Attorney General Cuccinelli Is Not Really Concerned About the Health and Safety of Virginians

“I recall the serious risks facing the environment and the survival of future generations…Do you see signs or phenomena to which we need to be more attentive?”---Pope Benedict speaking to the astronauts on the international space station

Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has turned his office into a political police that persecutes climate scientists on behalf of the fossil fuel industry. Cuccinelli, whose office is in charge of human rights, tries to repress climate scientists who tell us that the CO2 from fossil fuels is endangering our health and safety as well as the health and safety of future generations, but Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli doesn't want the EPA to regulate CO2 emissions. At the same time, Cuccinelli is also trying to use "health and safety" regulations to close down abortion clinics by extrajudicial means, supposedly because they endanger the safety of women.

The Washington Post (7-27-12) reports:

[Virginia Governor] McDonnell signed legislation last year to classify abortion clinics like hospitals, which are subject to exacting standards governing the size of treatment rooms, the width of hallways and doorways, the number of parking spaces and so forth. The purpose of the legislation, which does not apply to other outpatient clinics performing plastic or oral surgery, was to force the closure of most of the state’s 21 abortion clinics, which could ill afford the costly retrofitting the regulations would ­require.

...Advocates of the legislation insist its intent is to protect women’s health. But they offered no evidence to suggest that the state’s clinics, where most of Virginia’s 25,000 abortions annually are performed, are dangerous, unsanitary or slipshod in any way.

The law’s real purpose is to use extrajudicial means to roll back abortion rights, conferred by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, by making the procedure inaccessible to most women in the commonwealth.

Perhaps Attorney General wants the Catholic vote, but Catholics also are taught by the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences that climate change is happening and that it will endanger or destroy the lives of future generations.

Certainly any health facility should be regulated so that it is safe, but Cuccinelli is not applying these regulations to similar out-patient medical facilities. He hopes to misuse Virginia's health and safety codes to get around the law and to close a legal business.

Even people who oppose abortion should be concerned about Cuccinelli's Stalinist tactics. The communists formally closed (purged) churches by taking away their licences or "registration." The legal formality was that the churches were "in disrepair." 

There is nothing "conservative" about abusing Virginia's health and safety regulations to purge abortion clinics. Health and safety regulations can be used to target any organization that Cuccinelli doesn't like. Hypothetically, health and safety regulations could even be used to close Catholic schools---formally because their halls are too narrow---but really because they teach the peer-reviewed science about climate change.

Even if a person is morally opposed to abortion because it takes the life of an innocent child, there is NO MEDICAL PROOF that the health of WOMEN is endangered by legal abortions in Virginia; and that is what Cuccinelli is arguing.

Scientists are telling us that our delicate atmosphere, which nurtures and protects life on our whole planet like a mother's womb protects her developing child, is endangered by climate change. If Cuccinelli is really concerned about the protecting the health and safety of women and about protecting the health and safely of future generations, why isn't he concerned about climate change? Cuccinelli opposes our scientifically-based EPA regulations to limit the carbon dioxide emissions that cause dangerous climate change, but he favors imposing regulations on abortion clinics on the unscientific grounds that the clinics are unsafe for women.

"Oskar Schindler: Stepping Stone to Life" by Robin O'Neil

"Oskar Schindler's exceptional deeds stemmed from just that elementary sense of decency and humanity that our sophisticated age seldom sincerely believes in. A repentant opportunist saw the light and rebelled against the sadism and vile criminality all around him. The inference may be disappointingly simple, especially for all amateur psychoanalysts who would prefer the deeper and more mysterious motive that may, it is true, still lie unprobed and unappreciated."--Robin O'Neil

Oscar Schindler was an ethnic German citizen of Czechoslovakia who joined the separatist Sudeten German Party in 1935.

I have read Thomas Keneally's famous novel Schindler's List, but a former Scotland Yard detective turned scholar named Robin O'Neil [Wikipedia] has written a facinating on-line account of Oskar Schindler's [Wikipedia] transformation from an opportunist and even spy for the German military intelligence, the Abwehr, into a humanitarian hero who saved over 1000 Jews from Hitler's gas chambers.

The head of the Abwehr, Admiral William Canaris, was also initially a supporter of Hitler who had a change of heart when he realized that Hitler's policies would bring ruin to Germany. Canaris was executed for his alleged involvement in the 20 July Plot to kill Hitler. O'Neil's interesting book is titled Oscar Schindler: Stepping Stone to Life. Click the title to see the book on-line.

DeSmogblog Reports: Science Writer Andrew Skolnick Files Two Affidavits Against Englishman John O'Sullivan

According to DeSmogblog (7-26-12), science and health writer Andrew Skolnick has filed two sworn affidavits in the libel suit brought in a Canadian court by the climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann against the historical geographer Dr. Tim Ball, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, and a certain "John Doe." The affidavits, which  detail how an Englishman named John O'Sullivan allegedly misrepresented his legal credentials, are attached at the bottom of DeSmogblog's post.

It will be interesting to see how these sworn affidavits affect Dr. Mann's suit against Tim Ball, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, and the elusive "John Doe."

Although he claims at times to be a legal adviser or even an attorney, John O’Sullivan has a very poor track record when it comes to predicting the outcome of legal cases.

O’Sullivan opined that Attorney General Cuccinelli would prevail in his case against Dr. Mann, but Cuccinelli lost in both state and federal court. John O'Sullivan is frequently wrong about the basic facts of the cases/issues he comments on. For example, after Dr. Mann's emails were stolen by the "Climategate" hackers, O'Sullivan claimed that the Norfolk police were investigating the scientists when the police were actually investigating the hacker/s.

Deniers are constantly claiming that Dr. Mann is a fraud who hides the data and computer code for his famous "hockey stick" graph, but both Mann's data and the computer code for his 1998 hockey stick graph have been posted on the Internet for years, as Dr. Mann told Congressman Barton, a stooge for the fossil-fuel interests. Since Mann’s hockey stick, other scientists have replicated his results and published them in peer-reviewed literature using their own code.

O’Sullivan has put the words of Canadian Steve McIntyre, which appear on McIntyre’s own site, into the mouth of FBI Agent Royden Rice, and O’Sullivan refused to correct this obvious error on all of his posts. He only corrected it on one post. This shows me that O’Sullivan is a dishonest person. Probably it also shows the FBI, which is full of lawyers, what a dishonest person John O’Sullivan is, too.

The FBI is part of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) which is very concerned about climate change and water issues. The CIA, which is part of the NIC, even has a Center for Climate Change and National Security.

Foreigners who attack the great American scientists who do research for the government with disinformation, lies, and illegal computer hacking are attacking the national security interests of the American people; and our security agencies will protect our people and our scientists.

Even though the Norfolk police announced that they have closed their investigation into the "Climategate" hacking, the U.S. Department of Justice has not announced that they have closed their investigation; and the FBI comes to help Dr. Mann by investigating when people send him threats.

I don’t know Canadian law, but I do know that Tim Ball said that Dr. Mann belongs in prison, and Tim Ball has to show evidence for why he believed this. It seems unlikely that he can base his defense of what he has already said on some secret evidence that he has never seen.

John O'Sullivan frequently suggests, without providing any proof, that Dr. Michael Mann is refusing to comply with an apocryphal court order to provide Dr. Tim Ball with his "metadata" (computer code?) and that Dr. Mann is in danger of being held in contempt and having his libel suit thrown out. There is no proof that the court has made any such order. In any case, if John O'Sullivan is talking about the computer code for the hockey stick, Dr. Mann told Congressman Barton in 2005 that the computer code for his 1998 "hockey stick" graph is posted on the Internet.

Mann's libel suit includes numerous defamatory statements that Tim Ball, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, and the anonymous "John Doe" published. 

Climate Scientist Michael Mann Is the Real Thing!

Climate change is a scientific issue. The Bible does not discuss climate change, although many religious organizations are concerned about climate change and cite the passage in the Bible about being good stewards of God's creation as a justification for speaking out on this important issue.


Politicians who attack climate change usually claim to be conservatives, but are they the real thing? What are they conserving? These politicians are corrupt, rapacious wolves in sheep's clothing: they are actually radicals in the pockets of the fossil fuel interests who have appropriated the label "conservative" because many people identify with the traditional values of this country. These radicals don't really agree with those values; they are just using them as a disguise for taking total power.


Many people see themselves as "conservatives." They stick to the traditional, tried-and true-values; however, they are willing to change if they see a problem. Remember the song we sang at camp when we were children: "Make New Friends but Keep the Old"? I think it is good to respect traditions but also to be open to new ideas that enrich our traditions. Of course, not every new idea is a good one.


"Liberal" climate change activists who hope to build a consensus about global warming should not antagonize people who are being confused and misled by climate change denialists with labels that are meant to be disparaging, like "conservative" or "religious."


To my shame, I voted for Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli because I didn't understand what he really stood for. He claims that climate scientists "trick" people, but Cuccinelli tricked me with his phony-baloney appeal to traditional values. Now that I understand what Cuccinelli really is, I won't be voting for him again.


It would be better if "liberal" climate change activists would just give people the scientific information about climate change and political information about who funds the denialist propagandists and politicians so people can make better judgments. It's also good to be really honest and not trick people. They they will trust you.


After Climategate, I tried to figure out what was true. Because I am kind of conservative, I didn't like it that anonymous hackers broke the law and then arrogantly declared themselves "honest men." The hackers didn't break the law openly in an act of civil disobedience and take the consequences like the climate scientists who demonstrate and get arrested.


I compared what the scientists and their denialist critics were saying on their own sites, and I was able to see the dishonest way that the denialists manipulated and mischaracterized what the scientists were saying. I was really shocked to see that a crude propagandist like Marc Morano used to work for a Senator. I used to believe that climate change was a genuine scientific dispute because the newspapers treated both views the same and because there was debate in Congress. I knew that this was a very complicated subject and that I would not be able to really judge the scientific arguments. However, when I looked into the issue of climate change, it was immediately clear that real scientists and real scientific organizations say there is climate change. Not being a scientist, I think I will have to trust the experts who have their work peer-reviewed.


Peer-review is not perfect, but it's better than saying all theories are equal. We don't let anyone enter the Olympics as a contestant, and we don't accept anyone as an authority on climate change. Peer-review might be compared to our legal system. It is a set of procedures and precedents developed over hundreds of years for getting at the truth. Being a conservative, I respect the long traditions our scientific and legal scholars have worked out over centuries in order to seek the truth.


Trusting traditional authorities when we lack expertise is usually considered a conservative value. Of course, the authorities have to be real authorities--not just charlatans. I think its very radical to trust someone like Joe Bast, who doesn't even seem it indicate if he has an undergraduate degree in any field, much less a Ph.D. in a scientific field. Climate change denialists like Joe Bast are just propagandists.


Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is not a conservative at all. He's not a real authority on science or the law. He's nothing but a charlatan. He attacks the great scientists Michael Mann with despicable lies in spite of the fact that the fact that Dr. Mann's research is constantly vetted by his scientific peers. Attorney General Cuccinelli constantly loses in court because the judges recognize that he flouts our laws and disrespects Dr. Mann's human rights. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is supposed to be protecting our people, but he is really nothing but a mendacious demagogue who wastes our tax dollars and abuses his high office by persecuting scientists on behalf of private industry---the fossil fuel interests.


Cuccinelli has transformed the high office of Attorney General into a  real political police like the KGB----the "sword and shield" of the oil and gas interests. This is the business of the Cuccinelli family. The father is a career lobbyist for the gas industry. Cuccinelli is in government to protect the family business, not the people of Virginia.


Let's not forget that the father of the Koch brothers built Stalin's oil refineries. The Koch family did not have any problem with big government then and they don't now! They love big government, provided they own the politicians.


Cuccinelli also uses very totalitarian tactics to undermine Virginia laws. For example, although abortion clinics should be regulated for health and safety, Cuccinelli hope to use unneccessary building and safety codes that are more appropriate for hospitals to shut down abortion clinics. Even people who disagree with abortion should not like this radical tactic which could be used to repress any organization. For example, the communists exploited health and safety codes to close churches. Oppressive regulation is a classic Bolshevik tactic that can be used to eleiminate any organization a politician doesn't like. The so-called communist "purges" of churches in the Soviet union were often no more than taking away a church's licence or "registration" on the pretext that the authorities were enforcing health, safety, and fire codes. Cuccinelli uses tries to use unnecessary health and safety regulations to close abortion clinics, but he doesn't care about regulating health and safety when it comes to unsafe levels of CO2, which are causing dangerous extreme weather, floods, drought, and crop failures. 


Liberal activists who are concerned about climate change should not help Cuccinelli spread the lie that he is a conservative. Cuccinelli is a radical demagogue. Calling Cuccinelli a conservative reinforces his lie and causes people who have a conservative outlook vote for a man who is really quite radical and who hopes to destroy, not conserve, our educational, scientific, and legal institutions.


In my opinion, the climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann is the real conservative! He is standing up and protecting our people's traditional scientific, educational, and legal institutions. He actually understands what our country is all about, and I think he is a real patriot. Cuccinelli is a vandal, a barbarian who is attempting to undermine our traditional scientific, educational, and legal institutions. So far, this charlatan has not prevailed in the scientific or legal arena; and traditions developed over centuries have been conserved.


I used to vote Republican because I believed that they shared my so-called "conservative" outlook, but "Climategate" changed my political outlook and made me decide that I have more in common with the values that most Democrats profess.

Soviet Military Research on Nuclear Winter: John G. Hines Interviews Dr. Vitalii Tsygichko (1990-1991)

"Dr. V.N. Tsygichko, Colonel, Russian Army, Ret., is a full member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and since 1985 the chief researcher at the Institute of Systems Analysis of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISA RAS). He is currently the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs expert on information security problems. Since 1967 he has served the Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense, working on mathematical simulations of military operations. From 1988 - 1991 he headed an autonomous Center for Research into National Security Problems. Dr. Tsygichko’s range of scientific interests embraces methodological and systematic problems of modeling socio-economic processes; decision theory; applied systems analysis; the theory and methods of socio-economic forecasting; ensuring national security and strategic stability; information security problems; and geopolitical problems. He has authored over 200 papers and 6 books. Dr. Tsygichko is a founder of a new national school of mathematical simulation and forecasting of complex social processes in military and socio-economic areas. He has developed principles and methods of systems theory application, introduced an information theory of statistically unreliable decisions, and developed a scenario approach to researching and forecasting socio economic processes. Some of his papers include: “On Decision Making for Managers” (1992), “Information Challenges to National and International Security” (2001); and “Models as Part of the Strategic Military Decision Making System in the USSR” (2005). He is a permanent author of journals such as Military Thought, Military Bulletin, Independent Military Review, and a number of foreign publications. He is a graduate of the Ryazan Artillery Military School, the Dzerzhinsky Military Academy, and holds a Doctor of Science (Engineering)."----See page 9, of IO Sphere (2008), a publication of the U.S. Military's Joint Information Operations Warfare Command 

BDM is the name of a former defense contractor.  According to a series of BDM interviews (1990-91) with Dr. Vitalii Tsygichko (center), Soviet military scientists and their superiors understood that nuclear war would be national suicide for the USSR. [Also read Tsygishko's commentary on these interviews and the BDM report (Appendix E) and the English summary that precedes Tsygichko's book, Models in the System of Military-Strategic Decision Making in the USSR (Moscow 2005).]

Communist ideology maintained that the Soviet Union and the United States would eventually fight a nuclear war and the Soviet Union would prevail; however, when Dr. Tsygichko did computer modeling in the early 1970s on how to fight a war using nuclear weapons in Europe, he found that it would not be possible to fight and win a nuclear war in any meaningful sense. Computer models trumped the "scientific" ideology.


According to Dr. Tsygichko, military analysts in the GRU (Soviet military intelligence) even did research on the climatic consequences of a nuclear war ("nuclear winter") in the early 1970s.  Although Dr. Tsygichko's bosses accepted the accuracy of the models and understood their implications, his research was ignored or suppressed for ideological, bureaucratic, and economic reasons. See an overview  and links to information gleaned from these interviews at the National Security Archive of George Washington University.


According to Dr. Tsygichko, [Vladimir] Alexandrov, a Russian scientist who vanished on April 1, 1985, in Spain, and the astronomer Carl Sagan did not discover "nuclear winter." Analysts working for the Soviet General Staff during the early 1970s considered many of the climatic effects  of nuclear winter that received so much attention years later. 


Perhaps someone should read what Dr. Tsygichko said and reevaluate the apocryphal fairy-tale about nuclear winter attributed to the KGB defector Sergei Tretyakov that is given credibility in a so-called FBI white paper. The FBI might also read the book by the late Lawrence Badash called A Nuclear Winter's Tale: Science and Politics in the 1980s. The FBI's  attack on the alleged disinformation about the climatic effects of nuclear winter resembles the attacks on supposedly dishonest climate scientists who are telling us about climate change. To learn about the scientific research on nuclear winter, instead of FBI propaganda, visit the site of Dr. Alan Robock, a famous expert on nuclear winter.


If the FBI believes that some unidentified article in some unidentified journal contains some unidentified KGB disinformation, why don't they step up to the plate, identify these sources, and correct the disinformation? From their innuendos and from their source, Pete Earley's Comrade J, the FBI seems to be talking about the famous 1982 Crutzen and Birks article that appeared in the Swedish Journal Ambio. If so, what is the KGB disinformation in this article? If the FBI has identified KGB scientific disinformation, why aren't they able to correct the disinformation with the scientific facts?


Perhaps some day, a fuller picture may emerge. My own impression is that scientists in the USSR and the West who studied the effects of nuclear war on climate were learning from each other, and that this collaboration was probably a very good thing. If the KGB defector Sergei Tretyakov (and the FBI) really believed that "no one in Moscow ever believed [nuclear winter] was true" (Earley 177), that may have been because the economic interests of the more powerful Soviet "military-industrial complex" caused the research of GRU scientists like Dr. Vitalii Tsygichko to be ignored and suppressed by very high classification. See especially the first three paragraphs of the Appendix E summary.


The National Security Archive of George Washington University and America's academic and government climate scientists have a considerable body of research that the FBI might wish to consider should it decide to admit its errors and retract its defamatory, unsubstantiated allegations about KGB disinformation in climate science. It seems to me that a better case might be made that this FBI White Paper is disinformation dressed up as prophylactic tips for scholars on defending American science from KGB disinformation and spies. 


If the FBI thinks its White Paper is correct, the FBI should have the courage and decency to defend its perspective with a carefully-documented history of the 1980s nuclear winter debate and peer-reviewed climate science. How can climate scientists, who defend our national security, defend themselves from published FBI allegations that their work is riddled with KGB disinformation if the FBI keeps the scientific KGB disinformation that it has uncovered a secret?


The FBI's White Paper about nuclear winter is being spread by the main FBI and by FBI Agent Patrick Laflin on the FBI Tampa CI Strategic Partnership Newsletter (July 1, 2011). See the link marked "Higher Education and National Security." The organization's email is James.Laflin@ic.fbi.gov


Ask Agent Patrick Laflin to step up to the plate and name the unidentified Swedish journal and the the unidentified nuclear winter paper where the alleged KGB disinformation was published. Ask Agent Laflin to step up to the plate and identify the KGB's scientific disinformation. Ask Agent Patrick Laflin to step up to the plate and explain what the true scientific information is.


Sometimes it happens that kooks like John O'Sullivan deliberately put ludicrous words in the mouths of FBI agents, but the unsubstantiated allegations about disinformation in climate science are posted on the FBI's own website. The FBI should be prepared to defend its published allegations or to retract them. Otherwise, they may find themselves really quoted by climate change denialists like John O'Sullivan, who spread disinformation and libelous allegations about climate scientists; and that would be really embarrassing.