Ardeatine Massacre: Bombers were soldiers, not terrorists

August 13, 2007

Our Italian physicist friend, Dorigo, at A Quantum Diaries Survivor reports that an Italian court ruled against a newspaper that started a campaign to deny the history of the Ardeatine Massacre.

Good news today. The supreme court of Cassazione in Italy has ruled that the press campaign labeling “terrorists” the GAP partisans who organized the bombing of Via Rasella in nazi-occupied Rome in 1944, launched by the national newspaper “Il Giornale”, was a striking example of manipulation of historic truth for political means. The newspaper is owned by Paolo Berlusconi (brother of Silvio, formerly premier of Italy in 1994 and 2001-2006), and was directed by Vittorio Feltri . . . a journalist who never hid his sympathy for the extreme right.

What was the Ardeatine Massacre?

Statue memorial to the victims of the Ardeatine Massacre, Italy Wikipedia:

The massacre of Fosse Ardeatine (Italian: Eccidio delle Fosse Ardeatine) took place in Rome, Italy during World War II. On 23 March 1944, 2 German soldiers, 31 Italian soldiers of Battaglione Bozen and a few Italian civilians passing along the road, were killed when members of the Italian Resistance set off a bomb close to a column of German soldiers who were marching on via Rasella[1]. This terrorist attack was led by the Gruppi di Azione Patriottica, of Rosario Bentivegna, Carla Capponi, Antonello Trombadori (Head of GAP in Roma) and the approval of Sandro Pertini (later President of Italian Republic), in order to provocate the reaction of SS troops.

Adolf Hitler is reported but never confirmed to have ordered that within 24 hours, one-hundred Italians were to be shot for each dead German. Commander Herbert Kappler in Rome concluded that ten Italians for each dead German would be sufficient and quickly compiled a list of 320 civilians who were to be killed. Kappler voluntarily added ten more names to the list when the 33rd German/Italian died after the Partisan attack. The total number of people murdered at the Fosse Ardeatine was 335, most Italians. The largest cohesive group among the murdered were the members of Bandiera Rossa, a Communist military Resistance group.

Why is there controversy 60 years later? Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | 1941-1945, Accuracy, Bogus history, History, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Jurisprudence, Justice, Politics, TAKS, TEKS, Voodoo history, War, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Original Documents: Long history of DDT trouble, from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1945 and later

August 12, 2007

Header of FWS press release, Aug 22 1945

Archives of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) reveal a long history of trouble with DDT, almost from the first uses of the chemical as an insecticide during World War II. You’ll find extensive links to historic press releases from FWS below the fold.

Critics of the various restrictions on DDT use often claim that DDT is a God-sent chemical that nearly eradicated malaria from the world (absolutely untrue) and which was banned only because of hysteria caused by Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring (untrue at both ends, hysteria and the power of Carson’s book). This is history revisionism at its worst, it is bogus history.

A careful study of the history of the use of DDT shows that scientists were concerned about its dangers from the first uses as a pesticide. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported dangers in a press release on August 22, 1945, just a week after the surrender of Japan ended World War II (VJ Day was August 15 in Tokyo, August 14 in Washington). In that release FWS noted the beneficial uses of DDT to fight insect and lice infestations that threatened troops and civilians with typhus and other diseases, but cautioned that such use should not become common, that more study was needed: Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments | Bogus history, DBQ sources, DDT, Environmental protection, Historic documents, History, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, War on Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Harry Potter fan suicide? No, it’s still a hoax

August 9, 2007

It was a hoax then, two weeks later, it’s still a hoax.

Why doesn’t anybody call this guy on this grotesque disinformation? Hoaxes about suicide are not funny. The post continues to rank in the top 100 posts for WordPress’s 1 million+ blogs, as of August 9.

Do people really prefer a grisly hoax to the truth?

2 Comments | Accuracy, Books, Hoaxes | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fisking “Junk Science’s” campaign for DDT: Point #6

August 9, 2007

Another in a continuing series, showing the errors in JunkScience.com’s list of “100 things you should know about DDT.” (No, these are not in order.)

Steven Milloy and the ghost of entomologist J. Gordon Edwards listed this as point six in their list of “100 things you should know about DDT “[did Edwards really have anything to do with the list before he died?]:

6. “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT… In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable.”

[National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Research in the Life Sciences of the Committee on Science and Public Policy. 1970. The Life Sciences; Recent Progress and Application to Human Affairs; The World of Biological Research; Requirements for the Future.]

In contrast to their citation for the Sweeney hearing record, which leads one away from the actual hearing record, for this citation, the publication actually exists, though it is no longer available in print. It’s available on-line, in an easily searchable format. [I urge you to check these sources out for yourself; I won’t jive you, but you should see for yourself how the critics of Rachel Carson and WHO distort the data — I think you’ll be concerned, if not outraged.] The quote, though troubled by the tell-tale ellipses of the science liar, is accurately stated so far as it goes.

The problems? It’s only part of the story as told in that publication.  The National Academy of Science calls for DDT to be replaced in that book; NAS is NOT calling for a rollback of any ban, nor is NAS defending DDT against the claims of harm.  The book documents and agrees with the harms Rachel Carson wrote about eight years earlier.

Cover of the electronic version of Life Sciences, the 1970 book looking to future needs in biology and agriculture.

Cover of the electronic version of Life Sciences, the 1970 book looking to future needs in biology and agriculture.

Milloy (and Edwards, he claims), are trying to make a case that the National Academy of Sciences, one of the more reputable and authoritative groups of distinguished scientists in the world, thinks that DDT is just dandy, in contrast to the views of Rachel Carson and environmentalists (who are always cast as stupid and venal in Milloy’s accounts) who asked that DDT use be reduced to save eagles, robins and other songbirds, fish, and other wildlife, and to keep DDT useful against malaria.

First, there is no way that a ban on DDT could have been responsible for 500 million deaths due to malaria.  Calculate it yourself, the mathematics are simply impossible: At about 1 million deaths per year, if we assume DDT could have prevented all of the deaths (which is not so), and had we assumed usage started in 1939 instead of 1946 (a spot of 7 years and 7 million deaths), we would have 69 million deaths prevented by 2008. As best I can determine, the 500 million death figure is a misreading from an early WHO report that noted about 500 million people are annually exposed to malaria, I’m guessing a bit at that conclusion — that’s the nicest way to attribute it to simple error and not malicious lie. It was 500 million exposures to malaria, not 500 million deaths. It’s unfortunate that this erroneous figure found its way into a publication of the NAS — I suppose it’s the proof that anyone can err.

Read the rest of this entry »

16 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Conservation, DDT, Environmental protection, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Public health, Rachel Carson, Research, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Brainwashing for politics and profit: Global warming denial

August 5, 2007

Newsweek cover, August 13, 2007

We are plagued by industries set up to deny reality. It’s impossible to discuss public policy without smashing into organizations set up specifically to question history and hard science, and plant seeds of doubt in the minds of the public about the way things really are. When my job was to fight them, with essentially no budget, as late as 1985 there was a well-funded lobby in Washington that cranked out weekly “news” and opinion columns for smaller and less discriminating news outlets like weekly papers and local television stations, extolling the virtues of tobacco and claiming that no scientist had any real evidence that smoking is unhealthy.

A lot of those disinformation artists have moved on — not to the Soviet Union, since it collapsed and took most its propaganda machine with it — to denial of reality on global warming, evolutionary biology, pesticides and chemicals, and a host of other issues.

Sharon Begley’s story in the August 13, 2007, Newsweek pulls back the veil on the well-funded industry that tries to plant doubt about the reality of global warming: “The Truth about Denial.” If this is news to you, that people get paid well to hoax the public, you really need to read the story:

If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. Yes, 19 million people watched the “Live Earth” concerts last month, titans of corporate America are calling for laws mandating greenhouse cuts, “green” magazines fill newsstands, and the film based on Al Gore’s best-selling book, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won an Oscar. But outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.

Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. “They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry,” says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. “Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That’s had a huge impact on both the public and Congress.”

Do these deniers affect public policy? Gullibles, political opponents, handmaidens of error, and even well-meaning suckers fall for spin on science, over and over again: On global warming (see this one, too), on DDT and malaria, teaching science in public schools, alternative medicine and preventive vaccines, and other issues including (who could make this up?) riding a bicycle.

No, I don’t have a solution.

6 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, DDT, Hoaxes, Rampant stupidity, Reason, Science, Voodoo science, War on Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote of the Moment: “What is an American?” – Ferrara

August 3, 2007

This was written by Peter Ferrara, who was then an associate professor of law at George Mason University’s law school; it appeared in National Review Online on September 25, 2001, just two weeks after the attack on the World Trade Center.  Ferrara has moved from George Mason, but his opinion piece lives on.

Copies of the article circulate around the internet, claiming to have been written by an “Australian dentist,” or by some other non-American — to add authenticity, I suppose.  Here is the original, attributed the real author, as best I can determine.  

_________________________________

What is an American?  A primer 

ou probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper there an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.

So I just thought I would write to let them know what an American is, so they would know when they found one.

An American is English…or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani, or Afghan.

An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them choose.

An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Hoaxes, Patriotism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Who was Millard Fillmore? No, really?

July 28, 2007

George Pendle’s hoax biography of Millard Fillmore sells okay — but Amazon lists 365,000 books selling better (July 28, 2007). That’s small solace to people who worry, as H. L. Mencken came too late to worry, about how hoaxes may spread. Mark Twain is reputed to have said that a lie can travel around the world twice before the truth can get its boots on.

So I was interested to find that somebody actually has a biography on Fillmore that ventures beyond the usual encyclopedia article. Big Mo’s Presidents Review featured Fillmore on July 15. According to the site, Big Mo is a journalist now stuck (or happy) in the corporate world. The biography is not so long that junior high (8th grade) U.S. history students will find it incredibly onerous, nor is it so short that it merely repeats the same old material.  It’s a good report.

 

Appointment of ____ to be ambassador to France; Fillmore and Daniel Webster signatures

The Big Mo report on Fillmore is good enough that other people are copying it wholesale (with attribution).

One gap:  Big Mo leaves out discussion of Fillmore’s boyhood, which is one area that students search on frequently, according to the statistics from this blog.  I think Fillmore’s early life, his change in careers after he threatened to kill the man he was indentured to if the fellow did not allow him to learn the trade, make some interesting discussion points about Fillmore’s character.  Minor quibbles.

On the plus side, he includes just about every image available on the internet, and cartoons about Fillmore, which are deucedly difficult to find in high resolution images.

Fillmore need not be a mystery.  Check it out.

7 Comments | History, Hoaxes, Millard Fillmore, Politics, Presidents | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Harsh judgment on Millard Fillmore

July 23, 2007

Missed this on Presidents’ Day:  The Forgettable Millard Fillmore (in The Los Angeles Times) .

Maybe more odd, or more damning, it’s written by George Pendle, who has written a book, The Remarkable Millard Fillmore.

Which is Fillmore, remarkable, or forgettable?

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Books, History blogs, Hoaxes, Millard Fillmore, Presidents | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Hoax on Harry Potter fans

July 22, 2007

This has all the earmarks of a hoax, including that it cannot be confirmed in any news service: Teenage girl kills herself over fake spoilers of Harry Potter and the Deathly hallows.

It’s got all the classic sings of urban myths: No citation, no source traceable or even a hint of a traceable source (“the radio” can’t be traced), the “I heard” line, no mention of location or anything else that might place it.

Worse, it looks like a replay of the 2005 hoax that accompanied the release of Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince — a hoax based on a comedy report.

I can’t find this latest mention in any news source. But it’s propelled the blogger to a high ranking on the daily WordPress report.

I call “HOAX!”

If you see any confirmation, send it this way, please.

3 Comments | Harry Potter, Hoaxes | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Tripoli 6: Justice in a creationist world

July 18, 2007

We hope the Tripoli 6 are out of Tripoli, Libya, soon. Libyan courts commuted the death sentences delivered to the six health workers, but the commutation was to life sentences; late news indicates that Libya has agreed to extradite the six to Bulgaria in return for payments to the families of the 400+ children who were victimized by the hospital screw-ups for which the six are erroneously blamed.

Libya claims to have confessions from the health workers. Evidence suggests they were tortured to sign hoax confessions.

For rational people who care for justice, there is a powerful moral here. Forensic evidence shows that the HIV viruses that infected hundreds of children at a hospital, infected the children and evolved well before the five nurses and one doctor got to the hospital. In short, it is physically impossible in time for the accused workers to have been responsible for the infections. They are innocent.

But of course, this evidence is based on evolutionary paradigms, the same way that all DNA evidence is. The Libyan courts waved the evidence off, essentially, convicting the workers in a second trial after a team of international scientists completed a special research project showing, with the highest degree of assurance, the impossibility of liability to the accused.

Creationism is relativism with King James language: Facts are not facts, science is not science, what is true in the laboratory and in the wild, not true in a creationist court. The Libyan courts dismissed what would have been exonerating evidence in U.S. and most European courts.

And so another international team was assembled to raise the extortion demanded by Libya, and a settlement negotiated. U.S. scientists contributed time and expertise; the U.S. government appears to have deferred to European governments.

Sadly, the people who created the conditions for infecting 400 kids with HIV will go unpunished in this creationist court.

Effect Measure over at the Seed stable of science blogs has a much more complete explanation of the case, with links detailing the heroic work of scientists, and I encourage you to read that account and follow the links.

Justice, justice shalt thou pursue.

                                 – Deuteronomy 16:20

Tip of the old scrub brush to P. Z. Myers and Pharyngula.

Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Hoaxes, Junk science, Justice, Law, Science, Science and faith | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Reason and Christians: Oil and water? Bathtubs and truth?

July 13, 2007

Do Christians have any obligation to use reason, to be rational about the world at large?  Blatzkrieg writes about the issue here, especially with regard to vaccination phobics.  (A few people in every community can safely go without vaccinations, if everyone else gets them.  In too many communities, we have too many going without, for religious, political and economic reasons, and that puts us all at risk.)

It bugs the heck out of me, the “I-don’t-have-to-think;-I’m-a-Christian” view that tends to emphasize the snarkier bumper-sticker views on everything, and usually the wrong bumper-sticker.   How many times today can you find someone telling you the equivalent of “I’m sure Millard Fillmore put the first plumbed bathtub in the White House, because I have faith he did — and he probably invented plumbing, too?”

1 Comment | Hoaxes, Public health, Reason, Science and faith | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Update: War against science and Rachel Carson

July 11, 2007

Some links you should check out, in the continuing fight for reason against the bizarre campaign against the reputation of Rachel Carson, against the World Health Organization, and against fighting malaria, and for unwise use of DDT:

1.  Alan Dove, at Dove Docs, notes an entirely new way of thinking about immunity against malaria:  “A New Twist on Herd Immunity”

2.  Insight from Bug Girl:  “Scientists, media, and political activism;”  also check out her post on new research on mosquito bed nets.

3.   Deltoid posted several good pieces since last I linked; go here, and here.  Be ready:  Tinfoil hat brigade comes out in the comments to the first piece.

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Bogus history, DDT, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Natural history, Public health, Rachel Carson, Rampant stupidity, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, War on Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

DDT: The problems the WHO/Rachel Carson critics don’t want you to know

July 10, 2007

The merry bands of hoaxsters at “JunkScience.com” and the Competitive Enterprise Institute hope you think DDT is a well-targeted, perfect solution to get rid of malaria. They ignore the devastating effects DDT has on birds, bats and other mammals (including humans), beneficial insects and fish. They don’t care about the difficulties in treating malaria in hospitals, which would continue or grow worse were DDT to be sprayed willy-nilly across the malaria-endemic world.

Cover, War on Insects

Plus, CEI is well-funded and has been hammering away on spreading the hoaxes for several years. You may have to dig hard to find the facts, such as the fact that the inventors of DDT as insecticide warned against over-use exactly as did Rachel Carson, (see the Dove Docs archives), or that the death of beneficial insects and beneficial animals can cause disasters, too — or did CEI tell you that DDT can cause your roof to cave in, in Borneo, and that they had to parachute cats in to prevent an epidemic of typhus, caused by DDT?

Read the rest of this entry »

9 Comments | DDT, Geography - Economic, Hoaxes, Junk science, Lesson plans, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Another reason why DDT use damages mosquito control: Bats

July 9, 2007

Erich Schlegel photo, bats leaving a cave near Frio, Texas, U of Tenn researchers look on

UTenn grad student Noa Davidai (L) and Prof Gary McCracken watch bats come out of Frio Cave

  • Photos by ERICH SCHLEGEL/DMN

University of Tennessee graduate student Noa Davidai (left) and professor Gary McCracken watch freetail bats emerge from the Frio Cave near Uvalde, Texas. They study the range and value of bats, such as insect control for farmers. And ‘fecal rain’? That enriches soil, Dr. McCracken says. (Dallas Morning News, July 9, 2007, p. 1)

It’s easy to understand. Look at the on-line Dictionary.com definition of the Mexican free-tailed bat, for example:

Mexican free-tailed bat

–noun

any of several small, insect-eating bats of the genus Tadarida, of Mexico and the southwestern U.S., inhabiting limestone caves: residual DDT has reduced most populations.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Was that difficult? It’s right there in the definition of the animal: DDT kills bats.

Bats eat mosquitoes, those things that carry malaria and other diseases. A Mexican free-tailed bat eats about 70% of its body weight in mosquitoes, every night.

This morning’s Dallas Morning News has a front page story, with great photo, on the value of bats in Texas, “Taking bats to the bank.”

Researchers have long known that bats in Texas caves dine on insect pests. But just how many bats there are and the value of their feeding had proved elusive until a five-year, $2.4 million National Science Foundation study by scientists from Boston University, the University of Tennessee, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Texas Parks and Wildlife.

From sundown to sunup, the freetail bats consume a staggering 400 metric tons of insects a year in the Winter Garden, or 2 million pounds each night. They range over a radius of 75 miles and feed from ground level to 10,000 feet.

The bats help save $1.7 million annually by preventing crop damage and additional pesticide use in the eight-county Winter Garden, which produces $6 million in cotton each year, according to the report by the Boston University team.

“Most people think of bats as ugly or vile, but there is a real value they provide humankind,” said principal investigator Tom Kunz of Boston University. “The bats are a literal shield for this crop region. But until this project, no one developed a means to measure the specific economic value of bats to agriculture.”

From my experience with agriculture, that $1.7 million figure looks low, way low. Scientific studies like this tend to be very conservative, though, so we can say with great confidence that this is a floor figure.

DDT kills bats, and those bats who don’t die from eating DDT-laced insects often provide meals for predator birds, who then get a greater dose of the next-generation-killing chemical.

Studies have shown that the pesticide DDT often used by farmers in the 1950s and 1960s may also have led to the depletion of large numbers of Mexican free-tailed bats (Clark).The Carlsbad Caverns colony decreased steadily in size from nearly 20 million down to only a couple hundred thousand during the 1960s due to DDT use (Wilson 110).A study in 1974 documented levels of the toxin in fat stores the bats would accumulate before migration, and found that when those fat stores were metabolized during the long flight, DDT levels were high enough to kill many of the bats (Wilson 110).In addition, DDT ingested by mother bats was passed along to their young causing most of them to die before reaching maturity (Wilson 110).Clark’s follow up study in 2001 also showed levels of DDT in bat specimens from the 1950s and 1960s to be considerably higher than in specimens from later decades (Clark).These kinds of toxin levels would account for the dramatic decrease in the Carlsbad bat population.

All of this adds up to a conclusion that critics of Rachel Carson who make the wild claims that DDT is harmless, and that but for DDT mosquito control would have been achieved, and therefore malaria would be wiped out do not have a clue what they are talking about, and probably have some skullduggery in mind when they go after Rachel Carson. Ironically, overuse of DDT actually benefits mosquitoes in the U.S., killing the predators of mosquitoes and other crop and human pests, allowing the mosquitoes to breed and feed uninhibited.

In her book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson had noted a pesticide spill in Austin, Texas, which occurred in 1961 and virtually cleaned out all the fish in the Colorado River downstream — fish, of course, prey on mosquito larvae. DDT use in Texas, therefore, hammers mosquito abatement possibilities at both ends. Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | DDT, Hoaxes, Natural history, Rachel Carson, Science, Travel, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, War on Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Upon these rocks . . .

July 9, 2007

. . . Ken Ham’s creationist museum is established. An amateur geologist/paleontologist in Cincinnati lets the rocks tell their own story. Interestingly, the story they cry out is not the one promoted by Ken Ham.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Panda’s Thumb and P. Z. Myers.

Leave a Comment » | Bogus history, Creationism, Hoaxes, Museums, Natural history, Reason, Science and faith | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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