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John Fund highlights a moment in Ukraine when journalists were no longer able to lie for the regime.
… for many Ukrainians, there was another moment when they realized the ground was shifting beneath them. It came last Friday evening, during one of the most popular talk shows on Inter, the most-watched Ukrainian network. Lidia Pankiv, a 24-year-old television journalist, was invited on by host Andriy Danylevych to discuss the need for reconciliation following the agreement signed by Yanukovych and dissidents earlier that day. While reporting on the Maidan protests, Pankiv had helped persuade the Berkut riot police not to use further violence against the activists, and she had disclosed that one of the Berkut officers was now her fiancé. But reconciliation was not what Pankiv wished to discuss. As relayed by journalist Halya Coynash, Pankiv had a different message:
“You probably want to hear a story from me about how with my bare hands I restrained a whole Berkut unit, and how one of the Berkut officers fell in love with me and I fell in love with him. But I’m going to tell you another story. About how with my bare hands I dragged the bodies of those killed the day before yesterday. And about how two of my friends died yesterday. . . . I hate Zakharchenko, Klyuev, Lukash, Medvedchuk, Azarov. I hate Yanukovych and all those who carry out their criminal orders. I came here today only because I found out that this is a live broadcast. I want to say that I also despise Inter because for three months it deceived viewers and spread enmity among citizens of this country. And now you are calling for peace and unity. Yes, you have the right to try to clear your conscience, but I think you should run this program on your knees. I’ve brought these photos here for you, so that you see my dead friends in your dreams and understand that you also took part in that. And now, I’m sorry, I don’t have time. I’m going to Maidan (Independence Square). Glory to Ukraine.”
Danylevych immediately tried to return to the night’s topic of reconciliation. But he was stopped by guest Konstantin Reutsky, a human-rights activist from Luhansk. Reutsky agreed with Pankiv, saying that Inter journalists had “lied and distorted information about Maidan over the last three months.” …
Roger Simon says that after Ukraine we should think about the need for an American Spring. Pickerhead thinks that could happen when journalists here stop lying for the regime.
We are not in the situation of the Ukraine, however that turns out, but the events in that Eastern European country should remind us all of the sad condition of our nation, how much we now need an American Spring in the USA.
Not a Spring like the Arab Spring, of course, which was and is a nightmare beyond anyone’s wishes, but something more like the original Prague Spring that remade the Czech Republic into the vibrant country and society it is today.
The Obama administration has been the culmination of the advancement of state intrusion into our lives that began roughly a hundred years ago and has reached such a point that the originality and the intentions of our country are barely recognizable. The results of this have been disastrous both economically and socially, most of all in terms of the personal freedom and liberty of our citizens. We have gone backwards in many ways, not the least of which is that race relations have deteriorated during the administration of the first African-American president, largely due to state meddling. We are divided as we have never been since the Civil War, and for really no good reason.
The people aren’t the problem. It’s the state. …
Charles Krauthammer examines the myth of settled science.
I repeat: I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier. I’ve long believed that it cannot be good for humanity to be spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I also believe that those scientists who pretend to know exactly what this will cause in 20, 30 or 50 years are white-coated propagandists.
“The debate is settled,” asserted propagandist in chief Barack Obama in his latest State of the Union address. “Climate change is a fact.” Really? There is nothing more anti-scientific than the very idea that science is settled, static, impervious to challenge. Take a non-climate example. It was long assumed that mammograms help reduce breast cancer deaths. This fact was so settled that Obamacare requires every insurance plan to offer mammograms (for free, no less) or be subject to termination.
Now we learn from a massive randomized study — 90,000 women followed for 25 years — that mammograms may have no effect on breast cancer deaths. Indeed, one out of five of those diagnosed by mammogram receives unnecessary radiation, chemo or surgery.
So much for settledness. And climate is less well understood than breast cancer. If climate science is settled, why do its predictions keep changing? And how is it that the great physicist Freeman Dyson, who did some climate research in the late 1970s, thinks today’s climate-change Cassandras are hopelessly mistaken? …
Howard Kurtz posts on the intolerant left that attempts to quiet Krauthammer.
Charles Krauthammer says it right up front in his Washington Post column: “I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier.”
He does, however, challenge the notion that the science on climate change is settled and says those who insist otherwise are engaged in “a crude attempt to silence critics and delegitimize debate.”
How ironic, then, that some environmental activists launched a petition urging the Post not to publish Krauthammer’s column on Friday.
Their response to opinions they disagree with is to suppress the speech. …
John Hinderaker of Power Line posts on yet another attempt by the left to silence critic – we allude to the Mark Steyn suit. You can follow the link and read Mark’s latest brief.
As all the world knows, climate buffoon Michael Mann is suing Mark Steyn, National Review and others for disagreeing with him about global warming–not just disagreeing, but doing so in colorful language. As happens so often on the Left, Mann found himself losing the debate on a public issue of great importance. Rather than admit that he was wrong about the hockey stick–one of the most notorious errors, or frauds, in the history of science–he is trying to shut his opponents up through litigation.
Steyn was unhappy with how the lawsuit was going, so he dismissed the lawyers that were representing him and National Review and is now pro se. Rather than engage in further procedural maneuvering, Mark wants to fight out what he sees as the central issue–free speech–in the court of public opinion. So yesterday another shoe dropped: Mark served an answer and counterclaim against Mann in which he requested damages from the discredited scientist. You can read the pleading here. It is entertaining; it should be, Mark wrote it himself. ..
Salon on the foods supposed to be bad for us and turned out to OK, and even beneficial at times.
In the future, when we’re zipping around the biosphere on our jetpacks and eating our nutritionally complete food pellets, we won’t have to worry about what foods will kill us or which will make us live forever.
Until then, we’re left to figure out which of the food headlines we should take to heart, and which should be taken with a grain of unrefined, mineral-rich sea salt. Low-fat or high-fat? High-protein or vegan? If you don’t trust what your body tells you, remember that food science is ever evolving. Case in point: The seven foods below are ancient. But they’ve gone from being considered healthy (long ago) to unhealthy (within the last generation or two) to healthy again, even essential. …
… Old Wisdom: Coffee equals caffeine equals bad for you.
New Wisdom: Coffee is loaded with antioxidants and other nutrients that improve your health. Plus, a little caffeine makes the world go round.
Why? Actually, most of the world never bought into the whole caffeine/coffee scare that made so many Americans start to swear off coffee, or heaven help us, switch to decaf. But these days, the U.S., chock full of Starbucks, has come around. Several prominent studies conducted over the last few years unearthed a bounty of benefits in the average cup of joe. As everyone knows, caffeine boosts energy. Based on controlled human trials, it has also been proven to fire up the neurons and make you sharper, with improved memory, reaction time, mood, vigilance and general cognitive function. It can also boost your metabolism, lower your risk of Type II diabetes, protect you from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, and lower the risk of Parkinson’s. Whew.
3) Whole Milk
Old wisdom: High-fat milk lead to obesity. Exposing children to lower-fat options keeps them leaner and healthier and instills the low-fat habit.
New Wisdom: Ha