions and abuse are pandemic?

Which brings us to one of the big lies spread by these organizations: safe/safer sex.

Typical of schools throughout the country, the Minnesota AIDS Project experts (SAR graduates) tell youngsters they can cut and use plastic wrap as a “barrier” when a child has oral/anal contact.

What?

To make matters worse, many of these groups have for years been spreading the false advertising that condoms and dental dams are FDA approved for such bizarre and damaging use. They are not. (See my recent column, “Condoms never FDA-approved for sodomy.”)

Do “condoms” and homemade barriers give the protection Planned Parenthood and other groups claim? Or do these groups promote their use merely as cover for the real purpose – to hypersexualize younger and younger children, groom them and leave them increasingly vulnerable to disease, death and sexual abuse by peers and adults?

Isn’t it time we start holding these groups legally accountable for knowingly spreading their junk science? Let us hear from you if you are among the millions who have been harmed by their “grooming” lies.

The Next Cold Climate: Surviving politically, materially and socially

March 29, 2014/in Environment, Must Read, News, Policy, Science/by Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.)

An event, hosted by Sarasota Patriots, will be held at the Hyatt Regency on April 8th, 2014 on Climate Change (see flyer below). Two experts will be addressing different aspects of climate change and the policies enacted to address this critically important issue. Knowledge is power. Knowing how the coming changes in climate will impact you on a personal level is essential to your surviving and prospering in difficult conditions.

The featured speakers are John Casey, Founder of the Space and Science Research Corporation, and Craig Rucker, Executive Director and co-Founder of CFACT, both renowned experts on the topic of climate change policy. Casey worked for NASA, was a White House space and science advisor and wrote the seminal book “Cold Sun“. Rucker has attended all United Nations meetings with the G8 nations on climate change since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

Beth Colvin, founder of Sarasota Patriots, states, “Many people have no idea that Global Warming is a hoax dreamed up by Al Gore in order to redistribute the wealth of industrialized countries to the poorer nations. There are those who propose you measure your ‘Carbon Footprint’ by figuring out how much fuel your car burns, how much electricity your appliances require and how much CO2 you breathe into the atmosphere so you can offset this by donating money to less industrialized countries so they too might prosper. This is called ‘Cap and Trade for the Masses’.”

Go here to calculate how much you need to donate to offset your personal carbon footprint: http://www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator/

Those wishing to attend this open to the public free event please email your RSVP to Beth Colvin at becolvin@aol.com.

A History of the Disastrous Global Warming Hoax

March 28, 2014/in Environment, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Science, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Alan Caruba

“It is the greatest deception in history and the extent of the damage has yet to be exposed and measured,” says Dr. Tim Ball in his new book, “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science”.

Dr. Ball has been a climatologist for more than forty years and was one of the earliest critics of the global warming hoax that was initiated by the United Nations environmental program that was established in 1972 and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) established in 1988.

Several UN conferences set in motion the hoax that is based on the assertion that carbon dioxide (CO2) was causing a dramatic surge in heating the Earth. IPCC reports have continued to spread this lie through their summaries for policy makers that influenced policies that have caused nations worldwide to spend billions to reduce and restrict CO2 emissions. Manmade climate change—called anthropogenic global warming—continues to be the message though mankind plays no role whatever

There is no scientific support for the UN theory.

CO2, despite being a minor element of the Earth’s atmosphere, is essential for all life on Earth because it is the food that nourishes all vegetation. The Earth has passed through many periods of high levels of CO2 and many cycles of warming and cooling that are part of the life of the planet.

“Science works by creating theories based on assumptions,” Dr. Ball notes, “then other scientists—performing their skeptical role—test them. The structure and mandate of the IPCC was in direct contradiction of this scientific method. They set out to prove the theory rather than disprove it.”

“The atmosphere,” Dr. Ball notes, “is three-dimensional and dynamic, so building a computer model that even approximates reality requires far more data than exists and much greater understanding of an extremely turbulent and complex system.” No computer model put forth by the IPCC in support of global warming has been accurate, nor ever could be.

Most of the reports were created by a small group of men working within the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia and all were members of the IPCC. The result was “a totally false picture supposedly based on science.”

The revelations of emails between the members of the CRU were made available in 2009 by an unknown source. Dr. Ball quotes Phil Jones, the Director of the CRU at the time of the leaks, and Tom Wigley, a former director addressing other CRU members admiting that “Many of the uncertainties surrounding the cause of climate change will never be resolved because the necessary data are lacking.”

The IPCC depended upon the public’s lack of knowledge regarding the science involved and the global warming hoax was greatly aided because the “mainstream media bought into and promoted the unproven theory. Scientists who challenged were denied funding and marginalized. National environmental policies were introduced based on the misleading information” of the IPCC summaries of their reports.

“By the time of the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report, the politics and hysteria about climate change had risen to a level that demanded clear evidence of a human signal,” notes Dr. Ball. “An entire industry had developed around massive funding from government. A large number of academic, political, and bureaucratic careers had evolved and depended on expansion of the evidence. Environmentalists were increasing pressure on the public and thereby politicians.”

The growing problem for the CRU and the entire global warming hoax was that no clear evidence existed to blame mankind for changes in the climate and still largely unknown to the public was the fact that the Earth has passed through many natural cycles of warmth and cooling. If humans were responsible, how could the CRU explain a succession of ice ages over millions of years?

The CRU emails revealed their growing concerns regarding a cooling cycle that had begun in the late 1990s and now, some seventeen years later, the Earth is in a widely recognized cooling cycle.

Moreover, the hoax was aimed at vast reductions in the use of coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as nuclear power to produce the electricity on which all modern life depends. There was advocacy of solar and wind power to replace them and nations undertook costly programs to bring about the reduction of the CO2 “fossil fuels” produced and spent billions on the “green” energy. That program is being abandoned.

At the heart of the hoax is a contempt for mankind and a belief that population worldwide should be reduced. The science advisor to President Obama, John Holdren, has advocated forced abortions, sterilization by introducing infertility drugs into the nation’s drinking water and food, and other totalitarian measures. “Overpopulation is still central to the use of climate change as a political vehicle,” warns Dr. Ball.

Given that the environmental movement has been around since the 1960s, it has taken decades for the public to grasp its intent and the torrents of lies that have been used to advance it. “More people,” notes Dr. Ball, “are starting to understand that what they’re told about climate change by academia, the mass media, and the government is wrong, especially the propaganda coming from the UN and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

“Ridiculous claims—like the science is settled or the debate is over—triggered a growing realization that something was wrong.” When the global warming advocates began to tell people that cooling is caused by warming, the public has realized how absurd the entire UN climate change argument has been.

Worse, however, has been “the deliberate deceptions, misinformation, manipulation of records and misapplying scientific method and research” to pursue a political objective. Much of this is clearly unlawful, but it is unlikely that any of those who perpetrated the hoax will ever be punished and, in the case of Al Gore and the IPCC, they shared a Nobel Peace Prize!

We are all in debt to Dr. Ball and a score of his fellow scientists who exposed the lies and debunked the hoax; their numbers are growing with thousands of scientists signing petitions and participating in international conferences to expose this massive global deception.

A Brief History of Sex Ed: How We Reached Today’s Madness

March 27, 2014/in Education, Featured, Healthcare, News, Policy, Science/by Dr. Miriam Grossman, M.D.

Today’s sex ed curricula are based on the widely-accepted teachings of depraved human beings.

Once upon a time, sex education was a simple biology lesson. Students learned the facts of life, and, with those facts, that sex is part of something bigger, called marriage. Teachers explained that this was the moral and healthy way to live.

In those days, people understood that men and women are different, and that their union is unique, unlike any other relationship. It went without saying that boys grew up to become men, and girls, women.

There were only two sexually transmitted diseases, and having one was a serious matter. Certain behaviors were not normal; individuals who practiced them needed help, and a child’s innocence was precious.

Things have changed.

Now we have comprehensive sexuality education. It includes discussion of identity, gender, reproductive rights, and discrimination. Children learn that they’re sexual from birth, and that the proper time for sexual activity is when they feel ready. They’re taught that they have rights to pleasure, birth control, and abortion.

The terms husband and wife aren’t used, the union of man and woman is one of several options, and morality? Well, that’s judging, and judging is not allowed.

You won’t find much biology in sexuality education, but there’s voluminous information on the varieties of sexual expression, the pros and cons of different contraceptives and abortions, and the harms of gender stereotypes.

Gender itself is a complicated matter. A boy might turn into a man, a woman, or something else. A girl might feel she was born in the wrong body, and want her breasts removed. This is all normal, children learn.

There are over two dozen sexually transmitted diseases, and infection with one of these “lovebugs” is considered by some to be a part of growing up. A doctor declares on YouTube, “Expect to have HPV once you become sexually intimate. All of us get it.”

[youtube]http://youtu.be/wvlCx3w_tss[/youtube]

And childhood innocence? Forget it! Material created for children makes most adults uncomfortable. On websites recommended to students, nothing is taboo—sadomasochism, polyamory, and what were once called “deviant” behaviors . . . they’re all good. When I first discovered this, I was astonished. What do these bizarre behaviors have to do with health, I wondered? How can responsible adults allow this? How can they fund this?

As a physician and a parent, it really bothered me. I wanted to understand: where did this come from? How did we reach this madness?

So I looked at the history of sexual education, and I wrote a book called You’re Teaching My Child WHAT?. This is what I discovered.

Modern sex ed began in the sixties. It was based on Alfred Kinsey’s model of human sexuality. Thanks to the brilliant and courageous work of Dr. Judith Reisman, we now know that Kinsey was both a fraud and a deeply disturbed individual.

For Kinsey, it was anything goes when it came to sexuality, and I mean anything. He believed, for example, that pedophiles were misunderstood, and their punishments unjust. “Sexuality is not an appetite to be curbed,” Kinsey insisted. He taught that, and he lived it.

His official biography documents the beliefs on which he based his work, and his personal life: the “human animal” is pansexual. Traditional morality is destructive. Sexuality is not an appetite to be curbed.

When I say that Kinsey was a deeply disturbed individual, it fails to capture the level of his psychopathology. I’ve been a psychiatrist for thirty years, and trust me, I’ve met some very strange people. I am not easily shocked.

But when I began to read Kinsey’s official biography…what can I tell you? He was—please excuse the technical jargon—a real mental case.

Kinsey was afflicted at his core. He was a depraved human being, and his emotional illness expressed itself through his sexuality. He was consumed by a grotesque, debilitating obsession with a wide range of abnormal behaviors—I’ll spare you the details, but I doubt very much that in all the 62 years of Kinsey’s miserable life he knew even one day of what we would consider healthy sexuality.

Alfred Kinsey had a dream. He would prove to the world—and himself—that his lifestyle was normal. Average. Typical.

It was society that was at fault, with its religions, moral codes, and restrictions. Society made people feel guilty for following their natural urges, and that was unhealthy. Kinsey’s dream was to free people from those destructive institutions—to free the “human animal.” He did thousands of interviews, crunched the numbers, and concluded that most people practiced forbidden sexual behaviors. The average mom and dad were living a double life, just like he was.

His conclusions were widely questioned by leading scientists, but the criticism didn’t seem to matter. The popular press accepted Kinsey’s reports, and his books were best-sellers. A revolution was spawned and western culture transformed.

But his research was fundamentally flawed. His samples were too small and the demography was badly skewed. He excluded some populations and focused on others—most notably, imprisoned felons. His subjects were pre selected, since he relied on volunteers for his data.

The whole nefarious scheme has been exposed in a number of books and videos by Dr. Reisman. I urge you to check out her work at drjudithreisman.org for yourself, if you’ve got a strong stomach.

Kinsey died in 1956. This was a time in America when, thanks to antibiotics, venereal diseases were being obliterated. With one shot, syphilis and gonorrhea were cured. It was believed that this was the end of STDs, the end of all infections. The 1960 winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine said “we are seeing the virtual elimination of infectious diseases.” Can you imagine?

Also in 1960, birth control pills became widely available. With STDs easily cured, and pregnancy preventable, the only obstacle to Kinsey’s anything-goes model of sexuality was Judeo-Christian morality.

It was in this context that in 1964 Dr. Mary Calderone founded the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). This is the group behind the sexuality education guidelines published by UNESCO, aggressively promoted to nations all over the world. Calderone created SIECUS with seed money provided by Hugh Hefner.

Like Kinsey, she was on a crusade to change society. Sex education has too much negativity, she insisted, too much focus on unwanted pregnancy and diseases. The real problem, she insisted, following Kinsey, was that society is puritanical and repressed.

There were too many nos in sex ed. The approach of SIECUS, Calderone promised, would be based on yesses. Proper sex ed would teach children that from the day they’re born they are sexual beings, and that the expression of their sexuality is positive, natural, and healthy.

She told parents, “Children are sexual and think sexual thoughts and do sexual things . . . parents must accept and honor their child’s erotic potential.” She also told them, “Professionals who study children have recently affirmed the strong sexuality of the newborn.”

What did it mean, exactly, to be open and positive, and to replace the nos of sex education with yeses? What did it mean to “break from traditional views”?

It meant more than premarital and extramarital sex. Much more. Modern sex ed was about breaking boundaries. There were officials within SIECUS who were so radical that they argued publicly for relaxing the taboos against adult/child sexuality, even incest. Wardell Pomeroy, for example, a disciple of Kinsey’s who served as president of SIECUS, argued, “It is time to admit that incest need not be a perversion or a symptom of mental illness.”

TIME magazine described Pomeroy as part of the “pro-incest lobby.” He wrote a book, Boys & Sex, for grades six and up. There he argued that “our sexual behavior…is like that of other animals….There is essentially nothing that humans do sexually that is abnormal.” Calderone provided a blurb for the book jacket: “As I read your manuscript, I kept saying to myself, ‘At last it is being said…’”

Another figure to know is Dr. John Money. In 1955, he introduced the radical concept that maleness and femaleness are feelings, separate from anatomy and chromosomes. He was convinced we are born without gender, then conditioned by society to identify either as male or female.

Money was a prominent psychologist; he’s well respected to this day. He described pedophilia as “a love affair between an age-discrepant couple.” Money was also part of the incest lobby: “For a child to have a sexual experience with a relative,” he wrote, “was not necessarily a problem.” Like Kinsey, Money had deep emotional wounds. His identity as a man was troubled, and he molested young boys.

What’s so astonishing is that these men, these very disturbed men, using fraudulent data and theories that have been discredited, succeeded in transforming much of society. Today’s sexuality education is based on their teachings.

Once I understood who the founders were—Kinsey, Calderone, Pomeroy, Money, and others—I understood how we got to today’s “comprehensive sexuality education.” I knew how we had reached today’s madness.

It came from disturbed individuals with dangerous ideas—radical activists who wanted to create a society that would not only accept their pathology, but celebrate it!

These men were pedophiles. It was in their interest to see children as miniature adults who enjoyed sexual contact, and had the right to consent to it, without other adults, or the law, interfering.

Why would they value childhood innocence? They didn’t believe that children were innocent to begin with. They also thought that restricting sex to husband and wife was unnatural and destructive. They weren’t fighting disease, they were fighting ancient taboos; they were fighting biblical morality.

The bottom line: sex ed began as a social movement, and it remains a social movement. Its goal is for students to be open to just about any form of sexual expression. Sex ed is not about preventing disease, it’s about sexual freedom, or better—sexual license. It’s about changing society, one child at a time.

You don’t have to be a physician to understand the dangers of this ideology. All you need is common sense. While the founders of sex education are long gone, their vision is alive and well. The obligation to fight it rests on the shoulders of every responsible adult.

Guitars, Eccentric Billionaires, and Space Travel by Andrew Heaton

March 27, 2014/in Culture War, News, Science/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Recently astronaut Chris Hadfield became a global music sensation without so much as a nipple slip. He jumped to stardom by a combination of guitar mastery and zero-g singing via a music video he made. In space.

It’s certainly an odd way of carving a niche in the country-music industry. The standard career track is to develop guitar skills and a drinking problem simultaneously, then write songs about both until you wind up in Nashville. Very few astronauts ever wind up with Grammys—Neil Armstrong never even got nominated. Going through rigorous astronaut training in order to be blasted through the stratosphere in a billion-dollar tin can seems like roundabout career planning, but perhaps that’s the standard course for Ontario musicians. I don’t know.

While the spacefaring Canuck might have performed his orbital David Bowie tribute as a hobby and not for personal advancement in entertainment, his achievement nonetheless synthesizes a phenomenon that might define humanity’s future: combining space travel with the entertainment industry. In fact the next big fusion of the two is already under way.

Most of the space program thus far has been funded with tax dollars. American space exploration began when the Eisenhower administration found itself with a surplus of Nazi rocket scientists. After defeating Hitler, the United States and the Soviet Union snatched up every Raketenforscher they could get their hands on, only to realize they had dozens of German guys in lab coats sitting on their hands all day doing nothing. Eisenhower couldn’t stand layabouts, so he dared the co-opted Germans to see if they could launch random, blinking, metal objects—like a refrigerator, or a Winnebago—into space.

Four years later NASA leaped ahead in the space race when President Kennedy suspected that there might be women on the moon. We spent eight years and $25 billion figuring out how to get to the moon and potentially introduce its inhabitants to JFK. By the time we actually landed there, Nixon had become president, so the space program’s main priority shifted to finding novel locations in which to play golf. Then, in the 1980s the Russians ran out of dogs to launch into space, thus formally concluding the Cold War.

Now, in the 21st century, space travel has reached a new and glorious apex: It has been privatized.

You might ask, “What does privatizing space exploration mean to me?” Well, it means that now everyonegets a crack at bagging moon babes. And because eccentric moguls are pairing their insane intergalactic ambitions with the profit motive, we will probably build a moon base before you can say “President Gingrich.”

Elon Musk, the billionaire tech mogul who founded PayPal, intends to retire on Mars. And he means it. Richard Branson of Virgin Records has graduated from building trains to building rocket planes by forming Virgin Galactic. Director James Cameron and Google’s Larry Page are combining forces and investment capital in an asteroid mining company, which will drag asteroids full of platinum and gold back to Earth.

While the startup costs are immense, the profit margin is likewise staggering. There are gold nuggets the size of Houston drifting around the asteroid belt, just waiting to cloak the teeth of Lil Wayne. Enough so that, somewhat ironically, if Cameron and Page pull it off, we could see gold become less valuable than copper within our lifetimes. Rappers would have to resort to other forms of swag, like wearing antique brooches.

An even more fascinating development is Mars One, which seeks to build a permanent settlement on Mars. The brilliance of Mars One is that they are combining the highest of human aspirations (real estate investment) with the lowest of human depravity (reality television). Mars One will acquire part of the funding needed to send four people to Mars in 2022 by offering the film and licensing rights to private investors.

Adam Smith (who did not live on Mars or the moon) stated that government has four functions, the last of which is to fund activities that could not be handled by the private sector, or for which the private sector could not aggregately muster sufficient capital. Space exploration used to fit this bill: In 1957 no single company could have drummed up the necessary funding to launch probes into space. Only a government hell-bent on beating the Russians at everything from chess to rockets could possibly have done so.

Now space exploration has matured and is swiftly becoming the purview of wealthy entertainment moguls. This is the best possible thing that could happen to mankind. Within our lifetimes we will have orbital rocket planes that render flights to Australia brief and palatable. Someday I could send my children to space camp on the moon if I want peace and quiet in my house over the summer.

And all of us, if sufficiently photogenic and entertaining, have a crack at living on Mars. I’m hoping Chris Hadfield will apply, because I think an album about traveling to Mars would be worth purchasing. I would definitely tune in to watch a show featuring him and Megan Fox on a rocket.

ABOUT ANDREW HEATON

Andrew Heaton is a former congressional staffer, now working as a writer and standup comedian in New York City. He is the author of From the Monkey Cage: Fixing Politics With Wit & Cartoons. More of his wit and insight can be found at his website, MightyHeaton.com.